Can't spell "meme" without "me"

[sigma7]

I'm still trying to get my blog legs back -- and recovering from a rather grueling session of Oblivion having started over from scratch mutter mutter -- so why not fall back on the old staple of memetic content?

Funny, because robing pointed out an interesting publication to me a few weeks ago -- Userpicks: Cyber Folk Art in the Early 21st Century (Google cache if their MySQL issues aren't yet resolved). It touches on the propagation of "OMG racecar bling bling" as it filters from metaquotes over into userpicks and results in quite a few variations on the theme rendered in 100x100 format (with shaky transparency via yours truly). Also featured: Oolong the pancake-wearing bunny and iconized variations of the iPod silhouette ads. It's an interesting read, if only to see me get my gender misidentified yet again. *shrug* And yet again, I exist in my ideal state -- as a case study, a warning to others.

So I steal the MP3 first-lyric meme from daethkow, cutting it for your sanity.

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 15 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING! (But feel free to do it anyway because I'm not optimistic about recognition or participation. --s7)

Note that this is with my master three-week MP3 collection, not my portable collection, so I have no idea what the hell this is going to look like. I occasionally add another lyric if I think this is going to be a toughie.

1. Did you ever think of me as your best friend? (Hooverphonic, "Eden")
2. Blowing around, turning over and out/Blood into dreams and a supersonic high Rob Zombie, "The One" ronwe
3. Sitting on a bench in the sunshine/Filling up my belly with some fine wine Apollo 440, "Heart Go Boom", kansel
4. Dark in the city night is a wire Duran Duran, "Hungry Like the Wolf" gloomchen
5. On my way up north/up on the Ventura (Tori Amos, "A Sorta Fairytale")
6. This was a triumph Jonathan Coulton, "Still Alive" gloomchen
7. Shame, such a shame/I think I kind of lost myself again (Massive Attack, "Dissolved Girl")
8. His world is under observation/we monitor his station (Rush, "Digital Man")
9. I'd rather be liberated, I find myself captivated (Catatonia, "Mulder and Scully")
10. I can see the Russian Army rolling through my head Liz Phair, "Headache" gloomchen
11. When you're asleep they may show you/aerial views of the ground (Genesis, "Entangled")
12. When comes the shaking man/a nation in his eyes David Bowie, "Jump They Say" ronwe
13. Into the distance/a ribbon of black Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly" kateshort
14. Here today the red sky tells his tale/but the only listening eyes are mine (Genesis, "Stagnation")
15. Sha la la la la la my lady/In the sun with your hair undone (Jay Ferguson, "Thunder Island")

Actually, after weeding out the instrumentals, that didn't come out anywhere near as badly as I expected.

Comments

[gloomchen.livejournal.com]

6. "Still Alive" from Portal :)
10. "Headache" by Liz Phair

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Somehow I knew you'd get #10. I'm surprised nobody beat you to #6, though. It was as close to a gimme as there is....

[gloomchen.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah and #4 is Duran Duran "Hungry Like the Wolf"

:)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

It's the most well-known song, and yet without the music as just plain text it's remarkably hard to pin down. Good catch.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

Moar pixpam pleez! :D

I see indigoskynet also got quasi-namechecked in that article, in that the text on her iPod-meme icon *is* her name. :)

Are you sure #8-14 (but esp. #10-11) aren't consecutive lines in the same song?

As for guessing, #4 sounded really familiar, but otherwise, I got nothin' without using Google, from which I got all of 'em. I was going to post them spoiler-protected, but that just didn't seem right.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I'm struggling with picspam. It's gotten excessively Cyrillic and less interesting and I'll admit my enthusiasm for the entire endeavor has taken a punch to the groin. But I'll try.

I was amused that the article seems to suggest that the iPod icons were themselves a form of "plagiarism" -- I'd hope an academic would have a slightly firmer grasp of intellectual property...if not laws, at least concepts. She does seem to understand that co-opting the design, even in mockery and frivolity, ends up creating "viral marketing" independent of Apple's own. And yeah, I saw a few familiar "faces" on those pieces.

(Oh, yeah, I was very impressed with the near-cohesiveness of the resultant lyrics. If I could operate Garageband better than a brain-damaged chimp, I'd have to give it a shot.)

I'd have figured #4 -- if not #6 -- would be the gimme of the bunch; it's easily the most popular and widely-known of the fifteen. It's a matter of time before someone (yes, a certain someone) gets #8 and a different someone #4 unless someone beats her to it. Most of the others are relatively easy, a few leaning toward obscure but not totally so -- #2 I wouldn't have a shot of recognizing because before I looked them up I had no idea that those were the lyrics. (Kate getting #13 surprises me not, of course.) I've got an icon based on #3, though. (This is not it.) Interestingly, only one group repeats.

Feel free to post a few after, say, daethkow has a crack at it. He's got a good shot at a few, I'd say.

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

#13 is, of course, Learning to Fly by Pink Floyd, off of their A Momentary Lapse of Reason album.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I canna remember which version came up in Winamp, but it wasn't from Momentary Lapse. (And it wasn't the CSM 101 instrumental version, of which I've become increasingly fond. It actually keeps intact what even Floyd live omits about it that I enjoy.)

[kansel.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

#3 Heart Go Boom, Apollo Four Forty (heard the lyrics in my head but had to cheat, haven't listened to A440 in a while)

-kansel (mebbe I should just get an lj acct.)

P.S> glad to see some new picspam, gonna go check it out right now

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Worth it just for the commenting. And icons. I like icons.

[ronwe.livejournal.com]

#2 is Rob Zombie - One
#12 is Bowie - Jump They Say

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Neither are premiere songs in their artists' respective oeuvres, but that's because they're both pretty solid. Not my favorite from each, but certainly enjoyable.

[ronwe.livejournal.com]

I will confess that the only reason I was able to guess the Bowie song was because it started playing on my ipod while I was reading your post.