Outsmarting the Smart Playlist

OK - open up a new smart playlist on iTunes, enter Name>Contains>?
Tick "Limit to", and enter "10 items" and if you've got enough tunes you get 10 self generated questions, hopefully slightly less predictable than the ones the Guardian has in it's Is this it? section in Saturday's Guide.
iTunes grilled me as follows:

1. 4Hero – Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You?)Well I'd let you off if you were at home checking out this quietly brilliant version of the Stevie Wonder song. However, you were more likely to be out traing for some 'athlon or other while I slept in thinking "I really must do some exercise this year"

2. !!! – Hello? Is This Thing On?I spent a year going as a member of Ronnie Scott's jazz club when he was still alive and got to see an impressive list of classic jazz stars. Part of the experience was Ronnie's "let's join hands and contact the living" stand-up routine. Little did I know at the time that his "Hello? Is this thing on?" remark was giving props to the mighty !!! when I thought he was just complaining about lack of audience mirth.

3. Radiohead – You and Whose Army?My smartarse answer to the question of "Regime change".

4. Raphael Saadiq – What?I'm not looking at you and I haven't noticed the felt tip circle you've drawn around your left eye, honest.

5. Gnarls Barkley – Who Cares?Well I like to think I care enough to say "whatever" every now and again.

6. Super Furry Animals – It's Not the End of the World?What I used to ask myself on New Year's Eve throughout the 1980s (a mixture of fear of the apocalypse and Holsten Export)

7. Orange Juice – What Presence?The question that ended my career as lead singer of the "mighty" Grilled Anorax. By the way, anyone had an update on Edwyn Collins' recovery recently?

8. Grandaddy – Goodbye?It took them a few more albums before getting around to knocking it on the head, but a prophetic song maybe?

9. Badly Drawn Boy – Have You Fed the Fish?I had two fish named after former Aston Villa players, Dwight Yorke and Ugo Ehiogu. Both died in the week they transferred to new clubs although I swear I never skimped on the fish pellets. Looks like they understood all the accusations of being fishy "Judases" after all.

10. The Streets – What Is He Thinking?I suppose I'm thinking this is my last question. I'm also reminding myself that I thought the first Streets album was better than the second one which got all the hype. I'm also thinking that I spent a couple of formative years living in the same area of Birmingham that Mike Skinner comes from and I thought I'd lost my Brummie accent.

iTunes for Kids

Just in case anybody had noticed, many of my allegedly top tracks on my Last FM are the result of my IT savvy kids hijacking iTunes and putting a bizarre selection of songs on heavy rotation. It's an interesting experiment to see how long you can keep them away from the likes of McFly and Sandy Thom but it's weird to discover the kind of stuff they really get into when they only get to hear their parents' music.

The current top 10 are:

1. "Spanish Bombs" by The Clash, once played about 20 times owing to "rewind!" requests from the back of the car on a long journey to Wales.
2. "Everyday I love you less and less" again by the Kaiser Chiefs. Every time I heard this tune I loved it less and less - the opposite of what other family members thought.
3. "I predict a riot" by the Kaiser Chiefs. We once heard this as part of a rabble rousing soundtrack to the one and only pro Ice Hockey match we went to and so it got onto the playlist. Misheard locally as "I predict a carrot"
4. "Popcorn" by Hot Butter. A bit of a connoiseur's choice apparently - this 1970s predictor of arcade game music was the only one to be singled out of the most recent "Guilty Pleasures 3" compilation.
5. "Steppin Out" by Joe Jackson. A forgotten favourite of many, this appears as the last track on Dirty Vegas' "The Trip" mix CD. I had to download the lyrics and it was sung repeatedly. There was even a brief possibility of it being sung acapella at "Show & Tell"
6. "The Undefeated" by Super Furry Animals is apparently a really good tune to go ape to while being restrained in a car seat. The machine gun noises and silly squeaks at the end also entertain the younger end of the demographic.
7. "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley & The Wailers was got into via a substandard Freddie McGregor version on Trojan's excellent "Reggae for Kids". Includes another classic lyric mishearing: "Three little birds, sitting on my naughty step"
8. "World in Motion" by New Order was the "driving to the supermarket with all the windows down" song of 2006's World Cup (what was yours?). Obviously a patronising parent's attempt to put the efforts of Embrace in their place.
9. "You get what you give" by the New Radicals. Totally unclassifiable song that is either loved or more often hated by adults. 100% of children I know love it for some reason. Also on the aforementioned Dirty Vegas mix.
10. "Lost in the Supermarket" by The Clash. Was already very familiar before Ben Folds did a version at the end of "Over the Hedge"

So there you have it - a great excuse for any apparent overfondness for any dodgy songs on my lists.......

Posing in the National Press

One wilfully obscure posting about mix tapes and the joy of segueing the Isley Brothers into the Pop Group and, Hey Presto, stoibee gets props in the Observer.....

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2005270,00.html