MP3 Shuffle-a-gogo

And now it's time for another round of Shuffle-a-gogo. You know the drill: set your MP3 delivery device of choice on shuffle, hit play, write down the first ten songs. No skipping. This week I'm working off of my Creative Zen, which means 6,851 songs to pull from. Let's shuffle...

1. ANY TROUBLE - Growing Up (Girls Are Always Right: the Stiff Years) A bouncy new wave Springsteen cover from the band's debut album. 
2. CHINA CRISIS - Christian (Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It's Fun to Entertain 1982) This song from the band's debut sounds like a light synth pop take on Roxy Music's Avalon.
3. SAD LOVERS & GIANTS - Man of Straw (Feeding the Flame 1980) SL&G play moody post-punk that mines much of the same ground as Joy Division. But they did it better and more convincingly than most of the other bands that tried to pick up where Joy Division left off.
4. the POSIES - 20 Questions (Frosting on the Beater 1993) For album #3 the Posies recruited Don Fleming of Velvet Monkeys and Gumball to produce, which resulted in surprisingly heavier album than the first two. Now it seems perfectly in line with what the Posies were doing at the time, but I recall at the time it being a pretty jarring listen the first time I heard it.
5. JETS TO BRAZIL - One Summer Last Fall (Four Cornered Night 2000) This was my #9 album in 2000. but twelve years later it's easily the album I play the most form that year. For the second JtB album Blake Schwarzenbach abandoned most of his punk angst in favor of a more optimistic album with the keyboards up front and the guitars more restrained. 
6. X - When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch (Wild Gift 1981) Thirty plus years later Wild Gift still sounds fresh and exciting. Actually, I'd say that about the first four X albums. Billy Zoom's guitar is stellar as always here, but the Doe/Bonebreak rhythm section absolutely kicks and this is one of my favorite John Doe/Exene harmonies.
7. XTC - Ten Feet Tall (Drums and Wires 1979) A fine Colin Moulding song from the band's third album. For me this song is the bridge where Colin went from trying to write in Andy Partridge's style to writing uniquely Colin Moulding songs.
8. ENGLISH BEAT - Night and Day - 1983 Kid Jensen session (English Beat BBC Sessions) A throwaway take on the Cole Porter song with a goofy lounge singer style vocal.
9. the EQUALS - the Skies Above (Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys Anthology) I take every opportunity I can to convert more people over to the wonderfulness of Eddy Grant's first band, the Equals. They're one of my favorite bands of the 60's - playing a nice mix of British Beat, maximum R&B, and pop (and on occasion dipping their toe in the bubblegum pool). If you don't have one already - pick up an Equals comp.
10. LEE SCRATCH PERRY and the UPSETTERS - Drum Rock (Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle 1973) One of the first dub albums - hypnotic and weird, which is par for the coarse for Perry.

Well, I quite like this shuffle. I think all 10 songs put a smile on my face when they came up and made me want to break out the whole albums, which doesn't happen often with shuffles.