Shuffle 25 let’s see what u got.

Cool idea—it got me up off my butt doing stuff I’ve been putting off doing. 

 I'll list the tracks, a bit of an explanation, maybe a rating. I doubt I’ll bother with year, maybe decade….This is stuff from my “Various” playlist in Foobar.  Not my complete catalogue by any means, just the odds and ends not in album folders.

 1. Shriekback  “Hand on my Heart”  -- first song on the playlist, have to start somewhere right?  Shriekback is a great 80s post-punk outfit, and one of my most favourite bands ever.  4/5

2. Gerry Rafferty  “Mattie’s Rag” – a very nice and smart pop tune from the 70s; Rafferty is an underrated guy  3.8/5

3. Art of Noise  “Close (to the Edit)” – I have a lot of 80s alternative, apparently…I did like this bunch. (Foobar seems to think they are “hip hop”. LOL!)  3.5/5

4. Guess Who “Albert Flasher”  -- Hey...I’m Canadian, eh?  3/5

5. Guess Who  “No Time”  -- see above, but a far better song.  J  3.5/5

6. David Newman  “Serenity—opening credits” -  um…see my avatar. I love this soundtrack.  4.5/5

7. Thomas Dvorak   “The Castle”  -- okay,  so I have a soundtrack from a PC game.  Machinarium.  It is actually a very cool soundtrack, and a great game.  So there.  3/5

8. Psychedelic Furs   “The Ghost in You”  -- one of my fave groups from the 80s; I loved Mirror Moves (the album)  4/5

9. Porcupine Tree  “The Colour of Air” – all I will say is that a year ago I really had no idea who these guys were.  A year later…well…sometimes chance encounters can change your perspective entirely.  This will not be the only PT that crops up in the 25, I’m sure.  3.8/5

10. The Smiths  “What Difference Does it Make” – ah Morrissey…does angst almost as well as Hammill.  Great song.  4.7/5

11. PT  “Every Home is Wired”  -- toldja.  3.7/5

12.  PT   “Four Chords that Made a Million”  -- the playback is on shuffle, I swear.  However, not so fond of this piece.  3/5

13. Shriekback  “Mercy Dash” – Shriekback put out two phenomenal albums back to back: Jamscience (1984) and Oil and Gold (1985).  This is from Jamscience.  5/5

14.  Carlos Santana  “Smooth” – lives up to its name, a very smooth pop tune, great stuff. 3.5/5

15. Focus  “Hocus Pocus” – er…. Novelty factor.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  3/5

16. Mudcrutch  “Scare Easy”—Mudcrutch is a band of Tom Petty’s, and this is probably THE best straight-up rock song I’ve heard in decades.  Absolutely perfect—a real pro at work.  6/5

17. David Bowie  “Station to Station” – ahh finally my music player has clued in.     The great opening track from one of Bowie’s best albums.  4.8/5

18. Shriekback  “Suck” – another from Jamscience, raucous, loud and dissonant.  4/5

19. David Bowie  “TVC15” – another from Station to Station, excellent example of Berlin-era Bowie.  4/5

20. PT  “Normal” – from the Nil Recurring EP.  Now *this* is the sort of stuff from PT that grabbed my attention a year ago.  I love this song, I love how Wilson has an apparently inexhaustible supply of melodic hooks, I love his trick of revisiting ideas, and his arrangement chops...!!!!!  5/5

21. Spandau Ballet  “Gold” – meh, doesn’t really stand up, probably won’t last much longer on the playlist.  2.8/5

22. Duran Duran  “A View to a Kill”  -- theme song for a Bond film.  I kinda like it.  3.5/5

23. Dire Straits  “Sultans of Swing”  -- it was grossly overplayed for years, but after a decade or so of not hearing it…it really stands up.  Knopfler is a seriously talented guy. 4.5/5

24. Stewart Copeland  “Gong Rock” – some time in the mid-80s, Copeland traveled through Africa making recordings and hooking up with musicians from that continent.  The result was an album called “The Rhythmatist”, a superb collection of African-inspired rock that probably should be better known than it is.  4/5

25. Figgy Duff  “Auntie Mary’s/Brother’s Jig Medley”  --  a 1980s folk-rock outfit from Newfoundland whose first two albums are almost as good as anything Steeleye Span put out.  4.2/5

(Heh...as I format this and the stuff continues to play, #26 is "The Cinema Show"... )

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