1. If you’d like to play along, reply to this post and I’ll assign you a letter.
2. You then list (and upload or link to the video, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Then, as I’m doing here, you’ll post the list to your journal with the instructions.

I was given… “H”. And since I can do this, I’m embedding tracks in WordPress. Hah!

• [See post to listen to audio] Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea (Genesis) – I love this piece. I just plain love it. Especially the various live renditions with the dual drummers. This sort of thing is what I love about Genesis.
• [See post to listen to audio] Hallo Spaceboy (David Bowie w/ Pet Shop Boys) – Two great tastes that go great together.
• [See post to listen to audio] Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Daft Punk) – Let’s be honest: They’re probably never going to top this.
• [See post to listen to audio] Hyperactive (Thomas Dolby) – This is one of those love-it-or-hate-it songs from Mr. Dolby, and I happen to love it. I can see why some people don’t enjoy it as much, though.
• [See post to listen to audio] Heat (Jethro Tull) – Speaking of love-or-hate, this is from the Tull album which is the most “electronic” they ever released, and it drove the die-hard fans batty. One of the things I like about it is that nearly the entire album could be used as the soundtrack to a cheesy 80′s spy caper flick… especially this track.

And there you go. Anybody want a letter of their own to run with?

Anyway. Without further ado, blah blah blah:

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing (feel free to annotate, since snarky commentary is half the fun)
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend that you’re cool…

(I’m fudging on Rule #6 in my usual way: If it’s a foreign-language track or an instrumental, I will use my discretion. If you don’t like it, too bad. My journal, my meme post.)

Opening credits: “Beastie,” Jethro Tull – Ominous. And yet, the opening lines do describe the arc of one’s life, after a fashion… “From early days of infancy, through trembling years of youth, long murky middle-age and final hours long in the tooth…”

Waking up: “Hallo Spaceboy,” Pet Shop Boys w/ David Bowie – “Do you like girls or boys” is not what I’m thinking first thing in the morning, for the record.

First day of school: “Amlapura,” Tin Machine – Er. Never mind the back-to-back Bowie, this just makes no sense whatsoever here. “Never saw in all my life a more shining jewel,” indeed.

Falling in love: “Back to Back,” Tony Banks – This song has precisely nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Love scene: “Hollowman,” Econoline Crush – If I’m making love while angsty, shouty alterna-rock plays on a nearby sound system, somebody please slap me.

Breaking up: “Airhead,” Thomas Dolby – “You ask me, do I love you, does the Pope live in the woods? Quad Erat Demonstrandum, baby (‘Ooo, you speak French!’)” Apparently in this movie version of my life I broke up with someone for being a ditz? Huh.

Life is good: “Easy Lover,” Philip Bailey w/ Phil Collins – I… don’t know what to say to this except to question on which level of life things are good. Below the waistline, sunshine? (Name that tune. Hah!)

Mental Breakdown: “Anything,” The Damned – We finally have something that fits the slot to a T. “Anything, anything, anything… is better than THIS!”

Driving: “Be With Me,” VAST – Wouldn’t this have made more sense earlier on? Could we swap this with the Econoline Crush track? Please?

Flashback: “Lean To The Inside,” Electronic – A vocals-free track that… actually kind of works. I think. In my warped little brain, anyway. The Tony Banks track earlier in the list would be better, though.

Getting back together: “Here,” VAST – “Hold me now, you know I am so afraid to love… at all.” Okay, though that’s not really what the song is about as far as I can tell…

Wedding: “Army of Me,” Bjork – Well, that’s a bit surreal.

Birth of Child: “Dreaming,” BT – “Walk with me, the future’s at hand, here with us, here where we stand.” Again, not a perfect fit but not completely amiss either… huh.

Final Battle: “Lament,” KOTOKO – I can think of worse tracks for this slot. (I tend to put the darker, techno-industrial KOTOKO tracks on my music player rather than the bouncey pop fluff.) I approve, though one of the Econoline Crush tracks could be swapped into this slot and work out better than where they ended up…

Death Scene: “General Crossing,” Jethro Tull – Well, it is all about going over to the other side. In the Cold War, though. Whoops.

Funeral song: “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da,” The Police – No, I don’t think so. Couldn’t we have had Clint Mansell’s “Death Is The Road To Awe” in this slot instead? Bah.

End Credits: “Burnt,” Econoline Crush – It’s… a song, I guess. Once again, Econoline Crush jumps into a slot that it doesn’t quite fit, though. Maybe bring KOTOKO’s “Lament” down here? Hmm.

And there you have it, such as it is. I hope you were as amused by reading as I was by annotating!

The purists (if such a word applies here, especially considering how many variants I ran into while coming up with this rendition) who’ve done this one before will note that I’ve left out the “Prom” selection. I doubt that anyone I know will complain.

Also, these results come from the subset of my library which lives on the portable player. I figured it’d help confine the track selection to things some people might have actually heard of. Stranger things have happened, right…?

1. Kevin Gilbert, “When You Give Your Love To Me”
2. Jethro Tull, “Ears of Tin”
3. Gorillaz, “Feel Good Inc.”
4. Midnight Oil, “Antarctica”
5. Peter Gabriel, “More Than This”
6. Metallica, “The Memory Remains”
7. Jethro Tull, “Mayhem Maybe”
8. Folk Implosion, “Merry-Go-Down”
9. Led Zeppelin, “Custard Pie”
10. Queensryche, “Real World”
11. Toy Matinee, “We Always Come Home”
12. Bankstatement, “The Border”
13. VAST, “Flames”
14. Genesis, “Heathaze”
15. Depeche Mode, “Halo”
16. Genesis, “The Dividing Line”
17. Midnight Oil, “What Goes On”
18. Smashing Pumpkins, “The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning”
19. BT, “Satellite”
20. Midnight Oil, “Progress”
21. VAST, “Touched”
22. Robert Plant, “Watching You”
23. Peter Gabriel, “Don’t Break This Rhythm”
24. Midnight Oil, “Put Down That Weapon”
25. VAST, “Land Of Shame”
26. Filter, “Take A Picture”
27. Peter Gabriel, “Games Without Frontiers”
28. Phil Collins, “Long Long Way To Go”
29. Jethro Tull, “Lick Your Fingers Clean”
30. Crime & The City Solution, “The Adversary”
31. Robert Plant, “Why”
32. Tin Machine, “Prisoner Of Love”
33. The Space Brothers, “I Still Love You”
34. Toy Matinee, “Last Plane Out”
35. Bjork, “Army Of Me”
36. Midnight Oil, “Return To Sender”
37. Toy Matinee, “Queen Of Misery”
38. Midnight Oil, “Lucky Country”
39. Yes, “Leave It” (It was the a cappella version, if you must know.)
40. Filter, “The Best Things”

So. You’ll notice a lot of Oils tracks, twice as many as there are for VAST, Tull, PG or Toy Matinee. It’s true that I have more of their songs in the “Jukebox” than anyone else, but only by a few tracks. VAST has almost as many songs but half the representation in this “random” playlist. Meanwhile, artists like the Pet Shop Boys and Duran Duran are left completely out of the mix. What went wrong?

Right, randomization: I went into it wanting not to fudge things but knowing the a simple “shuffle play” might not work too well knowing Winamp. I chose, then, to load up the media library fresh with the contents of “Jukebox,” and then used the Sort feature to randomize, three times. At that point I started down the list from 1 to… well, more than 40, because of the instrumentals and foreign-language cuts that showed up. Had I filtered those out to start with, would the distribution have worked better? I don’t know. Perhaps, as folks have tried to explain to my feeble brain over the years, “random” is just that, and shouldn’t be counted on to provide a moderately even distribution.

It’d be nice if there was a decent artist-separation plugin for Winamp, by the way. Also? I need to add more songs to my “Jukebox” library. It’s not quite to 4 gigabytes of music yet, after all, so why not fill the Insignia Pilot to capacity…?

If you’re curious enough, I’ve uploaded the Excel spreadsheet that I cobbled together so I could understand the numbers a bit better. Try not to have too much fun at my expense…

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 40 (English-language) songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly. (Comments may appear at greyduck.net or at the LJ thingie, mind you.)
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own.

1. I’ve been thinking about this for the last three days
2. In the last hours of a sunset rendezvous
3. City’s breaking down on a camel’s back (Gorillaz, “Feel Good Inc.”)
4. I’m a snowplow, I must now plow on
5. I woke up and the world outside was dark
6. Fortune, fame, mirror vain, gone insane, but the memory remains (Metallica, “The Memory Remains”)
7. When we’re working nights, the village ’round the old church becomes scary town
8. Skin and bone, tremble on the throne, something unexpected couldn’t hurt
9. Drop down, baby, let your daddy see
10. Strange, the view from here, words we spoke forgotten at the time (Queensryche, “Real World”)
11. Father was born by Daisy May Welch
12. Dry forever, the sun blinds off the whitewashed walls
13. Close your eyes, let me touch within (VAST, “Flames”)
14. No cloud, a sleepy calm, sunbaked earth that’s cooled by gentle breeze
15. You wear guilt like shackles on your feet (Depeche Mode, “Halo”)
16. There has always been a dividing line
17. One thing’s for sure that it’s still the same
18. Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you (Smashing Pumpkins, “The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning”)
19. She smells of the sun, and she’s constantly saying that it’s all a lie
20. Say “yes” to a real life ambition, say “yes” to our hopes and our plans
21. Touched, you say that I am too (VAST, “Touched”)
22. In sleep I am drawn, I feel guilty at dawn
23. Don’t break this rhythm, don’t break this motion (Peter Gabriel, “Don’t Break This Rhythm”)
24. Under the waterline, no place to retire
25. Looking out the window staring at the things that I can’t see (VAST, “Land of Shame”)
26. Awake on my airplane, awake on my airplane (Filter, “Take A Picture”)
27. Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane (Peter Gabriel, “Games Without Frontiers”)
28. While I sit here trying to think of things to say
29. I’ll see you at the weighing in, when your life’s sum-total’s made
30. You see me in a foreign face, in ships that sink without trace
31. Oh, the Sandman is running, oh, he ain’t telling you why
32. Don’t look back, whatever it takes to save your life
33. I sit in silence, I feel the guilt
34. Greetings from Sodom, how we wish you were here
35. Stand up, you’ve got to manage (Bjork, “Army Of Me”)
36. Well I want to return to my sender, yes I want to return
37. Bouncing off the wall, blind and dancing out of frame
38. Speed, and this, there’s a feeling I get when I look to the sun
39. I can feel no sense of measure (Yes, “Leave It”)
40. Got a green light, got a green light yeah, but I’m going nowhere (Filter, “Take A Picture”)

Now, I used Winamp for this and pointed it at my “Jukebox” directory, which is the source/sync directory I use to feed my portable player. Given the variety of stuff there, I’m amazed at what could be considered a heavy showing by a small number of artists. So amazed was I, in fact, that I built an Excel spreadsheet… that I’ll share in a later post, so as not to give too many hints right from the get-go…

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

I really don’t photograph well, do I…?

So here goes:

How many songs total: 5,028
How many hours or days of music: 15 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes
Most recently played: Dodo/Lurker by Genesis
Most played: Integral by Pet Shop Boys (10 times) *
Most recently added: “Version 2.0″ (album) by Garbage **

Sort by song title:
First Song: #1 Crush by Garbage
Last Song: Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: Vitamin C by Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop OST #2 “No Disk,” 0:06) ***
Longest Song: Sasha’s Voyage of Ima by BT (“Ima” CD#2, 42:45) ****

Sort by album:
First album: “10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1″ by Midnight Oil
Last album: “Zone Of The Enders OST” *****

First song that comes up on Shuffle: I’m With Stupid by Pet Shop Boys

Search the following and state how many songs come up: ******

• Death – 9
• Life – 71
• Love – 190
• Hate – 31
• You – 377
• Sex – 9

Most Represented Artist: Genesis (233 tracks) *******

Footnotes:

* I’ve only recently gotten into the habit of using the Media Library. Otherwise there’d be songs with much higher play counts.

** I had to find this the old-fashioned way: Doing a date search in the file directory. Winamp seems not to track my “recently added” very well for some reason.

*** I’d have found the shortest “proper” song in the list, but I ran out of time this morning. The first dozen entries were “non-songs” of one sort or another. So I gave up.

**** Which beat out Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready,” the previous (three) contender(s) (original and two live renditions), by almost twenty minutes!

***** Last studio album, not a single, by a proper band: Worldillia by Porno Graffitti

****** In Winamp, file path and album are included in all searches. These numbers are therefore inflated a little bit. Yes, this annoys me but there seems to be no way to search only in the title of a song. (Argh.)

******* By no means is all of my Genesis music ripped to MP3 or Ogg. The same is true for most of my other favorite artists, actually. That first number (~5000 tracks) would be much, much higher if I really wanted to go crazy with the digital music library…