I was more or less raised by wolves, and that meant that I had zero access to portable music players growing up. I'd heard of them, the Walkman, the Discman, the MP3 and the iPod, but not until last week, when my roommate lent me her iPod indefinitely and allowed me to load 6 gigs of my own music on it, did I actually insert tiny speakers into my ears and listen to music as I went about my daily business.

The first thing I did was try to listen at work. It turns out that cranking Metallica's "...And Justice for All" while trying to edit news copy is not a good idea. I put the iPod away and went about work in the sterile silence that only office buildings can create. At the end of the day, I fished the iPod out of my bag, pressed "Shuffle Music" and inserted the headphones....

...and the whole downtown DC commuter world slipped away, the sounds of wind, traffic, coughing technocrats, scraping escalators and yowling trains replaced by music. What a terrific invention this iPod thingy is. I'd always thought that because I didn't listen to music while I walked or rode trains, buses or airplanes, sometimes across vast, vast distances and entire oceans, that I was somehow doing a lot more thinking than I might. Not true. It turns out that thinking and listening to music are not mutually exclusive.

The best part of the whole first day with the iPod happened on a train platform outside. I was making a transfer, and the sign above the platform clocked 3 minutes until the next train. I bounced to the end of the platform and stared down the tracks, and in the distance I could see the light of the inbound train. The Flaming Lips' "Sleeping on the Roof" came through the headset, and as I watched the train get closer and closer, the song played on, building an almost perfect soundtrack to the wait. The train blew past me as the song reached its apogee, and when the train stopped and the doors opened, the song quit.

I've been wearing the iPod every morning and evening since.

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darmuzz says:

Yes! A luddite reformed! Welcome to iWorld.

Posted about 1 year ago | Delete

The ice and snow in DC started melting today, along with some of my unemployment woes. I got a regular paying gig that will take the choke chain off my neck. I found out about it yesterday, so instead of transcribing an interview for an ongoing story, I started ripping some music that came in from my friend S.Z., who lives in Cambodia. She knew that I'd lost some of my Pixies due to an unfortunate file replacement accident in December, when I was visiting Phnom Penh, so she sent me a full collection from her own. I'd really been missing Bossanova. I ripped those, read up, and decided to make my next playlist: "World of Pixies," wherein I dropped Iggy Pop, the Stooges... as influences of the Pixies... as well as Radiohead, David Bowie and Nirvana, all of whom cite the Pixies as an influence. I'd like to do more to beef up this playlist, so if any Pixies fan out there has some advice, drop it like it's hot.

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chucky says:

I have no advice, but I'd like to see that playlist.

Posted about 1 year ago | Delete

ryun says:

Some people say this every chance they get, but in this case it's true--the Beatles were an influencer here. Especially of Frank Black, or so I hear.

As someone who many times has too much time on his hands, I like to pull apart Rolling Stone's top 500 albums list and look for connections there. It's amazing to see the web that shows up. For example, Raw Power is around 150 or so-a good lead in for Surfer Rosa in the 220s.

Posted about 1 year ago | Delete

gcincinnati says:

Well, Placebo also cites the Pixies, and they did a KICKASS version of 'Bigmouth Strikes Again'. I say use that:)

Posted about 1 year ago | Delete