It started up with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bohemian Polka,” which was a fun, off-kilter start to the week. When it followed up with “Jurassic Park,” I didn’t think much of it. Twofers by artist, and even by album, aren’t that uncommon.

When “Living in the Fridge” started up, I got a little suspicious.

Sure enough, when I stopped the car and checked, shuffle was set to “off.” I figure the playlist must have been sorted by album the last time I synced, with Alapalooza the first on the list.

I’m still not sure whether it switched off shuffle when the battery ran down, or I just had it off before and didn’t notice because the last playlist I was listening to was pre-shuffled. Still, it was — appropriately — weird.

• “I Love Rocky Road” (based on Joan Jett’s version of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” and all about ice cream.)
• “Cavity Search” (it’s about going to the dentist—U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” is turned into “Numb me, drill me, floss me, bill me.”)

Sometimes random shuffle makes you wonder whether the software knows more about the songs than what’s in the ID3 tag.

Seriously. It seems like this song has somehow become the most popular Christmas song this year. I normally don’t mind it, but come on!

It doesn’t help that it’s about as likely to snow here as it is for a meteor to strike Times Square at exactly midnight on New Year’s Eve. But that’s worth its own post.

(Incidentally, the parody’s original. We made it up together in the grocery store on Sunday. Katie has more, but I can’t remember it.)

Unfortunately, after listening through twice, I only actually like two songs on the album: “California Justice” and “Policeman’s Xmas Party.” Everything else is just too…sappy.

And “The Riddle” is everywhere. Radio, supermarkets, fast food, shopping malls. I can’t escape it. Worse, it’s one of those tunes that worms its way into your mind and runs around in circles.

But here’s the odd thing: Does anyone else think the verse sounds a little bit like “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “The Night Santa Went Crazy?”

Jewel and Tool, together… a…gain?

I understand the desire to play popular songs frequently, since it should improve ratings. I know record labels still pay radio stations to make sure their songs get played, even though it’s technically illegal. (They use intermediaries these days, but I don’t think anyone’s fooled.) But it seems to me that there must be a limit to the effectiveness of playing the same song over and over.

Heck, even Star, masters of the binge-and-purge playlist, got pissed off at Ryan Seacrest once when he played the same song 5 or 6 times in a row. This was probably 3 or 4 years ago, and I caught a few minutes of him saying that he didn’t understand what management was so upset about. “They’re always telling us to support the music,” he said.

Is that what it takes? Playing the same songs 10 times a day is OK, as long as no one song gets played 10 times in a row? Even though it takes up time that could be used to play more songs that might, radical as this might sound, get listeners interested in a new artist or album? That they might actually go out and buy?

In the late 1990s there were several LA-area radio stations that would play deep cuts off an album—songs that hadn’t been released as singles—or the album versions of songs that had. All gone. A few years ago, there was a station that had a policy of no repeats between 9am and 5pm. Gone.

Is it just the push toward the lowest common denominator, spurred on by the rise of giant radio conglomerates? (Clear Channel owns a huge chunk of LA radio.) Maybe. There’s a lot more room on satellite radio, and whenever I’ve been in a store or restaurant that plays satellite radio, I start hearing those album cuts and songs other than the Top 40 of a genre.

Of course, the way cable TV has gone—with former niche networks branching out for that lowest common denominator, giving rise to the lament of 500 channels and nothing on—this may be only a temporary renaissance. The same cycle of homogenization seems to hit all media, turning vitality into banality over and over.

“Today’s Music Alternative”

I’m sure they intend it to mean an alternative source for music, but it sounds like an alternative to music. And considering they’ve dropped their talk shows and DJs in favor of more time for music, I don’t think that’s the message they’re trying to convey.

The concert was great, and very different from the last concert we saw at Royce Hall just by virtue of having a full band behind her (Tori Amos performed solo last time we were there). It was also very different from the last time we saw Aimee Mann, at the House of Blues last summer. For one thing, she was focusing on songs from her new album, The Forgotten Arm.

It was also much more interactive than either of the other two concerts. What stuck in my mind was the request section. She had everything set up so that people would write the request on a piece of paper and leave it on the stage, but when she got to the break, people were shouting out titles. One guy came prepared with what looked like a balsa glider and wrote his request on that, adding that it was his birthday. I don’t remember his request, but she improvised “Happy birthday to the paper airplane man.” I’ve seen singers who get talkative, and singers who improv silly songs, but it really felt like the house was much smaller than 1800 people. (Of course, you could still make a drinking game out of the number of times she says “Thank you so much” after a song.)

Another funny moment was when someone shouted out a request for “Voices Carry.” “Voices Carry?” she said. “Why not ask for a Cyndi Lauper song? ‘Time after time…’” Surprisingly, after performing “King of the Jailhouse” for an encore, she finished up with none other than “Voices Carry,” altered to fit her current style.

The one thing I didn’t like about the concert was that the amplification was up way too loud. The couple sitting next to us left partway through because the woman kept covering her ears.

Of possible interest to my brother: the bio in the program was credited as labeled as “Courtesy of Wikipedia.”

The concert let out at 10:00, which was just as well, since the drive back was…interesting. Since we’d had to eat early to make it up to LA by 7:00 (and we just barely made it—the opening act had started singing), our plan was to grab a snack in Westwood and eat on the way back. We were surprised to find that there were lots of place open at 10pm on a Sunday, but I got frustrated trying to figure out which parking lots were fair game. We just got on the freeway, figuring on stopping in Manhattan Beach for a McDonald’s we knew of next to the freeway. The rain came back as we drove south, and then we started seeing lightning. When we stopped for food, we just parked the car facing southeast and watched the light show. There was a fantastic lightning bolt that snaked sideways across half the sky in front of us. The rain got pretty heavy for the rest of the drive, but for some reason it cleared up again by the time we got home.

Steve Jobs seems to get it, though. He’s pointing out that higher prices will just drive people back to illegal downloading.

• Judge slams SCO’s lack of evidence against IBM. Also Groklaw’s take. After all the wild claims they’ve made without providing evidence, it’s nice to see even the judge is getting sick of it.
• Coke may try out coffee cola – Yeah, it’s a month old, but it’s news to me. (Incidentally, I hate CNN’s practice of deleting stories from their website. That’s where I read about this earlier this week, and I had to go hunting for an article that was still up.) [Note: I've had to track down a third copy of the article.]
• MP3tunes.com shuns DRM – former MP3.com founder starts a new legal download service, and sticks with unencumbered MP3s instead of messing around with ultimately-flawed digital rights management. I’m reminded of Cory Doctorow’s famous talk on why DRM is bad for everyone.
• Beware the unexpected attack vector – Your enemy may not come at you from the direction you expect. Set up sentries around the beach, they’ll get you through the ocean. Set up a firewall, they’ll get you through web browsers. It’s mainly about computer/network security, but it has an interesting story explaining why there’s only one major newspaper in Los Angeles.
• CSS Zen Garden parody: Geocities 1996 – I’ve been meaning to post a link to this for over a month. It’s fully valid code, and manages to bring back the worst of 1990s web design.

Alt Rock Lyrics or Spam?

Can you tell the difference?

Excuse me? In general I like Apple, but their insistence on locking the iPod to iTunes and iTunes alone is short-sighted. When people hacked up a way to use an iPod on Windows, they first licensed the software, then wrote iTunes for Windows. iPod sales have tripled to the point where they may soon outsell Macintoshes. This could never have happened if Apple had kept the iPod Mac-specific.

I’m reminded of the many times Microsoft has altered its file-sharing protocol to break compatibility with Samba, the package that allows Linux, BSD, and now Mac OS X to connect to Windows networks.

The classic analogy is getting a car that can only run on certain roads. So someone’s found a way to let the iPod drive some different roads. But Apple still sells as many iPods. They might even sell more (as when it gained Windows compatibility). Why the accusations of hacking, why the legal threats, and why the determination to keep the iPod locked to their own roads?