archy

Let the old poops play
Today, Ezra offers this game for the amusement of his readers.

I like this timewaster. Open your iTunes (or other, inferior, music player), hit shuffle, and tell us the first ten songs that come up. I've added a twist: if the song has an exclamation mark next to it, it's a favorite.

This sounds like a good argument starter for a boozy Friday afternoon. I'm sure my friends and I in grad school could have carried on over this far longer than it deserved. The problem with it now is, that as an old poop, I don't own an MP3 player and I've only heard of one of the songs or bands on Ezra's list (and it's a 30 year old song).

So what would be the equivalent game for old poops? CDs, for the most part, exist in shapeless piles that don't really tell your much about the owner. The bottom half of the piles might contain the remnants of some ill-fated attempt to categorize them, but the rest is just random slush. LPs on the other hand show a nice pattern of archaeological layering. The most recently listened to albums are always at the front, the least listened to work their way to the back. If anyone still has their albums, and most old authentic poops do, the archaeological metaphor is further supported by the fact that we stopped listening to our albums long ago and the pile represents a moment frozen in time when the volcano (music industry) erupted and buried the village in ash (CDs).

Let's take a look at my time capsule (my turntable finally broke down in the summer of 1997, so that's the moment in time we're looking at). I have:

• War
  
• Quicksilver Messenger Service
  
• Django Rheinhart
  
• Pink Floyd
  
• Albert King
  
• Rassan Roland Kirk
  
• Steely Dan
  
• David Grisman
  
• Yes
  
• Eric Satie

I'm sure Ezra will score better at recognising my bands than I did with his.

Okay, geezers (and geezettes), what's in your time capsule?