Shuffle-a-gogo

1) X – Painting the Town Blue – From one of my all-time favorite albums (More Fun in the New World). This isn’t one of my favorite songs on the album, but it still sounds great.
2) Bad Religion – Struck a Nerve – I prefer the major label Bad Religion over the less melodic early stuff. But for some reason, at this moment, this song sounds sort of pretentious and plodding.
3) Balancing Act – Generator – Folky pop from the greatly under rated Curtains album. I keep waiting for this album get a belated resurgence, but almost 20 years later it still hasn’t happened.
4) the Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue – Yeah, Mick’s falsetto makes me laugh, but that rhythm section sounds so damn cool.
5) Jonathan Richman – Stop Your Sobbing – From the Kinks tribute album. This is one of those great covers that actually pays tribute to the original while also fitting in with the repertoire of the new artist. If I didn’t already know this song, I would have sworn it was a Jonathan original.
6) the Who – It’s Not True – Pretty much anything from those first four Who albums is going to put a smile on face. And I love the line “I’m not half Chinese either and I didn’t kill my Dad”.
7) Doves – Snowden – When this song started I didn’t know it was and didn’t recognize it by name, but once the vocals started and the lush melody started building I remembered why I put it on the MP3 player. This sounds great with headphones.
8) Depeche Mode – Stripped – It’s sort of obvious and easy to mock, but I’ll be damned if this song isn’t a little sexy.
9) XTC – Desert Island – I could have sworn I deleted this song when I tried to whittle down my XTC to under 100 songs on my MP3 player since they were (deservedly) dominating shuffle, which was no easy task. But I’ll never complain about an XTC song popping up on shuffle.
10) Echo and the Bunnymen – the Killing Moon – I’m sort of new to listening to music on headphones, but this song sounds incredibly great with headphones. I was a little too hyper when Ocean Rain came out in 1984 and was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t as rocking as their earlier album. It took me a few years to really warm up to the whole album, but this song hooked me from the first listen.