"Random Ten!" "What?" "Random Ten!" "Can't Hear You!" "I said Random Ten!"

1. Man Overboard - Blink 182

2. Once Around the Block - Badly Drawn Boy

3. This Little Light of Mine - Bruce Springsteen

4. Symphonia virginum: O dulcissime amator - Hildegard von Bingen

5. Green Onions -  Booker T. & The MG's

6. After The Garden - Neil Young

7. Symphonie Espagnole - Edouard Lalo, Isaac Stern, violin

8. Paranoid Android - Brad Mehldau Trio

9. Magenta Radio - Rusted Root

10. Train In Vain - Third Eye Blind

and 11. Becalmed - Brian Eno

I haven't done this in a while: I've added vast swathes of stuff to the iPod, plundered all sorts of (legal) free online sources like Epitonic.com, Daytrotter.com and AllAboutJazz.com, and cast my net further at eMusic.com whose Dozens collections are delightful educations in themselves, beyond the free samplers and tracks they readily make available to members.

In honor of my return to doing a Random Ten, the Mother Box has seen fit to deliver a nice conservative Ten that reflects none of that.

12. Liedklagen - Popol Vuh

The newest stuff is actually Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young--and them with their protest singers' hats and vests on. It's a useful reminder from the mysterious god/non-god who lives at the heart of randomness: if your going to protest that you're not a classic boomer geezer, don't expect Chance to come to your aid.

13. Time - Pink Floyd

Let me say that I've grown like Brad Mehldau's jazz piano work a hell of a lot: he has the impeccable taste to take Bill Evans as his touchstone--and good enough not to imitate him, but to pursue his own thoughtful, lyrical and sometimes witty approach to playing. Highly recommended.

14. Night Ride Across the Caucasus - Loreena McKennitt

I really should tie myself down and deprogram myself from the impulse to put down a random ten and justify it--and therefore, me. I've said before that I'm easy to please, and I'll listen to almost anything--and that's become more true in shuffle mode. I have my enthusiasms and I will talk about excellences--but when it comes down to it, I really don't believe that an experience of only the excellences is the best of lives. It took reading Henry James's The American to realize what a poisonous word 'taste' truly is. I've always felt perfection is death, proportion is close to death, and that transcendence and ecstasy (latin and Greek for the same thing) involve breaking and leaving rather than staying and having

15. Danny Boy - Johnny Cash

The idea of the best is a favorite among philosophers, but even teenagers see the problem of evaluating the best. As a kid, the best was important and, therefore, firmly established. Marilyn Monroe was the most beautiful woman in the world, Mickey Mantle was the greatest ballplayer, Einstein was the smartest, and Bruno Sammartino the  strongest wrestler. But after that period was over, it started to fall apart, and the prime example was music. Was Jeff Beck a better guitarist than Eric Clapton? Was Hendrix better than both of them? And what about Steve Howe? John McLaughlin? Larry Coryell? Alvin Lee? These were all hard-sounding electric guitarists who, sometimes at least, played rock--and we couldn't make anything resembling a list. We were still unwilling to give up the idea of the list, but we couldn't rank our guitarists--and we knew it.

16. My soul, bless the Lord - Drevnerousski Rospev Ensemble

And just saying they're all good felt--and feels-like defeat. Living in a happy value-free egalitarian world is every bit as bad as George Carlin said it is. Because simply abandoning better puts you in peril of abandoning good. The relationship  isn't simple and it's not the logical necessity it looks like--but it's important. The atrocious 'everyone's a winner' creates a universe chock full of individual lists, lists with no calibration. And that's no way to run a railroad.

17. One Misty Moisty Morning - Steeleye Span

That's why lesser art--non-best art--is important.  Because the process of listening is not to arrive at order, nor equality--it's to go about finding those million secret lists that tie all this together and tie the mind and heart to all the forms of art. These lists have no name, and some of them indeed have no calibrations, and some of them only two notches, and some have vast numbers. But that's what yo do when you listen, when you enjoy.

and, 18. Casino Boogie - The Rolling Stones