It's been a while since I've kept up with the popular music. How long has it been? Uh, well, Bananarama was a big deal back then.

Oh be quiet.

I'm guessing I might be just a tad out of touch with whatever the whippersnappers might be listening to.

I've been ripping tunes off my personal CD's and the workout CD's that folks have sent me to start to fill out the itsy bitsy shiny red Best Toy Ever but I could only come up with about 40 songs I really loved, which left me with room for about 30 more.

File sharing is not illegal in Canada thanks to a recent federal court ruling about free use. Oh yeah, we're wild and crazy up here in the Great White North. If I was running Tourism Canada, our ad campaign would feature the catchy slogan: "Come to Canada to watch the homos marry�there could be hott girl on girl action! If that gets old, steal music".

There might be a reason why I'm not head of Tourism Canada.

I'm a bit nervous about joining file sharing networks because I've heard it's a great way to bring dangerous programs into your computer. So I decided to look around to see if there are music blogs where people talk about the music they love and post MP3's so people can hear a bit of it.

There are.

Oh, stop smirking. I know my zygote readers have probably been plugged into this stuff since they were in diapers, but I am old. This is all new and slightly unnerving for me.

That said, oh, man, it's incredible. Seriously. It's as if the cast of that movie High Fidelity (and every other music geek who had ever wandered into their store) each decided to set up a web site. There are literally hundreds of these things and they are amazing.

Some of this music is insanely esoteric. I stumbled into one American kid's site where he talks about obscure Swedish pop music with an intensity that's stunning. I mean, he would get into impassioned fights with people on his message board over whether or not Lars Fluffenhosen had played lead guitar on a certain track or if at that point his cousin Sven Limpennoodle had been in the band. He was featuring tracks for which the pinnacle of success had been reaching #140 on the charts in Holland.

I spent the evening just following links. I ended up at everything from a site that features cheesy pop hits from the 1960's and 1970's (the main criteria for inclusion was that it has to include hand clapping or been on a record produced by either K-tel or RonCo) to a site completely dedicated to sound tracks of Japanese anime.

This internet place is full of wackiness. Wackiness, I tell you.

The passion is what I enjoyed the most. You get so used to people either feigning they don't care or actually living their lives in "whatevah" mode. When you stumble into little corners of the web where people are actually incandescent with how much they care about something, it's a big hunk of wonderful.

My problem, of course, is that I really don't know what people are talking about. When some impassioned person says a particular song by the Misplaced Commas reminds them of an Easily Too Dead back in their ungowa phase, I do not have a clue what this means.

I have downloaded a fair bit of music that I absolutely hate because someone expressed their love for it so articulately.

So, my three loyal readers, I am throwing myself upon your mercy. Could you leave me a comment, please, about the sort of music I might like? I'm not asking you for music, I'm asking you for band names and song titles.

To give you a sense of what I have liked so far, here's what's loaded into the itsy bitsy shiny red thing (this isn't the order on the player, it's the order I took them off CD's or, uh, for evaluation purposes):

833 � Bella Vera

Autechre, Kraftwerk, Orbital, Photek, Aphex Twin � Coal In, Ghost Out

Horse � Automatic

Bangles � Walk Like an Egyptian

Box Tops � The Letter

Cyndi Lauper � Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Del Amitri � Driving With The Brakes On

Derek and the Dominos � Layla

Disco Dance Medley (Includes Right Said Fred)

Don Henley � All She Wants to Do Is Dance

Fleetwood Mac � Landslide

Frou Four � It's Good To Be In Love

Gianluca Grignani-L'Aiuolo

Jackson Brown � Running on Empty

Jane Siberry � The Walking (and constantly)

Jevetta Steele � Calling You

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts � I'm Gonna Run Away

Madonna � Frozen (Dance Mix)

Moby � We're all Made of Stars

Nek with Dante Thomas � Cielo et Terra

Stevie Nicks � Edge of Seventeen

Stevie Nicks � Stand Back

No Doubt � Hella Good

Paola and Chiara � Tu sei per me

Paula Cole � Road to Dead

Pet Shop Boys � Home and Dry

Pretenders � Brass in Pocket

Prince � Little Red Corvette

Prince � When Doves Cry

Robert Palmer � Addicted to Love

Roy Orbison � I Drove All Night

The Zombies � She's not There

Sinead O'Connor � All Apologies (Nirvana cover)

Sinead O'Connor � Redemption Song (Live)

Sinead O'Connor � The Emperor's New Clothes

Rolling Stones � Gimme Shelter

The Byrds � 8 Miles High

Paul Oakenfold � Send Me An Angel (remix)

Nina Simone � Feelin' Good

Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright � Careless Whisper (Live)

Brian Eno � By This River

Suggestions? Anyone?

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 547.19 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers