First Gen iPod: I Totally Had One

Last year during the summer, while doing cactus surveys in the Uinta Basin, my boss brought out some mini speakers. We plugged his iPod in and started surveying. Everyone was totally into it, saying how awesome an idea it was, and how it was going to revolutionize cactus surveys forever. A couple of hours later, someone said "put in Howard's iPod."

So we did.

An hour or so in, many songs and genres later, my boss said, "Is that Frank Sinatra?"
"Yes," I said.
"I'm about to throw that iPod."

While I was contentedly listening to songs that have, over the years, enhanced my life and made the world a better place for me, my coworkers were, at least some of the time, miserable.

Here's the thing about my 'pod. It may not have something you like on it, but it is sure as heck going to have something that you'll hate. This is, I think, the way it should be. Music is just about as personal as it can get, I think, and if you're into it, your playlist should match no one else's in the world.

As far as I can think back, I've had at least a few bands and songs in my collection that have earned the absolute derision of my closest friends. For every Soundgarden and Pearl Jam during the 90's, there was Violent Femmes and Oingo Boingo.

We were all elitists back then, so I'm not going to make myself out to be any sweeter than those losers, but there was a list of acceptable music. If you had something that wasn't on it or something that you should have wasn't, it was, to use the vernacular of the time, "whack." I missed out on some good bands at the time because they were "trendy." I didn't touch The Offspring, for example. Who I think at the time I would have loved. Missed opportunities.

Things aren't much different now. I have several of the requisite indie bands, the hip-hop classics that we white people love now, and a few ironic throwbacks, but a perusal of my iPod rarely receives a full approval. Guilty pleasures like My Chemical Romance and AFI boast absurdly high plays, for example, while The Arcade Fire rarely gets a spin. There is even, and I shudder to think of what my 17 year old self would think of this, some classic country on there.

So next time you're in the desert, and someone asks you to put on your 'pod, and everyone at the end of the day tells you how rad it was? You're doing it wrong. We're all our own people, and our bookshelf, movie collection, playlist, and Pokemans should reflect this.

Anyway, the first 10 songs that came up on random:
Lost in Space - Aimee Man
I Still Miss Someone - Johnny Cash
This Time - RX Bandits
(Untitled) - Pretty Girls Make Graves
Static - Kool Keith
Jettison - Neko Case and Her Boyfriends
I Feel You - Depeche Mode
Symphony No. 40 - Allegro Molto - Mozart
Walk Among Us - Misfits
Without Me - Eminem

Cold night, sound travels

Just higher air density

Adios mystique