Apple Of My Eye (Pod)

If there is a peripheral (besides the mobile phone) that sums up the times we live in, it has to be the iPod. There is no better MP3 player on the market. iPod is consistently the smartest, most efficient and best performing portable music player ever developed. No arguments. Today, Apple’s 8GB iPod touch continues this tradition. Time for a history lesson:

During my early (even mid) teens, I had no interest in music at all. Although I was a very musical person. When I was around nine years old, I had written a song in class about friendship with an original melody line and a clever play on words. In fact, I was always coming up with smutty rhymes and rhymes. Personally, I blame my father, as he taught me the first song I knew called ‘Dan Dan Dan Was A Lavatory Man’ and set the template for the future development of my raunchy talents.

Dan Dan Dan was a toilet man,
Under the ground all day-eee,
By the urinals, classifying the finals,
Spending all the happy time away
And then he has a nap, all in the trash,
Smoking his dear old clay-eee,
And all the music he listens to is PooPooPoo* all day,

* Replace ‘Poo’ with a raspberry noise.

I reprint it here in the hope that it will one day be included in a great anthology of British folk music, or rediscovered when some Alan Lomax cosmic droid scans the remnants of our culture for clues as to who we thought we were. For years, I thought my dad had written it, which, in my young mind, made it something of a scatological equivalent of John Lennon. Eventually, it emerged that it was also the first song my dad ever learned.

So, like I said, it’s not really musical at all. He hated most of the pop music that was out there (despite a boyish fondness for all things Spice Girl) and preferred the raspy alarm tones of the drill sergeant to the awful five songs on the local radio every day he had. to bear. I fostered a great love, however, that still continues to this day, for Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album, No Doubt’s ‘Tragic Kingdom’ and Deep Blue Something’s song ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. All of which can be downloaded fairly easily/cheaply and played on your 8gb ipod touch (although ‘The Ballad Of Dan The Lavatory Man’ may get around that). Eventually, the long road to college (around age 16) had me listening to music regularly, and I plundered my parents’ LP collection, obsessed with classic rock and ’70s pop; The stones! Motown! Saturday! Zeppelin! Bowy! The OMS! Elton! Violet! Ah, indeed you were a golden age…

After The Ramones, Damned, Ruts, Black Flag and Pistols succeeded me, I started my own bands and wrote almost a million songs, and you know what? I did pretty well. It’s all down to portable music. Today, your troubled young criminal probably already has an 8gb ipod touch (don’t ask where he got it, because he probably won’t want to know), but if not, he could do a lot worse. than an 8gb ipod touch this christmas. Remember that part of ‘Almost Famous’ when the kid finds the box of vintage vinyl under his bed, with the note that says “these will set you free” or whatever? Well, the gift of an 8gb ipod touch could do just that. Maybe. Look at me; I came out fine, right? Was he right about this article…? I did not lost it.