iPod

Listening to: Wear Your Love Like Heaven - Donovan

Young Jim gave me his iPod, loaded with 800 songs, and I've been having such a good time playing with it. I've added a lot of my own and have been going through the ones already there to see if I like them or not. In the process, I've learned a few things:

• iTunes is so much fun (and I think it could get expensive if I'm not careful)! I've downloaded lots of songs, including the essential Donovan collection and Quinn the Eskimo (the Kinks' version, not the Dylan one). I didn't know you could get that crusty old stuff on iTunes.
  
  
• My newest favorites are Robert Plant & Alison Kraus -- I love Raising Sand (especially Please Read the Letter, Killing the Blues and Gone, Gone, Gone! I can't get over how beautifully their voices blend and I never would have expected it. I'm really in danger of listening until I'm sick of them.
  
  
• In the end, most of my favorite music is the stuff I listened to in my teens and twenties. I've added some new artists I like very much, but Crosby, Stills & Nash (and all their bands before and after) and the Beatles are still the best! I also still like everything Dylan did, but he REALLY can't sing -- his Quinn the Eskimo is painful to listen to!
  
  
• For the most part, everything Elvis Costello does sounds the same. I really only like 3 of his songs.
  
  
• For some reason, most of the music I listen to lately makes me sad -- either because it's inherently so or because it reminds me of the passage of time. The saddest song for me in the entire collection is one of Jim's -- Iron & Wine's "Upward Over the Mountain." I don't think I'll ever listen to it again.
  
  
• It's a funny thing that I'm just now getting an iPod, when the rest of the world is moving on to iPhones. We didn't get a laptop, either, until Charlie gave us his old one. It seems that I always depend on the kindness (and electronics) of family members!
  

Thanks for the iPod, Jim!!!!