Seventy-Five Songs

Shameless copycat that I am, when I saw the playist on Dolly Gwyneville's blog I was seized with a heavy case of "WANT!" So I clicked on the little button that invites me to build my own and began picking songs.

Picking a song list is a lot more personal an experience than I'd thought it would be. Some of them even surprised me as I clicked to add them to the list.

The presence of a lot of 1980's alternative shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me. Nothing irks me more than to hear the decade that brought The Cure, Siouxsie Sioux, and Wall of Voodoo to my hungry ears summed up as the time of Madonna, Duran Duran, and Michael Jackson. Actually, that's not entirely true. Lots of other things irk me. I can be very irkable. But anyway.

"Danny Boy" - The Pogues: Yes, the stereotypical "bar full of crying Irishmen" song. My Dad was very big on Irish pride. He once told me that every Irishman cries when he hears "Danny Boy". And I, young dummy that I was, said that I didn't. He looked at me and said: "That's because you haven't lost anybody yet." Well, a few years after that conversation with my father, I lost him. And he was absolutely right.

"Jesus Walking on the Water" - Violent Femmes: As a confirmed agnostic, this seems like another odd choice for me to others. No doubt it caused some head-scratching among the friends and fans of the Violent Femmes as well. After all, they're better known for fare like "Blister in the Sun" and "Gone Daddy Gone", and hardly the likely candidates to produce a catchy bluegrass gospel number like this. But it is very catchy, and a nice little something for music fans to use to remind themselves that not all Christian music consists of lukewarm dreck like the currently-trendy "Awesome God".

"O Fortuna" - Apotheosis: A remix of Carl Orff's opening song of the "Carmina Burana", and the only techno offering on the list. I'm not a big techno fan, but maybe that's because the only times I've heard it the DJ maxed out the bass and turned the rest of the mix into a mushy, unrecognizable background for the relentless beat. Such was the state of affairs at my friends' favorite club. Despite the music, it's where my friends were, so that's where I was. "O Fortuna" was the happy exception to my "I hate the freakin' music here" rule, and listening to it now takes me back to the press of bodies on the dance floor and the smell of artificial smoke.