The Mix Tape Challenge

One time, when I was in college, I was walking across campus to go home when I ran into my good friend Adam Pah skating to class. I almost always had my iPod and headphones on me, as did he, and we exchanged conversation about what we were "rocking". (I literally say it that way, I'm kind of embarrassing) He mentioned that he was trying out a challenge to listen to his iPod on shuffle and NOT skip over anything, and challenged me to do the same. I took my iPod and put it in my purse, getting through about half the parking lot before a song I didn't really like came on and I skipped right over it.

I think about this encounter a lot as I go through my day to day. I live in New York and since 99.9% of my commutes involve public transit, I ALWAYS have my iPod on me. I'm also fortunate to work in an office that encourages music-listening at our desks, often inciting a hilarious "speaker war" between our respective offices. I am constantly around music, only recently replacing my morning music shuffle routine with watching the morning news.

The funny thing is, despite how much music I constantly consume, I still find myself skipping songs over and over and over, even if it's a song I know I love. I've ended up with about 9,500 songs total, which according to my iTunes is about 25 days worth of music. I can't even imagine how many songs are buried deep within my library. There are probably records I don't even remember buying and since I upgraded to the 160gb, I loaded on records I hadn't had room for but were still on my hard drive. It's sometimes overwhelming.

Today I was listening at work and shuffling through, laughing to myself that it would be funny if I finally reached the end of ALL of the songs. And then I remembered Adam, and our conversation, and I was suddenly inspired.

What if I listened to every song on my iPod uninterrupted?

I realize this is twice as daunting as my "The Loop" series (where I wrote about my top records of the last decade - about 150 or so) I am going to make myself listen to each song - the entire song - no matter what it is. However, I'm not necessarily going to put a time limit on it, which should make thing a little easier/rational. I initially thought I'd just hit shuffle and go, but I know my iPod will restart itself if I plug in to add a new record, etc. The only real way to do this is to go through my songs in alphabetical order - that way I can jot down where I start and stop. I know I'll be adding new music during this process (it's amazing how you can "accidentally" end up with about 6 or 7 new albums thank to Amazon.com's $5 deals) and taking breaks to listen to full records, which will probably be necessary. However, this is more about revisiting songs that I had forgotten about. This means every embarrassing ska song, live bootleg, half-demo and emo ballad that exists in my catalog. I had them for a reason at some point, and I want to remember why.

So there you have it. I'm not sure what form this will take quite yet, most likely checking in periodically, talking about songs from one stopping point to another, digging up videos/streams/memories/etc.

I issue this challenged to YOU as well, if you're up to it. I'm honestly sort of nervous about it even now that I've fleshed it out, but I'm excited to see what I discover.

First up : "A" by Cartel

Ready. Set. Go.