Thursday Thirteen Songs that make me go mmmmm

In no particular order...
1) Babylon - David Gray
2) Sleep - The Dandy Warhols
3) Not Enuff Love - Faithless
4) Love Explosion - The Lightning Seeds
5) Oh Sister - Bob Dylan
6) I Believe When I fall in Love - Stevie Wonder
7) Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
8) Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
9) Sense - The Lightning Seeds
10) Wild is the Wind - David Bowie
11) River - Joni Mitchell
12) California Dreaming - Jose Feliciano
13) Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd

Blogging Hell...Holiday Tracks

This is the second time I have tried to blog since being in Greece. The first time I spent ages typing up an entry only to find it wouldn't load or even save as a draft - grrr!

Being on holiday has made me wonder, what is it that makes a great holiday track? Is it a summery feel to the music? Is it the content of the lyrics? Or is it some other mysterious quality that can't quite be defined?

I can think of quite a few tracks that have a summery feel to them. There are songs about summer (like Summer in the City, Summer Night City and California Dreaming), There are reggae, African and Latin tracks that ooze the heat of summer. Chilled out music like Air also has a summer's day feel to it, as do songs with great vocal harmonies like those of Simon and Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

But there are other tracks that for some reason I always feel like hearing in the summer although I don't really know why and this is my top 10 of those tracks...

Top 10 Summer Holiday Tracks

1) Acres Wild - Jethro Tull
"I'll make love to you,
in narrow side streets,
with shuttered windows
and crumbling chimneys..."

2) Ramble On - Led Zeppelin

3) Lucretia My Reflection - The Sisters of Mercy
" Hot metal and Methedrine..."

4) The River - Bruce Springsteen

5) Over the Hill - John Martyn
"Been worried about my babies,
been worried about my wife,
There's just one place for a man to be
when he's worried about his life..."

6) Cat People (Putting Out Fire With Gasoline) - David Bowie

Am I Wrong - Love Spit Love

7) Maybe Tomorrow - The Stereophonics

8) Coffee and TV - Blur

9) Knocking On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan

10) Don' Let Me Down Again - Fleetwood Mac

Summer Holiday Playlist

Been updating my playlist on the i-pod today in holiday anticipation!

Top 10 Summer Holiday Tracks

1) Maybe Tomorrow - The Stereophonics
2) All the Money or the Simple Life Honey - The Dandy Warhols
3) Epoca - Gotan Project
4) Shadows of Ourselves - Theivery Corporation
5) Falling Down - Muse
6) Sunshine Superman - Donovan
7) Leaving Me Now - Level 42
8) Cross Eyed Mary - Jethro Tull
9) Caroline - Status Quo
10) Dancing Barefoot - Patti Smith

Wordless Rope day

Land of Rope and Glory
Originally uploaded by pupski.

Musical Interconnectedness

Blue Turtle left me a comment suggesting I check out this singer "Ari Hest"(see picture), I had never heard of him before but I am glad I did, he is well worth a listen. it's mostly acoustic guitar based songs. You can check him out by clicking on his name above.

Blue Turtle's blog led me to that of A Boy and His Bike and another band that I had not heard of called "Hoobastank". I listened to a couple of their tracks and was very impressed. I like this kind of musical networking. I am always looking for a new musical high, so if anyone else has any good suggestions please leave me a name and or link in my comments.

holiday preparation

Just a few more days and I will be on a Greek island so might not get to post very often. (i could get my housesitter to blog for me!) There is an internet cafe so I will be able to blog once or twice.

As you might have guessed I have been editing my playlists in anticipation. What a difference from last time I went on holiday and had a little mp3 player that could fit about 50-60 tracks! There is something about summer that makes me want to revisit old tracks and this week I have wanted to revisit some music that I had on singles.

Holiday Preparation playlist:

Are Friends Electric? - Tubeway Army
Sarah Smiles - Bram Tchaikovsky
Airport - The Motors
Tempted - Squeeze
Turn it on Again - Genesis
Ma Jaiye Oni - King Sunny Ade and His African Beats
Shine Eye Gal - Black Uhuru
Invisible Touch - Genesis
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - Black Uhuru

Not so Random i-pod Shuffle

I'm not looking for a conspiracy but it does seem slightly odd that when I put my i-pod on shuffle there are certain songs it always plays. I find this slightly annoying. If you set it to shuffle a playlist of 180 tracks you want a bit of variety, but no, the same tracks come up every time and what is weirder is that one of the tracks that keeps coming up on my ipod, 100 Billion Stars by Lux, also comes up over and over on Hunchermuncher's ipod.

I did wonder if maybe it is to do with where you downloaded the tracks from in the first place, but there is just no way of knowing. It means that I quickly tire of certain tracks and then remove them for a while. According to Steve Fruhlinger I am just doing the human thing - looking for patterns in things.

"Apple's engineers swear that the shiny white music players actually do use pseudo-randomizing algorithms for shuffle play. The people at Newsweek were kind enough to verify this with Steve Jobs when they found that their iPod had an unhealthy obsession with Steely Dan (it happens). The conclusion? People love their iPods so much that they look for patterns in the pseudo-randomness. It's what we do, as humans."

But what if there really is a pattern???