So, I came across this on Neil Gaiman's journal a while back, and then again over on John Scalzi's By the Way. The idea is, fire up your MP3 player of choice, put your whole library on random shuffle, and list the first 10 songs that cue up. No deleting of embarrassing or uncool tracks allowed.

So, from my iPod:

1. Big Dumb Sex - Soundgarden


2. Civil War - Guns-n-Roses


3. The Best Things - Filter


4. I Sit on Acid (Remix) - The Lords of Acid


5. Summer Song - Joe Satriani


6. Sealine - The Church


7. Up in the Sky - Joe Satriani


8. Wave Goodbye - Chris Cornell


9. Everybody Knows - Echo and The Bunnymen


10. The Extremist - Joe Satriani

The odd thing is that I have no idea who Filter are. I assume this is one of the freebie tracks that came with my original iTunes installation, or maybe something that Daniel bought. The song sounds pretty good, though.

The other minor oddity is the number of times Joe Satriani appears on the list. There are only 15 Joe Satriani tracks among the 600+ songs on my iPod. (Though there probably ought to be more - Satch is mandatory for driving mixes.)

So, that was kind of fun, so I tried it again:

1. I Can't Wait - Steve Nicks


2. Rebel Yell - Billy Idol


3. Fire of Love - Gabriela Anders


4. "Track 01" - Mozart (whoops, either Daniel or I ripped some Mozart without bothering to get the CD track listings. I think maybe it's an Invention, but I don't know which one.)


5. Heaven on Earth - The Mission U.K.


6. This Corrosion - Sisters of Mercy


7. Sunbeam - Submarine


8. Come Lie With Me - Holly Palmer


9. Catharsis - Natalie McMaster


10. Family Affair - Mary J. Blige

This is really weird. I have no idea who Gabriela Anders, Submarine, or Holly Palmer are.

I don't actually listen to my whole library on random shuffle very often. I usually either play by artist or use playlists. Clearly, I'm missing some stuff.