The iPod Project

I had an idea while getting ready for work this morning: how much of the stuff on my iPod do I even listen to on a regular basis? There’s over 6,600 songs on there, and I probably listen to the same – what – 600 or so songs over and over? Seems silly.

So I thought to myself, “Why not see how long it’d take to listen to ALL of the songs on the iPod, in order? And blog about it!” Then I did a bit of math and figured out tgat, at my current rate of listening (roughly 45 minutes a day), it would take something like two years. That’s a bit much.

Then I decided to aim more reasonably: what if I listened to the first song of each album on my iPod? Much more achievable. It’ll probably still take a few months, but it’ll be fun to examine what all’s really on the iPod. And hey, the first song on an album is usually an interesting statement about the band or an album as a whole (even if the statement is “The rest of the album is nothing like this track.”

Now admittedly, on quite a few of the “albums” in my iPod, I have only a track or two, and often not the first track of the album. But that’s okay. We’ll just pretend it is.

Music Monday

Summer means I finally get to catch up on listening to music. There never seems to ne enough time for all the media I want to consume, but I try to make an effort with music.

To that end, here’s a playlist:

1. Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood.” With its refrain lifted from “The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” this song has great singalong potential.
2. The Old ’97s, “Melt Show.” A song about drunken summer crushes.
3. Butch Walker and the Let’s-Go-Out-Tonites, “Ladies and Gentlemen…’The Let’s-Go-Out-Tonites!’” Butch Walker is just a great crafter of catchy music. “Make up your own version/sin along” indeed.
4. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On).” An unorthodox, unlikely pairing that resulted in some damn fine songs.
5. Elvis Costello, “Pump It Up.” Is there anything a little Elvis Costello can’t make better? Not that I’ve encountered.
6. Steve Earle, “More Than I Can Do.” My brother and I are in search of a cover song for our long-delayed recording session (we’ve been wanting to put our songs down on tape in an honest to God recording studio for years, but being in different states made it hard). This is one of his suggestions.
7. Jakob Dylan, “Something Good This Way Comes.” I am apparently a sucker for anyone from the Dylan family. True story.
8. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “Hey You.” These guys always sound like they’re having so much fun when they play.
9. Billy Bragg, “A New England.” Punk-folk. ‘Nuff said.
10. The Black Crowes, “Hard to Handle.” I’m a sucker for blues rock, too. This is one of he last cassettes of new music I remember my father purchasing. In the late ’80s. My father hasn’t really followed contemporary music in awhile.
11. Bruce Springsteen, “Youngstown,” Such a depressing song. As was most of the stuff off The Ghost of Tom Joad.
12. Bob Dylan, “Positively 4th Street.” Still one of the nastiest kiss-offs in music history.
13. The Beatles, “I Saw Her Standing There.” a playlist without the Beatles is like a day without sunshine.
14. The Arcade Fire, “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations.” Sure, it’s pretty pretentious and overwrought, but that’s a big part of the band’s charm.
15. Chuck Berry, “Maybelline.” A great driving song. Just evokes the open road in one of Berry’s classic story songs.
16. David Gray, “You’re the World to Me.” Yeah, it’s shmaltzy adult contemporary, but he just writes these love songs that pull me in.
17. Death Cab for Cutie & Pete Townsend, “Photobooth.” Acoustic, sad, more of an end of the summer song than a beginning of summer one, but what can you do?
18. Depeche Mode, “Personal Jesus.” Don’t we all want a personal savior sometimes?
19. Greg Brown, “Not High.” There are days when “I try to get by on wine and poetry,” too.
20. Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine.” I’ve dug this song since I saw a bit using it on the old Brunching Shuttlecocks site back in college.

I Read Comics!

Not only do I occasionally draw a comic, I also really enjoy reading comic books. My haul from this week was decent, with some good bits and some mediocre bits. Let’s take a look:

Wonder Woman #33 draws to a close the epic “Rise of the Olympian” storyline. Sure, it’s another Wonder Woman comic that plays on Greek mythology, but Gail Simone is a strong enough writer to take seemingly cliched setups and make them feel fresh and exciting. There’s a reason this book was the first one I started to follow in single issues, and solid stories like this one are it. I heart Gail Simone.

Astonishing X-Men #30 ends a storyline for that title as well. However, I don’t know that I can continue to pick this comic up in single issues. It took a year to get six issues. Sure, that sounds like it’s coming out every other month, but two of those six came out in the last two months, and there was a gap of like three months between issues 28 and 29. I’m re-reading the entire story now, seeing if it makes sense as a whole, but I’m not really feeling it. A big problem I have with the title is Simone Bianchi’s art. Sure, it’s stylish and well-done, but it’s also laid out in a bizarre and hard-to-follow fashion and you often can’t tell what the hell’s happening (there’s a panel in issue #26 where Wolverine is being thrown at a spaceship and uses his claws to slow himself down, I guess, but it’s hard to tell because there’s no background and he doesn’t look like he’s in a position for what he’s doing to work). I do hear that Phil Jimenez is coming on to draw the next arc, though, which gives me hope. I do rather like Warren Ellis as a writer, though I’m still not sure if he’s right for this title.

Detective Comics #854 features Batwoman rather than Batman as the headliner. I’m a sucker for Greg Rucka, and J.H. Williams III’s art is phenomenal. It does feel kinda weird, this far removed from the weekly series 52, to see Batwoman just now going after the Religion of Crime, but the first issue of this story still grabbed me pretty well. Also, backup story featuring Renee Montoya, the new Question. Can’t complain about that one.

The Immortal Iron Fist: The Mortal Iron Fist TPB is the first collection from the post-Fraction/Brubaker run on the title, and while it isn’t quite as engaging as their initial run on the title, it’s still pretty solid. Duane Swierczynski wisely draws on a lot of the elements that made the Fraction/Brubaker run a success: a great supporting cast, examining the history of different Iron Fists, and lots of kinetic kung fu action. It makes me sad that this title is ending, ’cause Swierczynski clearly had a pretty good grasp of the character.

Will This Even Work?

Trying to get Crooked Halo started up again…or possibly other comics under the Crooked Halo banner. Regardless, we’ll have to see if I can make WordPress work that way, or if I’ll have to break down and actually figure out how to do ComicPress and all that jazz.