Day nine of the post a day in May and the schedule has gone out of the window. To such an extent this is the topic that was planned for today before being shuffled around and back again. Just not in this format.
IT is the shortest section of the A-Z iPod Challenge to date.
But within the 28 songs it took to travel from Case/Lang/Veirs to Turin Brakes, we hit a major landmark.
It was not marked in any great fashion, merely the fact that it had just stopped raining and was able to take my jacket hood down but the first strains of Hook, Line, Sinker by Stornoway ushered in the 5,000th track on the journey through my iPod.
Only another 8,703 to go. And rising.
And while drying off on the regular weekly walk to check on the latest weight loss progress, the original idea to write about travel was replaced by one to mark the occasion with a blog post.
So let’s rewind right back to the beginning and explain for any newcomers what this musical odyssey is all about, a few facts and figures and the self-imposed rules which govern it.
Are you sitting comfortably? Well you are one up on me, but let’s start anyway.
What?
Pretty simple, listen to every track on my iPod from A-Z.
Why?
Will ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’ suffice as an answer?
Tried it once before (with a much smaller musical collection) but it sort of ran out of steam having reached midway through C.
Think was struggling to find anything to grab my attention and, having planned several times to dig deep into my collection and listen to some stuff that had passed me by or been forgotten, it seemed a way of doing it.
Raised the idea again around the same time this website was created in March 2014 to house blog posts for past trips and the then looming Trans Africa trip.
Looking for something else to write about, some bright spark suggested combining the two and writing about the iPod. That’s the Cornish for you.
The rules
- My iPod decides the order – It’s in-built alphabetising system is the one which will determine the running order.
Somehow it has changed, Vampire Weekend’s A-Punk relegated from the opening track on the initial attempt to somewhere in the pack of A songs, letting The Beatles kick things off with A Day in the Life – although a quick check reveals the first song on the list is now (A Belated) Invite To Eternity by Stornoway which had been listed under B.
Some of the alphabetising is a bit weird, especially with definite and indefinite articles. - No skipping – To count, the song must register as having been played in my iTunes library, which means playing it until the end. Long silences at the end of songs push my patience on this one, especially in the gym.
- It’s the tracks that count, not songs – Multiple versions of the same song all have to be listened to. The most found so far is five – one cover and four of the original in various different guises. That’s five tracks to be listened to all the way through.
- No revisionism – There’s some rubbish on there, no hiding away from the fact. But nobody put it on there but me (even if the reason is lost in the mists of time), so there’s nobody to blame. It has to be listened to before moving on.
- New additions count – This remains an evolving collection, so when something is added and drops into the list before the current point, at some point there will be a catch-up session.
Do this at the end of each letter via a playlist which any new songs from earlier in the journey get dropped into. - Breaks are allowed – Let’s be honest, all this time without any new music or being able to choose exactly what to listen to is not really an option.
This is a challenge to be paused and picked up again from where it was left off. There have been some very long breaks, getting on for a year in a couple of places.
The landmarks
At the time these were the songs sat in the most notable figures:
- 1,000 Blue Eyes – Destroyer (now 1,182)
- 2,000 Cry Baby Cry – The Beatles (they keep cropping up, now 2,310)
- 3,000 Elizabeth My Dear – The Stone Roses (in the week of the 30th anniversary of their debut album, now 3,181)
- 4,000 Gimme Back My Dog – Slobberbone (now 4,117)
And the songs sitting in those positions at the moment:
- 1,000 Birch Tree – Foals
- 2,000 Coaxed – Avi Buffalo
- 3,000 Drinking At The Dam – Smog
- 4,000 The Gator – Will Oldham
The stats
- Longest track to date: 27.37 Driftin’ Back – Neil Young & Crazy Horse
- Shortest track to date: 6 seconds Hive Mind – They Might Be Giants (the shortest track in my collection)
- Longest section: Songs beginning with All which have held the title since occupying tracks 160-267. About to be totally blown out of the water.
The latest section
Apart from Stornoway grabbing the limelight, inevitably at the moment, we had The Beatles – twice in just 28 songs with Honey Don’t and Honey Pie.
There were also two appearances for Billy Bragg, both solo (Honey, I’m A Big Boy Now) and with Wilco (Hoodoo Voodoo) and two versions, one live, of Hope The High Road from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Not his best but still good enough to get on here twice.
More old favourites came in the shape of Leonard Cohen-inspired REM (Hope), The Wedding Present (Hopak, one of their Ukrainian tracks) and Sugar with Hoover Dam – one of the unwritten laws which have evolved says it has to be mentioned as it is from Copper Blue. And still brilliant.
For once, Sugar were not the loudest in this chunk. That goes to Deafheaven, all 11-plus minutes of it – an acquired taste which am starting to come round to.
But that was not the longest track of this section, followed immediately by 13 minutes of Honeymoon’s Great! Wish You Were Her by Josh T Pearson.
It all added up to something a bit different in the gym with those two back to back. Pretty sure was the only one in there listening to that.
But reckon that’s the case most of the time.
