Column: iTunes time capsule

While trying to find my recently played music, I accidentally clicked play count, and it blew my mind.

The play count on my iTunes is completely absurd.

In the past five or six years that I’ve had iTunes, the song the program thinks I’ve listened to the most is “Punk Rock Girl” by the Dead Milkmen. This makes me very happy, but I am also very confused.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love that song, and I kind of like having it as my most-played song. In fact, it’s a hilarious song to have as your most-played song; it’s two minutes and thirty seven seconds of ridiculous punk and pop nonsense.

Joe Jack Talcum is a horrible singer, and the lyrics are just a rambling tale of a boy falling in love with his punk rock girl. The guitar solo was actually written as a joke.

I have loved this song ever since I first heard it, and I do distinctly remember there was a month or so when I would listen to this song nonstop, but I have done that with all kinds of songs over the years.

Why isn’t a Replacement’s song my most-listened-to track?

I’ve probably listened to the entire “Let It Be” and “Tim” albums more than this one song, and the same goes for Good Luck’s album “Into Lake Griffy.”

I think the root of this occurrence is the fact that I haven’t used my iPod in about three years. I haven’t even seen it in two years, so when I’m not at my computer, my plays don’t get counted, and I’m rarely at my computer these days.

I’m sure if iTunes could magically count CD spins you would see Paul Baribeau, Van Morrison, and Andrew Jackson Jihad topping the list.

Instead, my 20 top-played songs are my favorite songs from when I was 16 and used my iPod 24/7. Some have such high plays because they were my favorite songs to play while I was learning bass; “London Calling” and “White Man in Hammersmith Palais” by The Clash, “Time Bomb” by Rancid, “Viet Nam” by Minutemen, and “In the City” by The Jam.

With the exception of “Badge” by Cream, all the songs are punk rock; The Dead Boys, two Husker Du tracks, The Only Ones, Fugazi, two Flogging Molly tracks. There is not a slow song in the bunch.

Where is the funk? Where is the soul? Where is the Cat Stevens?

This list is like a perfect time capsule of me at 16, smack dab in the middle of worshipping all things punk.

I still loved all kinds of music; I just loved punk rock most.

The Replacements, my favorite band, are represented; yet the two songs on the list are by far not two of my favorites. But they are pretty punk rock, and when I was 16 that’s what mattered.

If I were to make a list of my 50 favorite songs, few of these would make the cut. I bet a few wouldn’t even make the top 100.

But I appreciate these songs because at one point in my life, these songs meant the world to me.

So in a weird way, I’m glad my play count doesn’t make sense to my contemporary taste, because it serves as a time capsule for the 16-year-old me.

Every once in a while we could all use a step back from our current tastes and be reminded how magical punk rock was to us when we were young, and how great of a song “Punk Rock Girl” is.