Whenever John or Jeff is in the car with me the passenger gets control of the iPod.  John and I have been bonding over music for ten years now, I know just where to go if I want a reaction (Foo Fighter’s “Hey Johnny Park” for example) and he generally wants it loud.  He skips around and hits a lot of stuff from our early days, and tries to get me to fall in love with the last album he gave me to download.

Jeff and I haven’t been doing this as long.  We have standbys, a few local bands and anything loud and hard.  I skip around until he starts singing along and when he’s in charge he spends a few minutes digging through the rash of strange music I have on it and seemingly picks things at random.   I threw the Pod at him Thursday night and he surprised me with each and every selection.  We should have saved the playlist and named it “Songs to Snort To” as every choice made me laugh harder then the last.

We started off on a sour note when I accidentally hit play on MC Hammer as we left the first bar.  I have no idea why I have MC Hammer, so don’t ask.

The next twenty minutes, as we flew down the 60, were spent trying to make it through two Meatloaf songs.  Why are his songs so long?

I couldn’t name the next song (Megadeth.  Seriously, am I getting drunk and downloading music?  Where does this come from?), they made fun of me for having Michael Jackson, we rocked out to Rage Against the Machine, and then we settled into OK Go just long enough to scream along to “Get Over It” before getting to the next bar.

John spent three whole minutes in my car that night, all during the Pearl Jam phase.  Lucky for him, my opinion that Pearl Jam blows was unpopular, and it’s probably the first time John and I have listened to Pearl Jam together.

Next up was The Refreshments.  I hadn’t poured over their first album in years, but had plenty of time as I waited in the car while the boys scored pizza for the after bar snack, which is always my favorite meal.

We went back in time (Way back!) with Smashing Pumpkins, Spin Doctors’ “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” (Someday I’ll have to come up with some aliases and tell the story behind that song.), Beastie Boys, and Bad Religion.  We ended the night with Train, always a good way to wind down.

He continued the perfect soundtrack the next morning as we rocked out to Anberlin while getting dressed and left the house to that Verve Pipe song about freshman.

He struck gold with the Barenaked Ladies song “Pinch Me”.  Besides our ever present “I pinch” joke, the lyrics just suited the morning.  Our conversations lately have been focused on wondering what the hell we’re doing with our lives, wanting to move out of this state, and specifically that morning, trying to find a restaurant down the street because we were hungry people who’d like to eat.  Maybe I never listened to the lyrics that closely, serious topics but they’re cloaked in it’s perky tempo and avoidance techniques.

It always amazes me when a song I’ve heard a hundred times suddenly hits me in the chest.  Music is a strange combination of mood and time and place, and then suddenly a memory forms that I will remember every time I hear that song.  Lately I haven’t been forming many memories to music, what with my listening to the same albums for five months straight.  It’s fun to hand the music off to another person and see what they create.  Even if that song did bring up uncomfortable feelings I’ll always remember driving down Southern laughing and pinching.

In the end Jeff selected the entire Blink 182 folder and we let that run as he helped me navigate to the airport.  It’s really all you can do, keep it perky while you trudge along.