All I ever wanted...

Now as you may or may not remember, yours truly bought an ipod last year as it was a gadget that I just had to have, and jolly good it is too. Now, like most people, I suspect, I put most of my cd collection straight onto it with nary a thought as to whether I would actually listen to most of the tracks and it struck me the other day that I probably hadn’t and wouldn’t. so with this in mind I thought I would give it a try, just to see if anything came along that made me think ‘ooh’ in rediscovery, or indeed in discovery of a hidden gem.

One of the features of the ipod is you can list all the tracks alphabetically by song, rather than album, so last week I embarked on my aural journey to the nether regions of the hard drive. My ipod is only a 20gb one and even then it’s only just over half full, but that still means 1,621 songs to plough through, which could take some time.

I realise you may be wondering where this is all going, and it is here. Last Thursday I was walking home and as I got near to the flat on came Bob Dylan with All Along the Watchtower (which, by-the-by, I’ve always wondered about, as how can you be ‘along’ a watchtower? Maybe I’m missing the Bobness of it all, but a tower seems a bit, well, up and down, rather than along a bit. Any suggestions?)

Nothing strange in a bit of Bob, of course, and just as I reached the flat the ‘wind it begin to howl’ and the song finished. Next morning, which was Friday, if you’re paying attention, I walked out the front door and in the lift replaced the earphones and carried on with my sonic saga and, by the time I got to the office, about one hour and twenty minutes later, John Lennon was telling me, along with Paul, George and Ringo, that All You Need is Love. That’s about an hour and twenty-five minutes of songs all starting with the word ‘All’.

I don’t know why, particularly, but for some reason I find that quite remarkable. No one at the office did, when I remarked to various personages there, and I suspect that neither will you, dear reader, but there you go. I will keep you informed as to whether any other words crop up with such regularity at the start of song titles, but I think they will have to go some way if they are going to beat the all conquering ‘All’ – well, about ninety minutes to be exact...

The ‘All’ list in full

All Along the Watchtower – Bob Dylan
All Apologies – Nirvana
All Around the World – The Jam
All Because of You – U2
All Blues – Miles Davis
All I Wanna Do – Sheryl Crow
All I Want is You – U2
All Mine – Portishead
All Night Long – George Shearing & Nancy Wilson
All Of Me – George Benson
All That You Give – The Cinematic Orchestra
All the Things She Said – Simple Minds
All the Things You Are – Wes Montgomery
All This Time – Sting
All Those Yesterdays – Pearl Jam
All Tomorrow’s Parties – The Velvet Underground
All You Need is Love – The Beatles

NB, now up to Bear Hug by the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, number 117 on the count up.