Hey, get off my iPod’s back!

Just to respond to some comments on the contents of my iPod, I feel the need to make some clarifications:

1. That is just the tiniest fraction of my CD collection, to say nothing of the 600 or so vinyl albums I’m still stubbornly hanging onto (and slowly putting onto CD, hence the nearly complete lack of ABBA on the pod).
   
2. Molly Hatchet? Molly Hatchet? Are you mad?
   
3. Nine Inch Nails came at the wrong time for me; I was completely in a blues space then, and I never went back and caught up with it — unlike Nirvana, who completely undid me with the Unplugged album. Suddenly, I got the entire thing, and loved it all.
   
4. Never owned a single thing by Boz Scaggs, Faith No More, or even Dire Straits. Not sure why, although they mostly fall into the “that’s nice but they don’t need my money to support their careers” category. I lost track of Kathie Dawn, so I haven’t heard the “Drag” disc, but I’ll sample it.
   
5. The omission of “The Juliet Letters” is, in fact, inexcusable, and I will rectify it immediately. In fact, the great good thing about the iPod is, as you may have heard me rant already, Intergalactic Shuffle Mode. It means that albums that are absolutely through-the-roof excellent while at the same time being only rarely listenable — they may need to fit a certain mood, or too much exposure may just cause you to slit your wrists — can be taken in small, random, shuffling pieces. Thus, Patti Smith, whom I love and will rarely listen to for 40 minutes at a stretch, gets much more play. Same with Anne Sofie von Otter, and Ute Lemper, and . . . hmm, perhaps it’s an Elvis thing, eh?
   
6. Britney, Avril, and a couple of others are there because my daughters wanted them. This is actually my iTunes list, and not EVERYTHING here makes the iPod. But nearly everything does.
   
7. Now that you’ve got me looking at it, how can there only be one song by Cake? Where’s the rest of my Tom Waits? How come Screamin’ Jay Hawkins almost never comes up in shuffle mode?
   
8. The Dondero High School Symphony Band and A Capella Choir’s desperate wheeze through “Fox on the Run” and “Sunshine of Your Love” at first seemed funny as hell, but they have grown on me considerably as I think of how hard these kids worked to adapt these rock and roll classics for a very NOT rock and roll group. They dared to try to keep time, and that they failed matters not. These songs are classics.