Kicked on ye olde iTunes in shuffle mode yesterday morning, to give myself some background music while I commenced writing this year's novel. What's funny is that I had earlier finished the chapter on the beauty and apparent oddities of the iPod's shuffle mode in Steven Levy's The Perfect Thing, his book devoted to the little white wonder from Apple. Part of the chapter was devoted to the randomness of shuffle mode, the mathematics behind it, and how when true randomness is really at work, we begin to believe it's not really so random at all. Like say when people notice their iPod--and here I'll also throw in the iTunes application itself--seemingly playing a lot of the same type of music in a row. Such it was this morning, when I had an all-mellow mix. As before, songs are linked to the iTunes Store, albums to Amazon. 1. "Never Say Goodbye" - Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet 2. "September Skies" - The Brian Setzer Orchestra - The Brian Setzer Orchestra 3. "Yellow Ledbetter" - Pearl Jam - Jeremy 4. "Flesh for Fantasy" - Billy Idol - Greatest Hits 5. "DJ Culture" - Pet Shop Boys - Discography 6. "If I Leave This World Tomorrow" - Glenn Kaiser - Spontaneous Combustion (I've always loved Kaiser's voice, and think his blues work is so much better than when he fronted Resurrection Band/Rez) 7. "Understand Your Man" - Johnny Cash - Unearthed, Vol. 1 - Who's Gonna Cry 8. "Last In Love" - George Strait - Pure Country 9. "Your Presence" - By the Tree - These Days 10. "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such As I" - Elvis Presley - Elvis 30 #1 Hits
and a bonus, because I like the song so much: 11. "Loved and Forgiven" - Lost Dogs - Gift Horse