Tuesday 16 February 2010

Prevaricate (v) To paint fashionable veins one one’s legs in advance of old age.

My mp3 player is so full of stuff now that half the time I have no idea what I am listening to, and, while reading on the Tube for instance, can’t be bothered half the time to pull the machine out of my pocket to check what the track is. In the future, no doubt, I will have the option to have the name of the track and artist scroll across my eyeballs in an organic font of my choosing, but for now, I’m stuck with what I have.
I leave it on constant shuffle, which is perfect for me since it forces me to listen to stuff I may not choose voluntarily, and the tracks are a genuine surprise.
It is, as you may expect (or not, since you may not know who I am), an eclectic mix. representing the Classical community, we have Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Maria Callas and Philip Glass (among others). There’s a good representation of World music, which consists in the main of South American/Latino although I also have some Romanian gypsy music which was recommended by The Evening Standard. Then we have jazz and blues, from Charlie Mingus, Albert King, The Nigel Price Trio and some older blues artists whose names escape me, although I’m pretty sure they all begin with ‘Blind’.
Then there’s rock from Rammstein, Pink Floyd and Yes, some Beatles, Them Crooked Vultures, Frank Zappa, Syd Barrett, the complete Kraftwerk, some folky stuff from The Imagined Village (who do a very interesting version of Slade’s ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’) and a double CD of cover versions from The Ministry of Sound, a double CD of Erasure that I found in Barnardos, Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Editors.
I’m particularly fond of The Editors, who are the best band I’ve come across in the last few years. They seem to know what they’re doing, and they do it very well, which is all one can ask for.