I’ve mentioned my Random Access Brain before. On any given day when it is on Shuffle, my RAB can provide me with a most astonishing variety of music. Most of it can’t even be explained away as being triggered by my seeing a book title or something. So this morning when I woke up with J Lo’s “Jenny from the Block” playing in my head it occurred to me that I’ve never tried to keep track of all the songs on random play in my head during the course of one day.
Impossible? Crazy idea? Needlessly obsessive?
Perhaps. But darn amusing I’ll warrant.
And so I did. I actually managed to note down all the random songs playing in my head. And here is the list. In order of the first appearance of the song.
Be afraid.
Just singing in my head… 1) J Lo - Jenny From the Block (video) 2) Amy Grant - El Shaddai (video) 3) Fanny Crosby - Blessed Assurance 4) Do You Hear the People Sing from Les Miserables 5) A medley of songs from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. 6) A random theme song that I don’t know the name of. Sorry. 7) Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Urban Spaceman (video) 8 ) A song that I made up about a puppet…today. No idea how it got stuck in my head so quickly. 9) Kylie Minogue - I Just Can’t Get You Out of My Head (video) 10) En Vogue - My Lovin’ (You`re Never Gonna Get It) (video) 11) Dazz Band - Let It Whip (video) 12) The Goops - Build me Up Buttercup (video) 13) Rogers & Hammerstein - In My Own Little Corner (video) 14) Evanescence - All That I’m Living For
And there you are! Frankly I’m astonished that I manged to note it all down. Now you can see for yourself how very random my personal song shuffle can be. I have no idea why I started the day with J Lo of all people. Oh well. *shrug*
Is your Random Access Brain as random with its song choices?
46. Get collection of music audiotapes down to only the amount that will fit in the red thing.
Well, I’ve been working on #46 on my list and I have already made a couple of discoveries.
1) I’ve been able to get rid of two old mix tapes by buying two songs. Apparently, “Pressure” from Billy Joel (iTunes) and “Done With Bonaparte” by Mark Knopfler (not available on iTunes, but Amazon.com has it) were each a lone song that I liked on a tape. So, that’s two tapes down.
2) Some of the tapes I have can’t be replaced. Generally speaking, this is because they exist only in that format. Le Sigh. Some examples:
- “One by One” by Miles and Miles. This band no longer exists. I managed to hunt down Margaret Miles, but I can’t seem to find any word of a CD or MP3s from that album.
- “Reflections” by Laura Allan. I found someone selling a used LP of this album. Sadly…that’s not what I’m looking for. No CDs or MP3s. Le Sigh.
- Golden Bough’s Self-Titled album from from 1990. I can find some of their other stuff, but not this one. I don’t think that I can even recreate the album from bits of other ones.
(If you have any info on these, please let me know. At this rate I’m going to have to sweet talk Koshvader into hooking his tape deck up to his computer again.)
3) I have several tapes that I can buy the CDs/MP3s for. I suppose that I have to start somewhere. It’s the mix tapes that are going to be interesting to deal with. Heck, I don’t even know who the artists are for some of those songs.
At least I’ve made some progress. And now you all know what the infamous “red thing” looks like.
“Rickrolling is a prank and Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up” … The meme is a classic bait and switch: a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive. A person who falls for the prank is said to have been “Rickrolled”.” - Rickroll Wikipedia Article
Random Access Brain is the sort of brain that will randomly pop ideas into your head when you are busy doing something else. It will remind you of that time in kindergarten that you were learning the letter A, and do this for no apparent reason. It will take unrelated concepts and create new ideas out of them. Sometimes it will do this in the most inappropriate of circumstances. Worse yet, sometimes the ideas are funny.
Random Access Brain on Shuffle is when the RAB decided to start playing music. Generally it is something completely unexpected like the Gilligan’s Island theme or just the chorus of your favorite song from third grade.
You could be sitting at work, minding your own business, trying to remember that new band name you came up with the other day…that you forgot to write down. (Was it something to do with donuts?) And just when you think that you’ve got it, your RABoS starts playing “Never Gonna to Give You Up.”
And that’s how it’s possible to Rickroll yourself.
I just gave in and added “music” to the categories for this blog. I’m not sure why I haven’t done this previously, as music is sort of central to my life.
Anyway, this video is for my Father, now that he has DSL. (Finally!) It’s my favorite plainsong (though not my favorite version) paired with some beautiful images. This is just to remind you all that nearly everything is on YouTube…including Gregorian Chant.
