Friday, April 15

The Poor Man's iPod Shuffle

Note: not affiliated with The Editors or any cute kittens.

I don't own an iPod. Or a cell phone. I still wear spats. You kids get off my lawn.

But dammit, I wanna have fun, too. And since sex is out of the question at my age I dusted off another relic, the lamentably no-longer-supported Apple™ Hypercard and programmed it to turn up random numbers between 1-762, which is the number of Long Playing Records stored in the basement, followed by a number from 1-15 indicating which cut was selected. (This only applies to tracks I actually listen to and intend to digitize before I die.) After that big buildup, you're just itchin' for the list, right? Me, too. But first, no, I didn't stop buying music in 1986; this is the stuff I have on vinyl. And show a little respect, I had to run up and down stairs for this:

    Robin Lane and the Chartbusters: Rather Be Blind
    Captain Beefheart: Candle Mambo
    Adventures: Send My Heart
    Scruffy the Cat: Hello Angel
    Eno: Cindy Tells Me
    Waterboys: A Bang On The Ear
    The Church: Constant In Opal
    James Brown: Get Up Offa That Thing
    John Renbourn: Alman/Melancholy Galliard
    Nick Lowe: 36 Inches High

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy God. Everybody else I know says "Scruffy the whatnow?"
"Shadow Boy" is my favorite but "Hello Angel" isn't bad.
On the other hand, I also mourn Hypercard and refuse to accept the cell phone concept. No spats, though.

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

Maybe we should start dating.

I actually wrote that post for last Friday, then the idea of shuffling Kevin Drum's comments hit me so I post-dated this one. I don't remember now exactly how I landed on "Angel" but that was always my favorite cut.

I figured this for a one-off joke, but it was good to get downstairs and actually leaf through the ol' vinyl so I might keep it up. And Hypercard, jeez, what a great program, and I don't even have the color version. My wife and I tried for a couple years to get a grant to put her Art History module on the thing, and I planned to upgrade to color with the money. Sic transit.

Anonymous said...

I had a crush on Robin Lane and not only do I have Scruffy the Cat on cassette, I saw them live once. Moons of Jupiter rocks! Also got Captain Beefheart, The Church, The Waterboys and Nick Lowe. Are you sure you didn't detour into my basement? Since I can't do Hypercard, I have to figure out a way to do this vinyl shuffle with dice or chicken bones or something.

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

Understand the crush. The Chartbusters played here one July, tiny club, no AC, in the worst sort of Midwest heat wave-it was like 88ยบ and 75% humidity at night. So I've seen her soaking wet. They were great, very tight, another victim of crappy corporate radio practices in that era.

Didya know she's the same Robin Lane singing backup on Neil Young's "Round and Round"? She musta been like thirteen then.

Anonymous said...

Ah, the envy, corndog, the sheer envy. Never seen 'em live, myself. If it's gonna be a *lot* of chickens, btw, you might just try index cards instead.
As for you, Doghouse, the Drum comments thing was pretty funny, too, but you seriously need to get yourself an iPod. Even I've dragged myself that far into the tech age. If nothing else, it's easier on the back.
As far as dating goes, you'd probably have to date my partner too. Lately it's all martyred sighs and "Why don't we go anywhere together anymore, are you ashamed of me?" and *never* answer that with whatever seems funniest at the time, you may barely live to regret it.
Buy stock in Godiva chocolates. I'm gonna be a while digging out of this hole, I gather.

Anonymous said...

No "Big-Eyed Beans from Venus"? the greatest Beefheart song ever... especially when you realize they're here...

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

I came this close to an iPod for my last birthday but went with the 250 gig Firewire external hard drive so I could start digitizing my movie collection. That's scheduled to be completed in 2076. I guess I could just create a huge playlist on my new luxury skybox storage and do an iTunes shuffle, but I rarely listen to music on the computer and the stereo's just in the next room through large connecting doors anyway. The big problem is I can only burn CDs through the computer so digitizing vinyl is a pain in the butt.

And I've gone a half century now with the motto that you can always apologize, but a good laugh line, if missed, never returns. Still have all my own teeth too, somehow.