I was never a really massive fan of The Cure. Sure, I like their work and their music was/is the story of some generation like all contributions to music are (from Chico to The Who or Lennon to The Wiggles; the spectrum is wide and varied with some making more of an impact than others!) I liked The Cure enough to buy a couple of their albums, or should I say I’m a big enough music fan to have a couple of their albums in my possession. A particular song collides with my listening tastes after a comedy festival I attended used ‘Lovecats’ as its theme and proceeded to trumpet it out at the start of every gig, in between some intervals and, at one point, over the PA system erected around the city.
But that is no fault of the composer and I thought it was an exception until my ipod started taking a liking to ‘In between days’ which, granted, is a good track and something that lends itself to numerous commercial and promotional material, but why did it keep randomly appearing on the shuffle mode of a piece of software crammed with 60gb worth of music – the odds are like winning the euromillions jackpot or having a constructive conversation with a customer service department.
At first it was a ‘oh I havent heard this in ages…this is a good track, turn it up’. But slowly, on my daily commute, I noticed that I was hearing this song more frequently, It wasn’t anything to fret about; I would either listen to it again, start listening to it and then get bored or just skip it. This continued for a short period until I evaluated, on hearing it once again, that this was too much of a regular occurrence for it to be chance. It got to the point that I had heard It at least once EVERYDAY in the four-six hour period where I would be listening to the Ipod. I bordered on the point of insanity when I noticed that I was hearing it at the same point on my tube journey- Déjà vu and a general loss of bearings followed (‘what date is it, don’t tell me it’s still Monday!’).
On further investigation, I found that I gave no star rating to this or any music from that band; the closest thing to The Cure I found that I have rated is the Magic Numbers (going on the critics comparisons for their first album, not my evaluation!), The lightning Seeds, The Kinks…well actually quite a few artists that could be seen as being somewhat similar to The Cure for a human brain to draw a connection; but is this plastic white covered piece of overpriced circuit board really that clever.
I decided some casual interrogation of work colleagues might provide an answer. Gingerly over lunch I crafted conversation to music and then built a bridge to ipods. A majority had a Nano and in trying to maximise space carefully collated a playlist to suit their current appetite; not like my haphazard cluster bombing of tracks from my vast library (which I am slowly but surely converting to mp3). So my dilemma wasn’t solved; they know what they are expecting from their 1gb but in the forest of 60gb there are many shadows so who is guiding who? Man or machine? And is the blind leading the blind? At least they opted for the Nano and not the shuffle which is the baby of the ipod empire which solely relies on the infamous ‘shuffle technology’; could you imagine the uncertain hell that would descend.
A similar debate rose in the pub, with me as a very biased chair. It turns out that people do seem to get shuffle favourites but these tend to also be those awarded five stars by the user. My lack of education in statistical analysis fails me here as I am unsure if this is connected or pure coincidence.
So to the net, and a certain search engine that has now become a verb in modern the English vernacular. It turns out I am not alone (unlike this blog, which I believe if it is popular, 10% of its viewers will have actually read it using the very PC it was created on!) . There are others out there – shufflers anonymous they may be but the condition has inflicted a significant few. While the people may be there, the truth isn't. Apparently this is a modern day dilemma. But, alas, several extensive studies and the hounding of its creators has left little uncovered.
Not the perfect end (but this isn’t the perfect blog). The shuffle is man made so man is guiding the machine which guides man (?!?) but what code have they put in to create such a monster? I don’t believe that Apple have any conflicts of interest with music producers, apart from Apple music (maybe that’s why my beloved Beatles, of which there are 185 tracks, very seldomly airs on my mini jukebox!!) so that can conclusively rule out a commercial element; maybe it works in ‘caches’ (excuse the technobabble) so that the shuffle mode only plays files which are 'close at hand', so if The cure were played only yesterday, then odds are high it will air again. But surely a reselecting of the ‘shuffle songs’ mode would reload a new cache and this was done several times and still The Cure cropped up again. I have also heard an arguement for the 'code' assigned to a track. This, like a filename, is a series of digits that awards the file an identity. Is it possible that my superstitous ipod only trusts a certain few digits and stays away from '3' for fear it may form a '13' or the devil's '6'?
Maybe I have mistakenly ripped Inbetween Days several dozen times, hence increasing the odds of replay (but Im sure I have 'flushed' the system of duplicates) or perhaps it really is purely random and I a either living in my Billy Murray style hell or it is just a coincidence that this song keeps appearing. For now, I will have to settle with the preposition that the Ipod is living the words of this now dreaded song: "come back come back/come back today/come back come back...."
But that is no fault of the composer and I thought it was an exception until my ipod started taking a liking to ‘In between days’ which, granted, is a good track and something that lends itself to numerous commercial and promotional material, but why did it keep randomly appearing on the shuffle mode of a piece of software crammed with 60gb worth of music – the odds are like winning the euromillions jackpot or having a constructive conversation with a customer service department.
At first it was a ‘oh I havent heard this in ages…this is a good track, turn it up’. But slowly, on my daily commute, I noticed that I was hearing this song more frequently, It wasn’t anything to fret about; I would either listen to it again, start listening to it and then get bored or just skip it. This continued for a short period until I evaluated, on hearing it once again, that this was too much of a regular occurrence for it to be chance. It got to the point that I had heard It at least once EVERYDAY in the four-six hour period where I would be listening to the Ipod. I bordered on the point of insanity when I noticed that I was hearing it at the same point on my tube journey- Déjà vu and a general loss of bearings followed (‘what date is it, don’t tell me it’s still Monday!’).
On further investigation, I found that I gave no star rating to this or any music from that band; the closest thing to The Cure I found that I have rated is the Magic Numbers (going on the critics comparisons for their first album, not my evaluation!), The lightning Seeds, The Kinks…well actually quite a few artists that could be seen as being somewhat similar to The Cure for a human brain to draw a connection; but is this plastic white covered piece of overpriced circuit board really that clever.
I decided some casual interrogation of work colleagues might provide an answer. Gingerly over lunch I crafted conversation to music and then built a bridge to ipods. A majority had a Nano and in trying to maximise space carefully collated a playlist to suit their current appetite; not like my haphazard cluster bombing of tracks from my vast library (which I am slowly but surely converting to mp3). So my dilemma wasn’t solved; they know what they are expecting from their 1gb but in the forest of 60gb there are many shadows so who is guiding who? Man or machine? And is the blind leading the blind? At least they opted for the Nano and not the shuffle which is the baby of the ipod empire which solely relies on the infamous ‘shuffle technology’; could you imagine the uncertain hell that would descend.
A similar debate rose in the pub, with me as a very biased chair. It turns out that people do seem to get shuffle favourites but these tend to also be those awarded five stars by the user. My lack of education in statistical analysis fails me here as I am unsure if this is connected or pure coincidence.
So to the net, and a certain search engine that has now become a verb in modern the English vernacular. It turns out I am not alone (unlike this blog, which I believe if it is popular, 10% of its viewers will have actually read it using the very PC it was created on!) . There are others out there – shufflers anonymous they may be but the condition has inflicted a significant few. While the people may be there, the truth isn't. Apparently this is a modern day dilemma. But, alas, several extensive studies and the hounding of its creators has left little uncovered.
Not the perfect end (but this isn’t the perfect blog). The shuffle is man made so man is guiding the machine which guides man (?!?) but what code have they put in to create such a monster? I don’t believe that Apple have any conflicts of interest with music producers, apart from Apple music (maybe that’s why my beloved Beatles, of which there are 185 tracks, very seldomly airs on my mini jukebox!!) so that can conclusively rule out a commercial element; maybe it works in ‘caches’ (excuse the technobabble) so that the shuffle mode only plays files which are 'close at hand', so if The cure were played only yesterday, then odds are high it will air again. But surely a reselecting of the ‘shuffle songs’ mode would reload a new cache and this was done several times and still The Cure cropped up again. I have also heard an arguement for the 'code' assigned to a track. This, like a filename, is a series of digits that awards the file an identity. Is it possible that my superstitous ipod only trusts a certain few digits and stays away from '3' for fear it may form a '13' or the devil's '6'?
Maybe I have mistakenly ripped Inbetween Days several dozen times, hence increasing the odds of replay (but Im sure I have 'flushed' the system of duplicates) or perhaps it really is purely random and I a either living in my Billy Murray style hell or it is just a coincidence that this song keeps appearing. For now, I will have to settle with the preposition that the Ipod is living the words of this now dreaded song: "come back come back/come back today/come back come back...."
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