Today's Commute (As Chronicled By The iPod)

Today's two-hour commute to and from dance went as follows:

(Backstory: A friend from church ended up with a second iPod car adapter he didn't need and gave it to me. I decided to put my 2 GB nano back to work (it had been kind of forgotten since my library outgrew it). I loaded it with a bunch of random songs and took it for a spin today.)

I started it off myself with The Devil Is Bad by the W's. It was the first song that caught my attention as I was scrolling through the song list and I thought, 'Hey, why not?' (It was also peppy enough to get me through the first few minutes of the drive when I'm still tired and not really alert.)

Then I set it to shuffle.

I didn't recognise the second song at first... but when I did I started laughing. The only Christmas song on the iPod (and, I had noticed after syncing, the *gasp!* only White Heart song). It seemed quite fitting as the clouds hung thick and white in the sky, heavy with glorious snow so rare.

We were off to a very good start.

Next up, the analogue recording of PFR's Name (even though the dragging is awful, I couldn't part with the analogue tracks even after getting the CD).

After that, Petra's More Power To Ya, followed immediately by Adonai.

That right there, my friends, is a good commute song. Actually it's good for pretty much anything. (Have I ever mentioned that I love this song?)

It was kind of a downer when the best rock praise song ever recorded (says me) was followed by Switchfoot's More Than Fine. Not a lot of tracks can easily follow Adonai, and that wasn't one of them.

Then came Frontlynaz's Addicted (a random hip hop song I heard once and kind of liked so I downloaded it. You know, back when I had money for that kind of frivolous stuff).

Then the iPod abruptly changed gears and put out two early Amy Grant tracks in a row -- Love Can Do and Angels (eerily appropriate for driving that highway at times).

Then it apparently tired of the '80s and moved on to R&B/Soul-type stuff (Nicole C Mullen's Witness and Mary Mary's Shackles (Praise You)).

Midway through that last track we arrived at the studio and the iPod was put on hold for several hours in favour of piano music.

Upon returning to the rattletrap and finishing the Mary Mary song, it pulled out Owl City's Fireflies, much to my sister's delight, then, as we came off the overpass onto the main highway, one of my favourite Newsboys tracks, Praises.

Following that, Fisherman Song by Boxtree -- a sweet little flashback to my childhood. Such a cute cheerful song. Stylistically it's like PFR's Great Lengths, only nobody's ever heard of it.

Then came the ultimate in modern pop (as modern pop as one gets on my iPod, anyway), the remixed version of ZOEgirl's Even If. This is definitely a song you blast from the speakers as you rock down the highway. (At least that's what I did.)

And the ultimate in BeeGee-esque late '70s rock (as far as that goes on my iPod -- see previous paragraph) Petra's Angel Of Light. It was a bit of a jump, but hey, Petra is always fitting. Always.

We pulled into Tim Horton's just as Angel Of Light finished and paused it while I went in and ordered our weekly pair of small iced capps. (Yes, non-Canadian readers, that's 'capps' with two p's. It takes less time for the weather to change around here than it does for us to say 'iced cappuccino' and we just don't have that kind of time to mess with because the hockey game starts in ten minutes and we have to hurry up and get back to home sweet igloo before the face-off.)

Anyway, the trip from Tim Horton's to the next lights followed the soundtrack to Phil Joel's Strangely Normal, and the trip from those lights to the next were underscored by PFR's Goldie's Last Day. (Is it just me or did I drive really really slowly through town? Wow. Two songs seems a bit excessive. Apologies to the people stuck behind me.)

The Newsboys' Joy carried us out of town and back onto the highway, followed by Steven Curtis Chapman's This Day and Jasmin Gibb's Come To Jesus.

As I made the left onto the gravel road to our house, the final leg of the journey, and the last note ofCome To Jesus faded into a mere echo in the short-term memory, I began to seriously hope the next song wouldn't be a dud. Years of living in the same house, taking the same road over and over and over again has taught me that from the turn onto the gravel to our house is four and a half minutes -- just enough for one more song.

What would it be? Which should I hope for?

Come on, don't pick a lame one, don't pick a lame one...

Drum beat. Drum beat. Three more, successive.

Yes. (*insert mental fist pump here* I couldn't do a real one because if I took my hand off the wheel the wind would have swept us neatly into the ditch.)


People In A Box.

Just a little bit of eighties to stick in my head for the rest of the afternoon. (Okay okay, maybe a lot of eighties to stick in my head for the rest of the afternoon.)

And then once I got in the house it was too quiet so I put on some DeGarmo & Key. So much for that other plan.



(Yes, I know I need a life.)

Music Day

Another song from my childhood. (It was either this or more White Heart.)
This band has exactly two major hits (that I'm aware of, anyway). One from a VeggieTales episode (The Rumour Weed Song, from Larry-Boy And The Rumour Weed), the other, featured today, was catapulted to fame when Christian radio started advertising it as 'from the band who performed The Rumour Weed Song on the new Larry-Boy video.' The immense popularity of Larry-Boy at the time (strengthened by the newly-launched website -- a big deal in 1999) and the catchiness of both songs combined so strongly that most people who listened to Christian radio and/or knew VeggieTales in that era can hear either song now, more than ten years later (has it really been that long?) and still name the band. Not a lot of Christian hits from 1999 are that recognisable.
This is probably the only song that reminds me of PFR that isn't actually by PFR.

Title: The Devil Is Bad
Artist: The W's
Album: Fourth From The Last
Year: 1998
Label: Five Minute Walk Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Because let's face it, it's way too much fun to say Ski-dee-lee-oo.

Music Day

AAAAAHH! Look what I found!

We bought this on cassette tape when it was first released just after Larry-Boy and the Rumour Weed had started to seriously take over the homes of parents with young children everywhere. I distinctly remember the first time listening to it in our little emerald-green Dodge Spirit and my mother, sister and I laughing our heads off at the Bumblyburg Groove Remix and the Superhero Slim-Down Remix as we sat in the parking lot of a gas station that no longer exists (I can't remember why we were there, but I do remember my father seeming to take forever doing whatever it was. Then again, I was a little kid. Everything takes forever when you're little).

My sister and I quickly claimed it as our favourite and even our Barbie dolls were made to dance to it as we flipped the cassette over and over (why listen to it only once when you can listen to it three times and have three times as much fun?).

Eventually though, the Spirit was totaled and replaced with a minivan with a CD player. We had cassette players in the house, of course, but I've noticed that whatever player is in your vehicle ends up being the primary music player in your possession. Whatever's getting decent rotation in the vehicle at the moment is what you listen to in the house until you get sick of it and go dig up something else.

Over the years as the CD collection grew, this particular cassette was left in a drawer and all but forgotten. Somewhere along the way, it picked up something awfully sticky that managed to get inside the cassette and attach the tape quite firmly to the casing, making it impossible for the spools to turn, therefore rendering it unplayable.

Some time later, EMI released the soundtrack album again -- this time updated with scenes from the then-recent release Larry-Boy and the Bad Apple. However the Bad Apple scenes (which weren't very good in the first place in comparison to the first two episodes according to me) were included at the expense of some of the greatest moments on the original release -- Larry-Boy's (almost) classic line about needing a doughnut, the entire introduction of and performance from the W's, Alfred's dramatic quotations of poetry, et cetera. I was sorely disappointed.

However...

Yesterday I got thinking about Bob the Tomato and VeggieTales in general and on a lark (like I have nothing better to do -- it's not like I'm trying to write a novel and prepare for a potential career in dance or anything) searched 'veggietales' on the iTunes Store. Finding nothing but their post-Jonah tripe, I searched 'larry-boy.'

And found this, the original version of the soundtrack, the one I remembered from my childhood, unadulterated by the forced stereotypical superhero flick that is Larry-Boy and the Bad Apple. Note that below is the link to the whole album, but if you're on a budget (although $6.93 Canadian is pretty bargain already), at least buy Look Who's Here To Help, Bumblyburg Groove Remix, Superhero Slim-Down Mix, It's The W's! and The Rumour Weed Song (as performed by the W's).

Album Title: Larry-Boy: The Soundtrack
Artist: VeggieTales
Year: 1999
Label: Big Idea
iTunes here.

Note: It should be blatantly obvious by the name VeggieTales (not to mention Bob the Tomato) that yes, this is about talking (and singing) vegetables. Yes, it's technically children's material. No, it's not deep and serious and talking about either how crappy life is or about some girl like 'grown-up' music does... this is just funny. No toilet humour (save the image of the plunger ears and one use of the word 'underwear' in the The Superhero Slim-Down Mix), just cheesy puns and innocent goofiness.
Let your inner child out here (Alfred even addresses the listeners as 'boys and girls'). Laugh a little. It's okay. :-)