Strange things happen when you put your entire music collection on shuffle. Sometimes, it's magical when one great song you forgot you loved is followed by another, then another, until it gets awkward.
You know those moments? When it goes from a cool tune to something that's just for you, like that Peter Frampton song from High Fidelity, or anything from Swallowing Shit, or your super-secret anthem.
You want to go to the next song, but the skip button is too far away. It's impossible to casually make a move without drawing attention to secret song shyness. It's even worse when iTunes does that thing where it starts playing the next song before the previous song is finished. There's no time to make a diving leap for the Skip button.
It's shuffle roulette, and sometimes you got the bullet.
This was a common social situation for those of us in the 2000s, just leaving the age of CD shuffle and entering the wonderful world of digital music. A world of downloadable music where you could dangerously venture outside of your tastes, into other genres, and gleefully listen to guilty pleasures.
We didn't understand playlists. We grew up with mixtapes, which took effort. So, most of us either learned to slap together a playlist without overthinking it or settled with Russian Shuffle Roulette and hoped it doesn't land on a bullet.
This was a problem in my household. My wife has good musical tastes. But, I'd be playing family-friendly Arcade Fire, and as the song would finish, Bane would come roaring on. The toddler gets a little freaked out, and I get a nod of disapproval.
Thankfully, I discovered a foolproof technology that prevents these awkward yet excusable social situations: the radio. In particular, the celebrity DJ on the radio.
When Burton Cummings plays something that off-kilter while you're listening with your musically-judgemental friends, then their judge-y glares are directed towards the guy from the Guess Who.
If Henry Rollins spins some Devo after Bad Brains, we all forgive him.
Lately, we've been listening to James Newell Osterberg Jr., and he plays some great stuff... and some really weird stuff. It goes from some 70s punk band that makes you nod your head along to something as random and amazing as a Swedish pipe organist. But, I don't get any looks over the shifts from genre to genre. Why? It's difficult to argue with a radio DJ who fronts a band and is mainly known by his onstage name: Iggy Pop.
With the miracle of on-demand listening, we play Iggy on-toddler-demand. So, my almost-three-year-old son has taken a particular shine to Iggy Pop's DJ sensibilities. James Brown's Make it Funky has become "Bacon Pocket!" Listen to the song. You'll hear it.
But it's Iggy's deep, growly voice that commands his attention. Every morning, he asks us to play "Bear Music."
Some old technologies never get old.