Songs to Run Errands To

I'm going to be busy nearly all day today with our annual undergraduate research symposium on campus. I'm bribing some of my intro students to attend (five points on next week's exam), and chairing a session, and judging the annual student research award, so it's a full day.

As a distraction (the best way to avoid dread, as any fule kno, though some fules with brain scanners have now conclusively shown it), here's a set of ten songs that my iPod threw out yesterday while I was running errands. With one exception, they were all pretty good songs for driving around on a gorgeous spring day:

  • "Do You Want To," Franz Ferdinand. Aggressively stupid, but really catchy.
  • "Vertigo," U2. One, two, three, fourteen.
  • "Layla," Derek and the Dominos. The famous coda is longer than some songs.
  • "Sodajerk," Buffalo Tom. An underrated band.
  • "Things Have Changed," Bob Dylan. Didn't he win an Oscar for this?
  • "Elegy for Elisabet," the Weakerthans. The one dud-- it's not bad, just mopey, like everything on Left and Leaving.
  • "Life After Lisa," Bowling for Soup. From mopey straight to juvenile...
  • "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," They Might Be Giants. Hush my darling, be still my darling, the lion's on the phone.
  • "A Kind of Magic," Queen. I think this was originally associated with Highlander.
  • "Some Fantastic," Barenaked Ladies. Just like pheremones for flies.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

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That's a weird mix of tunes, Chaz. Lately I've become quite fond of the acoustic version of Layla.

The coolest thing about the aggressively stupid "Do You Want To" is the reason why it's aggressively stupid: The lyrics were all links the singer/writer overheard at a party.