It’s a week early, but I am resetting the play counter on my iTunes account tonight, which has been diligently accumulating records of tracks played on six iPods since its last reset nearly a year ago. As I’ve noted before, this is always a fun process for me, in that our “most played” list represents the place where three listeners with very different tastes find common ground, in places that we often don’t expect.
2012’s list is an interesting and pleasing one, for me. It includes songs from two Iowa-bred bands (Love Songs for Lonely Monsters and Mumfords), which is good, since this is our first complete year here, and I am glad to have found bands I like hereabouts. It also includes seven songs by three Albany bands (three by Kamikaze Hearts, two by K. Sonin and two by Gay Tastee), so I am glad that those old community favorites still resonate with us, half a continent away.
Robin Gibb’s lingering illness and death had us listening to a lot of Bee Gees this year, and the political environment seemed perfectly suited for the most played song of the year in our household: “All Hail the Corporation” by Andy Prieboy, who appears three other times to boot, once solo, twice with Wall of Voodoo. We have a couple of current pop stars (Taylor Swift and Madonna) in the mix, as well as a couple of tracks from ’60s pop titans, The Monkees. There was underground hip hop on the list, plus some funk from West Africa, some classic ’70s progressive rock, and even a cut from the original soundtrack to the notorious blaxploitation film, Dolemite. We’re nothing if not omnivorous in our listening habits.
Here’s the full list, with selected links for further exploration into some of the more obscure tracks, if you’re interested in hearing them:
- “All Hail the Corporation” by Andy Prieboy
- “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)” by The Bee Gees
- “This Summer’s Been Good From the Start” by Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci
- “Nights on Broadway” by The Bee Gees
- “Weekend in Western New York” by Kamikaze Hearts
- “Reputation” by Love Songs for Lonely Monsters
- “Jive Talkin'” by The Bee Gees
- “One Brown Mouse” by Jethro Tull
- “Send in the Drugs” by Andy Prieboy
- “Birth Comes to Us All” by The Good Rats
- “Flowers of Angst” by Shriekback
- “Summer Twin” by Blitzen Trapper
- “10 Years” by K. Sonin
- “You Just May Be the One” by The Monkees
- “Now I Wanna Go Home” by Shriekback
- “Winston” by Gay Tastee
- “How Bad (Do You Want It)?” by Check Engine
- “Formel” by K. Sonin
- “Lament” by King Crimson
- “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round” by The Monkees
- “Dulwich Fox” by Wild Turkey
- “Beware” by Death Grips
- “Da Supafriendz” by Vast Aire featuring DOOM
- “Every Valley Is Not a Lake” by Cold War Kids
- “Creeper” by the Soul Rebellion Orchestra
- “The Grass is Greener” by Wall of Voodoo
- “Feeling You Got” by El Rego et ses Commandos
- “4 Hours” by Clock DVA
- “Beautiful Brand New” by Gay Tastee
- “Beverly Hills” by Kamikaze Hearts
- “The Great Deceiver” by King Crimson
- “Blues for the 18th” by Jethro Tull
- “Five Point Turn” by Kamikaze Hearts
- “Safe & Sound” by Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars
- “SOLD!” by Mumfords
- “40 Stripes” by Blitzen Trapper
- “Ray of Light” by Madonna
- “Elvis Bought Dora a Cadillac” by Wall of Voodoo
- “Love’s Secret Domain” by COIL
- “Feedback in the Field” by Plants and Animals
Happy listening in 2013 to you all!!!
J. ERIC SMITH 
I woefully underused scrobbler this year, for reason for too numerous to go into here, but it did still manage to put up a top forty list that comes replete with an obvious, glaring weakness: Wolf Eyes’ Asylum Style Ten, for example, is a massive CD box with will over 100 tracks. all of which are titled “Untitled”. Merzbow has at least a thousand tracks with that title. Akio Suzuki has done whole albums where the name of all twenty-five tracks are the name of whatever he’s sampling, so you may only end up with four “titles”; Eric La Casa does this as well. Etc.
These guys will always win; Merzbow “Untitled” and Wolf Eyes “Untitled” will top the list every year. Sigh.
Interesting little thing I just noticed: while this laptop does scrobble from the mp3 player, I don’t think it does from the 500GB hard drive always attached to it through which I normally stream music (it’s got my entire collection).
Hmm–can you scrobble Pandora? I never looked… that’s my usual tipple at home these days.
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Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci!! Haven’t heard that name in dog’s years!
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