SHUFFLIN' AROUND

I’m sure I once read somewhere that some folk out there think that their i-pods can read their minds. The evidence for this seems to be that some song or other that they were thinking of suddenly comes on while their machine is on random shuffle.

Now I’m sure if you’ve got a small number of songs on your i-pod, say something in the region of between 50 and 100, then there’s a real possibility that this could happen. After all, there’s many a horse-race that is won by a 50-1 or 100-1 shot. But surely it should never happen if you’ve got almost 13,000 songs stored on your machine??

Well……

Just the day before yesterday, I was sitting on the train listening to my i-pod on the way to work. The fact I was doing so was only because Mrs Villain was running late and wasn’t with me (not that we sit down on the train and hold animated conversations first thing in the morning – its just out of politeness that I don’t put on my headphones and stare vacantly out of the window). On came the 49th song in sequence since the last time I used the shuffle songs function:-

mp3 : The Skids – Scared To Dance

And as I listened, a couple of thoughts ran through my mind. One of them, provoked by the guitar-playing of the late Stuart Adamson, was just how close new wave/post-punk could sometimes be to the mainstream rock of the late 70s. I’ve long been a big fan of The Skids, and can still enjoy their records almost 30 years on, and I think much of this is down to the fact they were far from one-dimensional, with many of their songs having more depth, both lyrically and musically, than those of many of their peers. And on a song such as Scared To Dance, it becomes obvious that if Stuart hadn’t been part of The Skids and later on Big Country, his talent and playing was such that he would most certainly have carved a niche for himself in some sort of rock band.

The other thought was to do with the lyrics penned by Richard Jobson. I wondered to myself just what it is about singers from Scotland telling the world about their inability to strut their funky stuff on the dance floor….and in particular I was thinking about this track:-

mp3 : Arab Strap – Don’t Ask Me To Dance

You guessed it. The 50th song in sequence on the i-pod turned out to be the one I was thinking of…..

Now the odds on this happening must be something in the region of 12,950 -1. And there’s not many horses sent off at that price…….

So, I’m making a plea to any of you who are exceptionally good with numbers to put my mind at rest and tell me that the probability of that particular Arab Strap song following that particular song by The Skids wasn’t all that bad. If you don’t, I’ll be starting to worry myself that man and machine are beginning to merge into some sort of horrible hybrid.

Happy Listening.

PS : I willed the next song to be something from Magazine, PiL or Siousxie & The Banshees as that could well have completed the holy trinity of Scottish post-punk axe-men comprising Stuart Adamson, Malcolm Middleton and John McGeogh. But I have to report it was in fact an Arctic Monkeys songs that came on…

PPS : Many many thanks to all of you who have responded so magnificently to the request for tunes for Colin's weekend in Paris. The e-mails have come in from all over the world with some fantastic suggestions and attachments. There's still time to submit a song if you haven't yet done so...if you don't know what I'm talking about, then read here.