Fill er up

After almost a month without a functioning iPod, I finally took it in to the genius bar where they told me what I already knew. The battery was thrashed. They offered to give me a new mini for about 60 bucks. I accepted. Sure, it's obsolete, but it's cheaper than buying a new MP3 player. Now I've been preoccupied with filling it up.

First off, reggae. I put in the Mod Reggae and Rocksteady box-sets from Trojan, as well as 300% Dynamite, An Even Harder Shade of Black, and Return of the Super Ape. Augustus Pablo and Herman Chin Loy, too. Yeah.

Next comes the rock. Clash on Broadway, Hey! Ho! Let's Go!, Jam at the BBC, and Bowie at the Beeb serve as the foundation. Then some newer stuff like the Libertines, Jets to Brazil, Fugazi, and Sleater-Kinney. The new Monsters are waiting made the cut, and so did Arctic Monkey demos. Still have to add my favorite band, J Church. So many cuts to choose from.

That was all on my old iPod, so I wanted some new stuff, too. I've found some Dag Nasty demos at Daghouse, tons of great stuff from Mick Jones and Tony James' new band, Carbon Silicon, and nice links from the Ted Leo site.

There's a lot of stuff I listen to that's not going in. The new Avail re-releases are amazing. I've been listening to Gorilla Biscuits a lot since I got tickets for their reunion show this summer. But I'll probably just listen to those CDs in their entirety.

Anything else? As you can tell, the songs are heavy on my own library of CDs that I own and light on downloading stuff... When I run around the reservoir this weekend, I'll let it shuffle, see how things pop up, and adjust accordingly.

My next challenge: finalizing a playlist for next week's event...