fwiw, i found two new sets over the weekend that may be worth mentioning. the “here” songs all seem to call you to a sense of presence, to command your attention, pull you into the moment. the “make” songs (including the “making” ones that follow) are similar, but they’re even more forceful. the “make” set is for your moments when you want your ipod to make you feel submissive. at least on my list — anyone else’s?

Awesome post. Thanks for posting this when you did because when I read it I had just returned from dropping off a rental car. While reading your post, I decided to grab my iPod and play along. Hmmm, where *was* that little bugger? Shite, I had left it in the rental car! Fortunately, when I arrived back at Avis, the car had been washed and was on the block for the next renter. The iPod was still there, right where it had fallen. So your post most likely saved my iPod from a slow horrible death squeezed between the seatbelt housing and the passenger seat of a gold Chevy Cobalt. My iPod has actually had a rough couple weeks. It was recently retrieved from the cold concrete floor of the elevator shaft in my apartment, where it landed after falling about 60 after slipping out of my hand. Not much worse for the wear, I might add.

Anyway, I love this idea! It’s a fun way to explore one’s music collection. You got me thinking about what my music collection really looked like. As a consequence, you also got me motivated to start hacking the iTunes database and visualizing my collection along various dimensions. I can think of tons of ways to have fun with this data. Is hip-hop really more heavily represented in ‘W’ than other genres? The answer is, in my collection, a little bit). I’m going to write a more detailed post about what I mine from this data later. In the mean time, a couple of informative graphs are: here, here and here.

Here are some interesting anecdotal tidbits.

First 11 Songs that start with ‘Roc[k]‘
Roc The Mic – Nelly
Rock & Roll (Could Never Hip-Hop Like This) – Handsome Boy Modeling School
Rock & Roll Bullshit – Government Issue
Rock and Roll Remedy – Alpha Blondy
Rock Classics – Knife
Rock for Light – Bad Brains
Rock it Tonight – Seven Dub
Rock n Roll – Mos Def
Rock n’ Roll Band – Mano Negra
Rock ‘n Roll Medley – The Meters
Rock of Gibralter – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

A Short list of ‘She’ Songs
She Knowz What She Wantz – Gangstarr
She Lives in My Lap – Andre 3000 (OutKast)
She Passed By My Window – Nick Cave
She Sells White Weddings (Mash-up) – Smashup Derby
She Watch Channel Zero?! – Public Enemy
She Wears He Harem – Shudder to Think
She’s Alive – Andre 3000 (OutKast)
She’s Having a Baby (Knife)

Here’s one of my favorite runs: Madonna, Gustav Mahler, Bob Marley, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Maria McKee, Meat Puppets, Mekons, Metallica, Charles Mingus, Minutemen, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison. So many different stages of my musical life, all sandwiched together.

T