Thursday 18 October 2007
Brain shuffle
Every once in a while, one of those music memes sweep through the blogs I read: put your music-player software on shuffle mode and list the first 20 tracks that come up, that sort of thing. Here’s a twist: keep track of the songs that are in your head at the moment you wake up, and post a list. Here’s mine over the past few weeks. Make of them what you will.
- Dexys Midnight Runners - “Come On Eileen”
- Franz Ferdinand - “What You Meant”
- Massive Attack - “Risingson”
- Peter Gabriel - “Steam”
- XTC - “Limelight”
- Little Eva - “The Loco-Motion”
- Bruce Springsteen - “Dancing In The Dark”
- Steelye Span - “Bachelor’s Hall”
- King Crimson - “Dinosaur”
- Rowlf the Dog - “Cottleston Pie”
- Komeda - “Elvira Madigan”
- The Shins - “Phantom Limb”
- David Bowie - “Life On Mars?”
- Mashup: Depeche Mode - “Get The Balance Right” vs Franz Ferdinand - “Jacqueline”
- Jazzanova - “Mwela”
About half of these are things I was listening a day or a few days previous… but the more interesting ones are the ones that seemed to come out of nowhere, like “Dancing in the Dark”, or “Cottleston Pie”, which I hadn’t heard since I was a kid. (And by the way, here it is on YouTube. A lot faster than I remember - my mental recording seemed to be more wistful.) “Loco-Motion” and “Bachelor’s Hall” are in there too, certainly.
Try it! It’s a cross between “what you’ve been listening to” and “where’s your head at”.
I don’t tend to wake up with songs in my head, maybe because part of my “get to sleep” process is trying to IGNORE the songs in my head…or maybe I just don’t notice? I’ll have to pay attention!
This morning, as I stepped out the door, the opening lines to “Leipzig” jumped into my brain: “39 and you need some leeway.” This is probably because I’m turning 35 this week. Then, as I hustled through the iPod to actually LISTEN to the song, these lyrics popped in:
“Ten years old, with thoughts as bold as thoughts could be.” I frantically searched my memory to find out what song that line is from, but every time I try I end up with Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” instead: “I was eight years old, and running with a dime in my hand.” My brain knows that the cadence and tone of the lyrics are identical, and won’t let me think about the former without blocking me with the latter.
So I’m still trying to figure out where that lyric comes from, but I’m holding off googling because I want to figure it out for myself…