The El (Day 101)

The Thrills - "Saturday Night"
Outkast - "Snappin & Trappin"
Sparklehorse - "Dreamt For Light Years In"
Rhett Miller - "The El"
Mercury Rev - "I Collect Coins"
Beirut - "Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)"
Grandaddy - "'Yeah' Is What We Had"
Wilderness - "Death Verses"
Paul Westerberg - "Boring Enormous"
Wilco - "Muzzle of Bees"
Coleman Hawkins - "Fine Dinner"
The Beatles - "Carry The Weight"
Silkworm - "Nerves"
This is a great song. The great opener on a great album. From a great band. You get the point. But what struck me as odd was something that I noticed about this song after it played today and I began to compile today's playlist: "Nerves" registered as having zero previous plays. In other words, it's on my iPod, but I've never listened to it until this AM. The explanation is fairly simple, although I've owned the CD for years, I only recently uploaded Silkworm's 1996 album Firewater to my iTunes. And since I've been mostly shuffling my music, for obvious reasons, I haven't had the opportunity to listen to it yet. Which brings me to my question of the day: How many other iPod "orphans" do I have? In other words, what songs are there on my iPod that I've never really listened to? Since nobody stepped up yesterday and volunteered to be my intern, I had to crunch the numbers myself. Not too hard: There are actually 1,770 songs on my iPod I've never listened to (that's specifically on my iPod...iTunes plays through the computer and regular stereo plays are different). By the way, that's out of 11,021, or approximately 16% of all the songs. Not too bad. But who are these orphans? After a very quick scan, I offer you (a weird list, I admit it):

The Best Songs On My iPod That I've Never Actually Played On My iPod (in alphabetical order)

• The Beastie Boys - "High Plains Drifter"
• The Beatles - "The Ballad Of John & Yoko"
• Belle & Sebastian - "The Stars Of Track And Field"
• The Clash - "Lost In The Supermarket"
• David Bowie - "Life On Mars?"
• Led Zeppelin - "I Can't Quit You Babyy"
• Leonard Cohen - "So Long, Marianne"
• Liz Phair - "Never Said"
• My Bloody Valentine - "I Only Said"
• The National - "Pay For Me"
• Nirvana - "Lithium"
• Radiohead - "Morning Bell"
• The Rolling Stones - "Rip This Joint"
• Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock"
• Teenage Fanclub - "Catholic Education"
• Townes Van Zandt - "Poncho & Lefty"
• Uncle Tupelo - "Screen Door"
• Violent Femmes - "Blister In The Sun"

These poor "orphans" have all been put in their own playlist (called "zeros") and I plan to play them on the way home from work.

And then I got to work.

Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 13
Total minutes of music (approx.): 48
Song with the most previous plays: "The El" - 13
How I Rate Today's Playlist (1-10): 6
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: I think I may be getting a mild (very mild) case of Olympic fever.