When I worked in the music industry, my boss had every release across every format – 7″ & 12″ singles, 7″, 10″ & 12″ EPs, LPs, cassettes, CDs, cassingles, minidiscs, didImissany? – to come out in Australia between 1969 and 1995, and since that was the year I was working for him, I’m guessing he has since accumulated plenty more.  With everything filed away in a special room around the size of most people’s houses, carefully archived and everything easily found, all that was missing was a robot to fetch the desired item.  To describe him as anally retentive about who could enter that room would be vastly understating the facts.

I’m also a little anal retentive about my iTunes collection.  The one that requires its own external HDD to manage so that our resource heavy software like Final Cut and CS4 don’t get tooooo upset.  The one that sees me allocate songs to their correct source albums or singles (including tracking down accompanying artwork), even if I’ve acquired the tracks via compilation.  The one that I make sure sorts correctly by manually updating any ‘auto’ sort-field ‘errors’.  Ok, so I’m a lot anal-retentive about this.

Over at Christy’s blog, she was doing a meme thingamy, and since one of my songs was in her list (!), I thought I’d do the same meme thingamy here, not realising one of my songs would also appear in my own list…

I’ve also put some extra explanation stuff in there, because some of the categorisations are a little too constricting for me.  And I’m awesome so I can do that sort of thing.

Here we go!

iTunes Statistical Randomness

Number of Songs = 19,683
Number of Albums = 4,699
Most Recently Played Song = His Glory Appears – Hillsong Live : Faith + Hope + Love
Most Played Song = um…Your Clothes – David Goodwin; 32 plays. When I recorded this, I listened to it on my iPod all the time to check every detail. And I like it too. So there.
Most Recently Added Album = Hillsong Live : Faith + Hope + Love
First Song Alphabetically = A-Punk – Vampire Weekend
Last Song Alphabetically = Zulu Khayalami – Imbizo
Smallest Song Numerically = 0.000890569 – Aphex Twin
Largest Song Numerically = 6161 – Max Tundra
Shortest Song = Suite Outro – En Vogue, 4 seconds.   I’ve got over 200 tracks under 1 minute long, so I’ve taken this as shortest track rather than song…
Longest Song = Ascension, Edition II – John Coltrane, 40 min 41 sec.  Free-style jazz FTW!
First Album Alphabetically = A.O. Mod. TV. Vers – V.Spy V.Spy
Last Album Alphabetically = Zooropa – U2
Smallest Album Numerically = #1 Record – Big Star
Largest Album Numerically = 90125 – Yes
First 5 Songs That Come Up In Shuffle =
…You’re Not The Kind – Sarah Vaughan
…Amazing – George Michael
…You’re Just Too Hip, Baby – Dave Graney ‘n’ the Coral Snakes
…Central Reservation (Ben Watt Remix) – Beth Orton
…Fly Too High – Janis Ian

I was kinda embarrassed that in 5 songs, there’s nothing that reflects my proclaimed passion for worship music. Then I did the stats. I’ve got nearly 20,000 tracks, and around 2,500 of them can be classified as Christian (mainly overtly Christian). So 1 track in 8 should be Christian. Meaning there’s still 3 more tracks I have to redeem myself. Phew.

There’s not much electronica in that shuffle either (the Beth Orton remix barely qualifies) … and according to the stats 1 in 7 should be electronica.  So we’re OK.  Just.

Other Semi-Interesting Tid-Bits

Albums Titles Which Are Neither Alphabetical or Numerical = ( ) – Sigur Ros
Song Titles Which Are (Kinda) Neither Alphabetical or Numerical = Þversögn – Sigur Ros, and also ” µ-Ziq Theme ” – µ-Ziq

And yeah, more team videos are coming, but at the moment videos for our church are being produced by the Master @Machroi, though she did decide this was worth a diversion so she could add her magic.  Just as well too! Prorably This backs up my earlier contention that I’m no actor…

So why, dear readers, did I choose to succumb the the Facebook 25 Random Things meme?

Well partly because I was kinda-sorta-indirectly challenged by Jenni to turn it into a song after her highly entertaining video version.

And partly, as a fun way to start Valentine’s Day, Diane and I decided we’d better respond to the tagging together (though Diane did hers in the more conventional manner).

The MP3 is a bit long, a bit “midnight-recording-whispery”, a bit crap really, but I think fitting it all into a 4 minute “song” (I use the word loosely) is somewhat impressive. Though not near as impressive as the one take vocals the whole way through…there’s clearly no mistakes in there…oh no…

I’m also fairly sure I don’t want to use this as my February entry for Our Creative Community…but let’s see how the month pans out

And since the likelihood you can hear what I’m singing is small, here’s the things :

1. I’ve only ever broken bones doing wimpy things, like playing handball.
2. One of my front teeth is fake.
3. It’s fake because it got smashed out by a flying metal ruler.
4. Toilet paper must be over, not under. I will fix it if it’s not.
5. The consequences of my nut allergy are a refreshing change to choking to death.
6. Depending what theatre production I’m in, I’m either God, Satan or Fagin.
7. The first time I used a non-electric razor and shaving cream to shave was when I was 24.
8. The first word I knew how to read was ‘Niacin’. Thank you Cornflakes.
9. I’m only 72% of the man I used to be.
10. I never bothered crawling.
11. The first song I ever wrote was called ‘Rock-a-Bye-Bra’ when I was 4.
12. It was full of nonsense words.
13. It shall never be spoken of again.
14. I usually change my hairstyle at least every two years.
15. The fact my dad says ‘prorably’ for ‘probably’ only stopped annoying me when I was 27.
16. I dance in the car.
17. I wrote an album of songs about being jilted. And called it ‘Catharsis’.
18. None of my real life friends Twitter.
19. None of my real life friends blog.
20. I once played Dead Or Alive’s ‘Brand New Lover’ fifty times in one day. I still love that song.
21. The sourer the sweet/candy/lolly, the better.
22. The most fun thing we ever did in Barbershop Quartet was sing Motley Crue’s ‘Kickstart My Heart’ or ‘Dr Feelgood’
23. The second most fun thing we ever did in Barbershop Quartet was hide from our bass, usually in cupboards. Sometimes for up to an hour. In one cupboard.
24. I was upgraded to business class on my first international flight, but I was 15 and too young to appreciate it.
25. I think ‘inconsiderate interlocutor’ is the best phrase I’ve heard all day.