The first blog I ever came across was Aaron Gleeman’s Baseball Blog. I’ve been a regular for at least 2 years, but to this day I’m not sure how I ran across his page. Most likely I found it either through Rob Neyer’s message board (when he was still free & the board more or less fanboy free) or baseballprimer (when you didn’t have to register).

Aaron’s blog is not only one of the longest running sports blogs, but very likely the best. He’s working on many different side projects from Insiderbaseball.com to Rotoworld.com to his own coalition of bloggers at the Hardball Times, and probably a few that I’m missing. Aaron is so well known that even his name has become part of the vernacular. Gleeman-length refers to an article that’s extraordinarily long.

Just yesterday A.G. wrote a column called the The iPod Shuffle

…I thought it might be kind of interesting to put my (generic) iPod on shuffle and see what the first, I don’t know, let’s say 40 songs are that come up.

Keep in mind now that this sort of exercise can really only lead to you guys mocking me for my musical taste (or lack of), so it takes some guts to do it. Music is one of those things where you’re bound to say you like a song that someone else thinks is complete crap. And I also fully admit to liking a wide variety of complete crap.

Also, I realize 99% of you couldn’t care less, but oh well …

So here is my wide variety of complete crap:

1	Firehose	Epoxy, For Example
2	Lauryn Hill	Final Hour
3	Pixies	Wave Of Mutilation
4	Depeche Mode	Master And Servant
5	TMBG	Shoehorn With Teeth
6	Dead Milkmen	Big Lizard
7	REM	9
8	Dead Milkmen	Rastabilly
9	The 2 Tone Collection	Ylang Ylang
10	U2	The Ocean
11	Smoking Popes	Pretty Pathetic
12	Belle & Sebastian	Mary Jo
13	U2	A Sort Of Homecoming
14	Belle & Sebastian	Roy Walker
15	Barcelona	1980
16	Galaxie 500	Decomposing Trees
17	Sundays	So Much
18	TMBG	Chess Piece Face
19	Elvis Costello	Man Out Of Time
20	The Whole Fantastic World	Under Red Umbrellas
21	REM	So. Central Rain
22	TMBG	Hotel Detective
23	Beatles	Mother Nature’s Sun
24	Dead Milkmen	(Theme From) Blood Orgy Of the Atomic Fern
25	Pavement	Hit The Plane Down
26	Barcelona	The Power Of Jen
27	Less Than Jake	She’s Gonna Break Soon
28	Firehose	Makin’ the Freeway
29	Pavement	Stereo
30	Paul Simon	Hearts & Bones
31	Elvis Costello	What’s So Funny Bout Peace Love & Understandin
32	Dead Milkmen	Serrated Edge
33	Ween	She Fucks Me
34	REM	Pretty Persuasion
35	Pavement	AT&T
36	Weezer	Glorious Day
37	Lauryn Hill	Superstar
38	RHCP	Suck My Kiss
39	TMBG	My Evil Twin
40	Belle & Sebastian	Dear Catastrophe Waitress
41*	Ocean Blue	It Never Just Might
42	B-52s	There’s a Moon In the Sky
43	Rx Bandits	Babylon
44	Apples In Stereo	Go
45	Skankin’ Pickle	Toothless & Grey
46	Planet Smashers	It’s Over
47	Modest Mouse	Dog Paddle
48	Who	See me, Feel Me
49	Sonic Youth	Screaming Skull
50	Beautiful South	Woman In the Wall

Since my iPOD is filled with every album from about 5-10 bands, the randomizer isn’t a true cross section of what I listen to. Quite honestly I don’t listen to those bands as often, they’re just a safety blanket on my iPOD. After I was done with the top 40, I forwarded through until I got 10 songs by artists that weren’t in the original list to give a wider view. If you can’t tell, I’m heavily influenced by 80s/90s/00s new wave/modern rock/college radio or whatever they call it these days. I have the feeling I’ll have the most songs that aren’t on any of the other bloggers that decided to participate in Aaron’s game.

Notables:
#1 fIREHOSE – If you can stand bad punk singing and love the bass, you should own fIREHOSE.

#6 Dead Milkmen – The Sex Pistols had the attitude, the Dead Kennedys were anarchists, the Ramones were cool, but no one could combine punk and witty sarcasm like DM. The most under-appreciated band of all time. 8 original albums (plus live albums & compilations) and they’re only remembered for Punk Rock Girl?

#10 By #2, my top 5 bands, of which I own nearly every album (and of course which take up considerable space on my iPOD) show up. I’m guessing they take up 1/3-1/2 of my iPOD. In no particular order: REM, U2, TMBG, the Pixies, and the Dead Milkmen.

#11 Smoking Popes – Saw a video of theirs on Much Music in college. The only had 3 albums, and then the lead singer decided to do Christian Rock. Reason #581 on why I try to keep my theistic/political views out of my blog. There is no reason to narrow my audience to anything other than the main focus.

#15 Barcelona – They caught my eye by writing a song about the Commodore 64, which is what I use to run the stat page. Just imagine if New Order were computer nerds. I saw them live twice, and they put on a great show & the keyboardist was really nice. No longer together.

#20 Whole Fantastic World – Mark my words, they’re going to be big. Probably the best “find” I’ve had in the last 5 years. Thank you WOXY.

#27 Less Than Jake – LTJ is the recess peanut butter cup of punk & ska. Not crazy about the last few albums, but Hello Rockview is one of my favorite albums both in song content and CD layout.

#33 Ween – Great song title that the randomizer picked, very appropriate for Ween. I wonder how my Google ranking will increase with this one. Welcome pr0n searchers!

And now for open season on KnickerBlogger’s musical tastes in the comments section…

Mike Kurylo is the founder and editor of KnickerBlogger.net. His book on the 2012 Knicks, "We’ll Always Have Linsanity," is on sale now. Follow him on twitter (@KnickerBlogger).

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