16 Comments:

Hey, there ain't nothing wrong with Deano, though a couple of the tracks on a Christmas CD I picked up for $2.99 in a grocery store are just a little embarassing.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 6:46 AM  

Well, I don't have an MP3 player, but here's what iTunes kicked out on my Mac.

The Last Time - Dwight Yoakam
Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead - Ella Fitzgerald
Pads, Paws And Claws - Elvis Costello
Hymn to Her - the Pretenders
I Got You Babe - UB40 w/Chrissie Hynde
I Can't Give You Anything But Love - Art Tatum
Ten Cents a Dance - Ella Fitzgerald
You Took Advantage of Me - Art Tatum
Dancing on the Ceiling - Ella Fitzgerald (No, NOT Lionel Ritchie! It's a Rogers & Hart song.)
Lazy - Ella Fitzgerald

This might not seem all that random, but I've burned the entire Fitzgerald "Songbooks" and Tatum's "Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces," which from a sheer volume standpoint dominate my MP3 collection.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 7:06 AM  

I don't even buy music anymore. I just listen to KCMP. They always (& only) play exactly what I want to hear, when I want to hear it. It's uncanny.

By  Hammer, at 7:36 AM  

Jambo, for someone who is 41 years of age today (Happy Birthday), most of your tracks are age appropriate, particularly that Neil Young number.

By  Anonymous, at 8:41 AM  

Jambo I Bday how great. Give yourself a big hug and (CLARK) go out and buy yourself something real nice on me. Stover Congrates

By  Anonymous, at 10:16 AM  

You know, I actually thought of you as I typed that one out knowing that you wouldn't let it pass without comment. And thanks for the iTunes GC.

Also don't forget, as I'm sure you haven't, that fully 2/3 of the 3WN gang has a birthday today.

Joseph, I have noticed an odd thing in the "random" selection of songs by my iPod which may effect iTunes as well. It tends to very quickly repeat artists, quickly enough and often enough for it to be statistically significant. I have more Beatles songs than anything else but they make up no more than maybe 5% of my library. Yet when it plays one at random I can count on hearing at least two more within the next dozen songs. The same thing may be happening to you. I really like the UB40 version of I Got You Babe. Which I'm sure all 3WN readers know is a Dylan song.

By  Jambo, at 10:27 AM  

Jambo: truly random numbers are not uniform. You should expect repetition and over-representation in any subsample.

And, of course, computer generated random numbers aren't really random at all, but are a series of random numbers based on an initial seed. Not sure how your iPod picks a seed.

By  Hammer, at 10:37 AM  

Joseph is right. You NEVER need a disclaimer for Deano. He and Frank are 'da men.

By  Anonymous, at 10:46 AM  

Hammer: Here's a discussion of iTunes randomness. I once heard a math prof say something like "Anyone who uses computational methods to generate random numbers is living in a state of sin."

TRR: Last year I spent a very pleasant couple of hours in a pizza joint in San Diego where they played nothing but Frank and Dean. I'm a little surprised that no Sinatra tunes showed up in my random 10, since I have the whole Columbia disc set ripped.

Jambo: Happy birthday. You caught up to me (until November, anyway). And it ain't Dylan, babe. No, no, no!

Everybody: C'mon, Jambo & I opened our kimonos. Let's see your random 10.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 11:27 AM  

WTF!? Someone told me years ago that I Got You Babe was actually a Dylan cover. It seemed a little simplistic for him but I assumed they were telling me the truth and it was some early Lay Lady Lay era song. Was I lied to?

By  Jambo, at 12:32 PM  

You were misled. Sonny Bono wrote I Got You Babe. As I alluded in the previous post, your informant may have been thinking of Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe.

It seems kinda weird, but Cher covered a number of Dylan songs. I've heard All I Really Want to Do, but I've read that she also recorded several others, including Masters of War.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 3:42 PM  

I can almost see her doing All I Really Want to Do but Masters of War seems a bit out of character.

There was kind of a cool cover of All I Really Want to Do back in the 80s by a band called World Party. Hey, that could be a new poll! Best/worst Dylan covers.

By  Jambo, at 4:46 PM  

Just found this site showing thousands of Dylan covers. Blowin' in the Wind alone has 375, including an unreleased Beatles version -- I'd like to hear that!

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 10:55 AM  

But you can't cover a Dylan song. Didn't we have that discussion once?

By  Hammer, at 11:38 AM  

I just reread the Dylan cover comments and I'm not sure I understood what either of you was getting at. I did however recently recommend a very interesting cover by Madeleine Peyroux of You're Going to Make Me Lonesome When YOu Go and the reactions from my Dylan loving fans ranged from impressed to appalled.

By  Jambo, at 3:35 PM  

That Dylan cover post was from my pre-readership days, or I'd have been all over the comments. Most interesting. I once had a discussion in a bar about that very topic, and my position then (as now) is that personally, if I were a recording artist, I would stay away from, say, Like a Rolling Stone, but not necessarily from, say, Tangled Up in Blue. That's just a personal aesthetic judgment. Both songs, and equally as important for me, both records, have that undeniable, undefinable "Dylan" thing about them, but the former has such power that it would just scare me off.

So in general, I'm pro-cover, even though any particular one is likely to suck either just because it's a terrible recording, or because it doesn't measure up to the original. I'd guess there'd be wider agreement among Dylan fans about the first reason than about the second.

I'm still waiting for Willie Nelson to record Tomorrow is a Long Time.

By  Joseph Thvedt, at 5:04 PM  

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