Friday Diversion

I picked this one up from Shannon, among other places. Here's a fun exercise if you have iTunes.

1) Take a playlist or random shuffle of your library and post a stanza from 25-35 diffent songs.
2) If the first is too obvious, take a middle one instead.
3) Try to keep the artists and albums as diverse as possible (don't take five songs from the same album).
4) Now try and guess the song, group, and album in the comments. It can be a fun way of maybe discovering something new to try.
5) I'll post the answers as people guess correctly and put up the full list next week.

6) Now, of course, the answers to all of these can be found with several simple Google searches so only post the ones that you know off the top of your head. Honor system is in effect here.

(I've started updating some of the answers people have e-mailed me with. I'll continue as they come in -- let me know if you want credit .)

This is a fairly representative crossection of my musical tastes (it's actually my current gym/running rotation):

Answers in BOLD: Song/Artist/Album

1. What I Got/Sublime/Sublime
Early in the morning, risin' to the street
Light me up that cigarette and I strap shoes on my feet
Got to find a reason, a reason things went wrong
Got to find a reason why my money's all gone

2. Goodnight Moon/Shivaree/Kill Bill Vol. 2
There's a nail in the door
And there's glass on the lawn
Tacks on the floor
And the TV is on
And I always sleep with my guns when you're gone

3. World On Fire/Sarah McLachlan/Afterglow
Hearts are worn in these dark ages
You're not alone in this story's pages
Night has fallen amongst the living and the dying
And I try to hold it in, yeah I try to hold it in

4. I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)/The Proclaimers/Best Of
When I wake up
Well, I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man that wakes up next to you

5. Jesus Of Suburbia/Green Day/American Idiot
Dearly beloved, are you listening?
I can't remember a word that you were saying,
Are we demented? Or am I disturbed?
The space that's in between insane and insecure

6. The Impression That I Get/Mighty Mighty Bosstones/Live From The Middle East
(I guess we know this fucking song)
Have you ever been close to tragedy
Or been close to folks who have
Have you ever felt a pain so powerful
So heavy you collapse

[Bonus points if you guess the correct album]

7. Harder To Breathe/Maroon 5/Songs About Jane
How dare you say that my behavior is unacceptable
So condescending unnecessarily critical
I have the tendency of getting very physical
So watch your step cause if I do you'll need a miracle

8. Hello, I Love You/The Doors/Best Of
She's walking down the street
Blind to every eye she meets
Do you think you'll be the guy
To make the queen of the angels sigh?

9. Here We Go/Dispatch/Bang Bang
I got the mean time slippin' down
the slide some uptight right wing,
political homicide, do what you
want, take what you will, take it in
like a south paw, flip it on the grill

10. The Dark Of The Matinee/Franz Ferdinand/Franz Ferdinand
You take your white finger
Slide the nail under the top and bottom buttons of my blazer
Relax the fraying wool, slacken ties
And I'm not to look at you in the shoe, but the eyes, find the eyes

11. Twenty-Five Miles/Edwin Starr/Best Of
It's twenty five miles from home
Girl, my feet are hurting mighty bad
Now I've been walking a three day, two lonely nights
You know that I'm mighty mad

12. Get Off This/Cracker/Kerosene Hat
All these cats with holey jeans,
Dirty hair and titty rings
Say "what's your scene man? We got these questions...

13. You Will You Won't/The Zutons/Who Killed...The Zutons
While your thinking, thinking, thinking up a storm in you
All the things you're thinking, are they false, are they true
You know the dipsydoodle rag, it tells no lie
But all the time you're thinking, well you're tricking your mind

14. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me/U2/Batman Forever
You don’t know how you took it
You just know what you got
Oh lordy you’ve been stealing
From the thieves and you got caught

15. Hardest Button To Button/White Stripes/Elephant
We started living in an old house
My ma gave birth and we were checking it out
It was a baby boy
So we bought him a toy
It was a ray gun
And it was 1981

16. The Real Slim Shady/Eminem/ The Marshall Mathers LP
I'm like a head trip to listen to, cause I'm only givin you
things you joke about with your friends inside your living room
The only difference is I got the balls to say it
in front of y'all and I don't gotta be false or sugarcoated at all

17. The Last Stop/Dave Matthews Band/Before These Crowded Streets (Jenn)
Fire
The sun is well asleep
Moon is high above
Fire grows from the east
How is this
Hate so deep
Lead us all so blindly killing killing

18. Sweet Home Alabama/Lynyrd Skynyrd/Forrest Gump
Well, I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard 'ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

19. Come Downstairs And Say Hello/Guster/Keep It Together
To tell you truth I've said it before
Tomorrow I start in a new direction
One last time these words from me
I'm never saying them again
And I shut the light
And listen as my watch unwinds

20. Get Off My Cloud/Rolling Stones/Hot Rocks
I live in an apartment on the ninety-ninth floor of my block
And I sit at home looking out the window
Imagining the world has stopped
Then in flies a guy who's all dressed up like a Union Jack
And says, I've won five pounds if I have his kind of detergent pack

21. The Fly/U2/Achtung Baby
It's no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest.
It's no secret ambition bites the nails of success.
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief;
All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.

22. Hitchin' A Ride/Green Day/Nimrod
Hey mister, where you headed?
Are you in a hurry?
I need a lift to happy hour.
Say oh no.
Do you brake for distilled spirits?
I need a break as well.
The well that inebriates the guilt.

23. Kryptonite/3 Doors Down/The Better Life (Jenn)
I took a walk around the world to
Ease my troubled mind
I left my body laying somewhere
In the sands of time
I watched the world float to the dark
Side of the moon
I feel there is nothing I can do, yeah

24. Connected/Stereo MC's/Connected
If you make sure you're connected
The writing's on the wall
But if your mind's neglected
Stumble you might fall

25. About An Hour Ago/O.A.R./The Wanderer
Now we're kickin back and we're sippin beers
and there's a man telling stories about his inner fears
We was all choked up and too close to tears
Well then we moved on up to some margaritas
and we started makin faces at the senoritas
Playing drinking games but they were all too drunk to beat us

26. Devil's Haircut/Beck/Odelay
Somethin's wrong cause my mind is fadin'
And everywhere I look there's a dead end waiting,
Temperature's dropping at the rottin' oasis
Stealing kisses from the lepers faces

27. Curbside Prophet/Jason Mraz/Waiting For My Rocket To Come
You see it started way back in NYC
When I stole my first rhyme from the M-I-C
At a west end avenue at 63
It's the beginning of a leap year February ‘96
win a guitar picked it up in the mix
I committed to the licks like a nickel bag of tricks

28. Under African Skies/Paul Simon/Graceland
This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein
After the dream of falling and calling your name out
These are the roots of rhythm
And the roots of rhythm remain

29. No Alibis/Eric Clapton/Journeyman
I beg your pardon, hello darlin'
This is me you're talkin' to
Sit down and tell me about it
You don't have to shout it at me
Tell me what you really want to do

30. The Rising/Bruce Springsteen/The Rising
Can’t see nothin’ in front of me
Can’t see nothin’ coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can’t feel nothing but this chain that binds me