Marginal Utility

by Tom Bozzo

So far, I am very happy with the new wheels. Still, there is one feature of the old car I really miss — the hard-wired iPod connector, and the related ability to control the iPod with the steering wheel buttons. I find it to be extremely dangerous to try to navigate the iPod while driving otherwise. Worse than talking on a cell phone, even, insofar as it's nearly impossible to keep your eyes, let alone attention, on the road.

That's created a market for car-friendly playlists, and here's the latest one I devised: About a CD-R's full of stuff. The trick is that the tracks are alphabetical by title.

Song, Artist, Album
1. 50 Shades of Blue, Edwyn Collins, Hope and Despair
2. A Gentle Sound, The Railway Children, Reunion Wilderness
3. A Wish Away, The Wonder Stuff, The Eight-Legged Groove Machine
4. Ace Tone, Holiday, Holiday
5. Airplane Gardens, The Family Cat, Magic Happens
6. All Around the World, The Jam, Compact Snap
7. All This And More, The Wedding Present, George Best
8. Baby Maker, Pale Saints, In Ribbons
9. Beautiful Day, U2, All That You Can't Leave Behind
10. Before the Day, The Bats, Silverbeet
11. Blade of Grass, Versus, The Stars Are Insane
12. Boston's Daily Temperature, Damon and Naomi, More Sad Hits
13. Breaking Lines, The Pastels, Up For A Bit With The Pastels
14. Broken Chair, Luna, Rendezvous
15. Creep, The Chills, Brave Words
16. Cut Me Deep, The Jasmine Minks, Another Age
17. Demarest, Grenadine, Goya
18. Distant Mother Reality, Eric Matthews, It's Heavy In Here
19. Do It Anyway, The Woodentops, Well Well Well...
20. Don't Say If, The Flatmates, Love and Death (The Flatmates 86-89)
21. Dreamwalk Baby, The Primitives, Lovely
22. Elephant Stone, The Stone Roses, The Complete Stone Roses
23. Fabulous Friend, The Field Mice, Snowball + Singles
24. Far Gone And Out, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Honey's Dead

This mix has an ITMS Esoterica Index (1 minus the fraction of songs available in the U.S. iTMS, with half-credit awarded if the band but not the song appears in the database) of 46%.

Have you been mystified by the Friday mixes here? Looking for a quick education in (mostly) late?

Well, if you make a (tax-deductible) contribution of $25 or more to the Children's Organ Transplant Association campaign for liver transplant patient Annika Tiede, I will happily burn you a copy of this or any other playlist posted to this blog. Send me a request with sufficient contact information to the address in the sidebar. For more information on Annika's situation, see here, here (her mom's blog), or here (chez Phantom Scribbler). Just please don't expect label artwork or the like. My ancient laser printer barely knows it's hooked up to our household network.