Three songs, walking back from town...

I have an ipod shuffle, borrowed from a good friend of mine, after my beloved 80 gig classic died tragically over a year ago. It was an enlightening experience when I brought the dead ipod into the Apple shop and the dude said "oh yeah, ipods generally have a three year life expectancy. There's not much we can do for this one, but we can offer you ten percent off a brand new one."  Ten percent! Ah jeez, now I'm blushing. I can tell from the sincere tone of your voice you only make that offer to your most select clientèle. And I can tell from your personal approach and casual unassuming demeanor that I'm not only a customer but a friend, too.

Coincidentally, this was right around the time I began to think just maybe there might be something to the charge I-Pods are more style than substance. Anyway, this is all besides the point. I no longer have a fancy 80 gig classic, I have a shuffle. Which makes for a much different listening experience. A few times a week I load up a random selection of music, around 175 songs at a time. And because Shuffles have no display, and I don't have the new fancy one with the voice song identifier thing on it, I'm often not sure what I'm listening to. For a longtime I just put all the hip hop on my itunes on shuffle, hitting the shuffle button roughly 33 times for some reason, and chose the first 200 songs. Yesterday though, I put my whole itunes on shuffle, well I had to use that itunes dj thing, and I have to say if it was actually left in charge of a party, it would be responsible for a pretty cerebral, unorthodox, unpopular dance party. The majority of attendee's would not be happy. It always throws on a lot of random world music/jazz type horn and percussion, mixed with a lot of Brian Eno, old country and Autechre. I'd still dance to it, but I guess it is music from my itunes, plus I'm pretty weird.

Anyway, I was walking back from town today, badly bearded, in my brogues, with my eggs and milk, you know, like I do, and three songs especially caught my attention. Unexpectedly, even. The first was Everywhere from Fleetwood Mac's fourteenth album Tango In The Night. A song a lot of people would probably expect I enjoyed out of some kind of irony. Surprisingly though, this wasn't the case. It popped on my headphones just as the rain clouds were clearing up and raised my spirits with unusual sincerity. Especially unusual for a cynical man such as myself. What can I say I just got caught up in that ridiculous 1980's Fleetwood Mac vibe. It was fun.




Roughly thirty songs later (I do skip through periodically) after songs from the likes of The Clash, Funkadelic, Jay Crocker, Devo, Bill Cosby, and Invisibil Skratch Piklz, a fantastic song by the legendary Charles Mingus came on called Better Git It In Your Soul. The first track from his iconic album Mingus Ah Um. It starts off beautifully with this great bass line that sounds like Mingus rose up out of the ground, from beneath the studio, as he was playing it. Then it just goes into this huge blissful big band romp. Fun, exhilarating summertime music.





And finally the third song, that came on directly after Mr Charles Mingus, and I have the feeling I might get judged right about here, was You Make Me Feel Like Dancing by Leo Sayer. From his album Endless Flight, an album with a fantastic front sleeve I have to say. Though I think the version I have is from the Charlie's Angel's soundtrack that my cousin Tasha put on itunes ages ago. The vocals on this song are incredible. Superdisco. That I at first mistook for the Bee Gee's. Sayer reaches some serious high notes. The overall feel of the song is almost giddy. And I think my enjoyment of it would have swayed over into irony if it weren't for that genuinely insane bassline/ guitar combination during the versus'. That part blows my mind. Serious disco funk. And again, sunny day, Saturday night music. I guess that's the obvious theme at play here. I guess the mood can't always be life in the ghetto/ironic violence/dark beat/depressing introspection/experimental/soundscape type stuff all the time. Sometimes you just want happy music. As awful as that phrase sounds. And in the end I always feel like dancing. Oh and plus, the video for this song is fucking great. Excuse my french.





I actually had to listen to the Leo Sayer song twice.