Contextual
Ezra at Pandagon (it's the Pentagon, but with Pandas!) hates interludes: the little interstitial skits, found sounds and nonsense that some bands like to stick between the real songs on their CDs. Sadly, I am growing to dislike them too.
Long long ago, in the before time, when I didn't have an iPod, I'd just listen to CDs as nature intended, from start to finish. All those little bits of connective tissue made some kind of sense usually (talking to you, Trent Reznor and your 100 song CD). But now that I'm hip and technosavvy, I only listen to my iPod on shuffle, and those cutesy little songlets occasionally show up in contexts that make no sense: The Beatles' "Her Majesty" only belongs at the end of Abbey Road, but now I can hear it with the little automated greetings that A Tribe Called Quest sprinkled through their Midnight Marauder album, or next to a little noise burst from the Swirlies or at the end of the 26 minutes of "Bitches Brew".
So, what to do about them ? I could delete them from my song list. But, then I couldn't hear some whole albums in their original form. That's no good. But, if Apple came up with a way to filter songs that are shorter than a given length, when using the shuffle feature, my little problem would be solved.
On a side note, I wonder if I could put together a compilation of these little things that would be interesting listening. Perhaps I'll try.
