If there is one peripheral (besides the mobile phone) that sums up the times in which we live, it is the iPod. There is no better MP3 player on the market. The iPod is always the smartest, most efficient, and best performing portable music player ever developed. No arguments. Today, Apple’s 8GB iPod touch continues this tradition. Time for a history lesson:
During my early teens (even mid-teens), I had no interest in music. Although he was a very musical person. At the age of nine he had written a song in class about friendship with an original melody and a clever play on words. In fact, I always came up with dirty songs and rhymes. Personally, I blame my father as he taught me the first song I knew from cover to cover, titled ‘Dan Dan Dan Was A Lavatory Man’ and set the plan for the future development of my raunchy talents.
Dan Dan Dan was a lavatory man,
Under the ground all day
By the urinals, qualifying the finals,
Spending all the happy time
And then take a nap, all in between shit,
Smoking your dear old clay-eee,
And all the music he listens to is PooPooPoo * all day,
* Replace ‘Poo’ with a raspberry noise.
I reprint it here in the hope that it will one day be included in a great anthology of British folk music, or rediscovered when some Alan Lomax cosmic droid scans the remnants of our culture for clues as to who we thought we were. For years, I thought my dad had written it, which, in my young mind, made it a kind of eschatological equivalent of John Lennon. Eventually, it became known that it was the first song my dad learned too.
So like I said, it’s not musical at all. I hated most of the pop music that was out (despite my youthful fondness for all things Spice Girl) and preferred the harsh instrumental sergeant alarm tones to the horrible local radio of the same five songs every day I had. to endure. However, I nurtured a great love, which continues to this day, for Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album, No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom’ and Deep Blue Something’s song ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. All of which you can download fairly easily / inexpensively and play on your 8gb ipod touch (although ‘The Ballad Of Dan The Lavatory Man’ may elude it). Finally, the long walk to college (at about 16 years old) made me listen to music regularly and I looted my parents’ LP collection, obsessed with classic rock and 70s pop; The stones! Motown! Saturday! Zeppelin! Bowie! The OMS! Elton! Purple! Ah, it really was a golden age …
After The Ramones, Damned, Ruts, Black Flag, and Pistols passed me, I formed my own bands and wrote almost a million songs, and you know what? I did pretty well. It’s all due to portable music. Nowadays, your conflicted criminal teenager probably already owns an 8gb ipod touch (don’t ask where he got it, because he most likely doesn’t want to know), but if he doesn’t, he could do a lot worse. than an 8gb ipod touch this Christmas. You know that part of ‘Almost Famous’ when the kid finds the classic vinyl box under their bed, with the note that says “these will set you free” or whatever? Well, the gift of an 8gb iPod touch could do just that. Maybe. Look at me; It went well, right? Did you have a point with this article …? I did not lost it.
