Death Of The tPod

My iPod died for what appears to be the final time yesterday. Its currently sitting on my desk making gurgling fizzing noises that shouldn't be coming from a robot sinking into a swap, let alone a piece of music technology. Tom has just asked me if I'm playing Aphex Twin's new album. It's done this many time, as previous blogs have well noted, but each time I've managed to resuscitate it using a number of tricks and when I say tricks I mean looking at things on the net, rebooting it, and crossing my fingers at the same time. But yesterday in the car as I tried to play 'King Of Limbs' for the fifty billionth time through the stereo, it started doing its mechanical stroke noises and displayed a large red circle with a cross in it. Not at all dissimilar to the X-Men logo and I was temporarily led to believe I had a mutant pod which is why it had previous healed itself. I had all sorts of notions of cranking it up to play some Ice Cube or Rage Against The Machine so it would go into a Wolverine berserker fury, or some Daft Punk so it shoot lasers from its 'i'. Sadly, it just croaked some more and died. Then I was left with Radio 2 for company until I picked up Robert White to take to our gig.

I'm all for Radio, Radio's the 2 and the 6 being my favourites. Its just that I am unable to switch track when they do play something shit. Or talk too much. Or have some sort of phone in with morons. Or the reception goes funny. Or they don't play 'King Of Limbs' six times in a row. I hate radio and I honestly don't know what I'm going to do without my iPod, or, as I renamed it, the tPod. See? I even named it? Its been with me around the world. I bought it in the Greenwich Village Apple Store in New York and since then it has provided me with amazing music at the best of times. At the worst of times its snuck on a track from one of my ex-girlfriend's iTunes so that suddenly while in the car with friends or other comics, Avril Lavigne bursts out and ruins everything. I mean bursts out of the stereo musically, not actually bursts out. I think that would be surprising and possibly more enjoyable than any of her whining poptastic tunes. But ignoring those moments, its given me running music, driving music, tubing music, holiday music and even sometimes just sitting music when other people around me are being boring. I've managed to ignore so many inane conversations on the bus, I once avoided getting mugged because it was on too loud and only noticed someone shouting at me after they'd tried to grab my shoulder once I was too far away. At the same time its nearly got me run over as I blasted music at top volume while crossing the road in the rain, hood up, unable to see to the side or hear beeping. Ok, so that wasn't just the tPod. It was a collaboration to kill me with the hood. That hood's influenced a lot of people in evil ways. That's why people raised in the hood are pretty violent. HAHAHHAHAHAHAAH. Sorry.

Sure I could go buy a *shudder* iPod touch, with its limited memory, inability to be dropped on the floor quite as hard when drunk and general expensiveness. Sure I could put music on my tPhone even though the OCDness in me can't really cope with using the device I have as a phone for music too. Also that means I can't listen to tunes and play with my phone at the same time. Its a whole can of shitty iPodless worms. I want my classic back. I want to occasionally wipe half of it, realise I don't have the songs on my iTunes to put them back on, and my CD drive of my Macbook is broken and then spend ages missing all those songs on a long journey. I want to annoy people by insisting they listen to something I have on my tPod that they don't have, proffering them an earphone that's been stuck in my lughole for most of the day. I want to be able to play DJ Hazard's 'Machete' as I race through a train station or the Tron Soundtrack as I go anywhere so that everything seems more exciting. But instead I am reduced to a life of real noise. I'll miss you tPod. I'll miss you and your small wheel of joy. Sob sob.


On another note, I was in Poole last night at the Lighthouse Arts Centre. Its easily the very best gig in the area. Great venue, truly lovely crowd and much much fun was had yesterday even though nobody wanted me to do any political material. I also met two Twitter followers, Jon and Lisa, in the real world. I like this. If you do follow me and are at a gig, please do actually come and say hello. It's much better than me just assuming you are a bot employed by the Matrix to get my guard down. True story.