Joining the iPod Generation

If 2007 was the year I started blogging and bought an iPod, I'm either way behind the curve or going through a midlife crisis. How about a blog entry about my new iPod?

My two year old Creative MuVo2 music player stopped working this weekend, so I took the plunge and purchased a real iPod yesterday - a sleek black Nano with 8gb of storage. I like it so far. It's hard to believe that 1800 songs can fit in something so tiny! And it was an open container at Fry's, so I got it for 20% off ($199 vs. $249 list).

My old player only had 4gb of storage, so I can double the amount of music on my live, but it's still only 20% of the 40gb of music in my iTunes library, so I needed to come up with a strategy to pull the essential tunes to my Nano. My old MuVo behaved like a USB hard drive where all I needed to do was drag and drop folders to fill it, but iPods need to be loaded via iTunes, so today I was trying to find a way to seamlessly load one fifth of my fifth on my new player. I came up with an elegant solution, which I'm sure no one has ever thought of before!

I set up an iTunes playlist called "My iPod" and set up the iPod to sync up with this playlist only, then I dragged and dropped everything from my library to this playlist until it was full. The choice of what to include and what to exclude was tough though. My first pass was to go artist by artist, including no more than 20 songs (one full album plus a few stray tracks) from anyone. I chose which album by deciding which collection of songs worked best as an album, plus I have a thing for even anniversaries so albums with release years ending in 7 or 2 got special preference.

Here are all the full albums on my new iPod nano. Still 2gb free, and it seems a little too 1960s-focused.. Am I missing anything?

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's (1967)
The Beau Brummels - Triangle (1967)
The Bee Gees - First (1967)
Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister (1997)
Big Star - #1 Record/Radio City (1992)
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust (1972)
The Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday (1967)
The Chills - Submarine Bells (1990)
Julian Cope - St. Julian (1987)
Cotton Mather - Kontiki (1997)
Marshall Crenshaw - Marshall Crenshaw (1982)
The dB's - Repercussion (1982)
Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972)
Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking (1969)
Field Music - In Context (2007)
Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action (1976)
Fountains of Wayne - Utopia Parkway (1999)
Game Theory - Lolita Nation (1987)
Genesis - Foxtrot (1972)
The Go-Betweens - Tallulah (1987)
Jose Gonzalez - Veneer (2005)
Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand (1994)
The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls In America (2006)
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
The Kinks - Something Else By The Kinks (1967)
Ted Leo/Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak (2003)
Let's Active - Cypress (1984)
The Lilac Time - & Love For All (1990)
The Loud Family - Interbabe Concern (1996)
Love - Forever Changes (1967)
Moby Grape - Moby Grape (1967)
The Monochrome Set - Eligible Bachelors (1982)
The Negro Problem - Post Minstrel Syndrome (1997)
The New Pornographers - Electric Version (2003)
Randy Newman - Sail Away (1972)
The Orange Peels - Square (1997)
Pentangle - Basket of Light (1969)
Pernice Brothers - Live A Little (2006)
Pink Floyd - Piper At The Gates of Dawn (1967)
Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)
R.E.M. - Murmur (1983)
The Replacements - Pleased To Meet Me (1987)
The Rolling Stones - Between The Buttons (1967)
Elliott Smith - Either/Or (1997)
The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight (1980)
Surfin' Stevens - Illinoise (2005)
Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend (1991)
Teenage Fanclub - Songs From Northern Britain (1997)
Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights (1982)
The Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
The Who - Sell Out (1967)
Brian Wilson presents SMiLe (2004)
XTC - English Settlement (1982)
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990)
The Zombies - Odessey & Oracle (1967)