iPod Rediscoveries: 10 Songs I'd Forgotten About That I Found On My Old iPod, Vol. 1

Oh, the things you find when you get your iPod working for the first time in a decade...

Once upon a time, I had an iPod. It was an 80GB iPod, and I loved it very much. I took it with me just about everywhere I went, including several trips to the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills and Pasadena. At one point several years back, however, it suddenly stopped working…or, rather, it would turn on, show the Apple logo, and then shut off again. I was confounded. I just figured, “Well, that’s it for my iPod,” and I set it aside. More than once I contemplated sending it off to have it repaired, but between having an iPhone and using Spotify, Amazon Music, and iTunes, I soon realized that it wasn’t all that big a deal that my iPod wasn’t working anymore, so it stayed set aside.

A few days ago, I stumbled upon my iPod again, buried in a box of various plugs, wires, and rarely-used devices that I was going through in the hopes of disposing of a good chunk of them. Only a few minutes prior to finding it, I’d also found the cord to charge it, so I thought, “Why not give this thing another go? It’s been awhile since I last tried it.” So I plugged it into the computer…and it did the same thing. This time, however, I decided to try Googling the symptoms to see if maybe it wasn’t a problem that required repair. I definitely tried doing that before, but either no one else had figured out the solution at that point or I didn’t use the right search terms, because this time I found a site that offered a possible fix, and when I tried it, son of a gun, it worked!

So I’ve been going through the 13K+ songs on this thing, and while a sizable amount of them are songs that I uploaded from CDs in my collection, there’s a lot of stuff on there that I’d only had digitally and hadn’t listened to in years, in some cases not since the iPod had crapped out on me. As such, I found myself saying more than once, “Oh, my God, I’d forgotten all about this song. I love this song!” So I thought I’d share some of these iPod rediscoveries with you, starting with these 10 tracks…

1. The Adventures, “Raining All Over the World” (1993)

I first discovered this Irish band when they released their sophomore LP, The Sea of Love, which was their debut album for Elektra Records, and I think it was sometime after they released their third album, 1990’s Trading Secrets with the Moon, that I finally obtained a copy of their actual debut album on cassette. (It was released in the UK under the title Theodore and Friends, but it was self-titled when it emerged in the States and - for reasons that I cannot explain, although I’m sure the band can - had the song “These Children” switched out for a track called “Nowhere Near Me.”)

This ditty, however, was released in advance of the band’s fourth album, Lions and Tigers and Bears, a record which I have never managed to own and have never even heard, since it’s not streaming on Spotify. That said, I did hear the song on the radio when I was in the UK in 1992, and…I don’t remember how I came to have this MP3, but there’s a decent chance that it can be dated back to Napster. Perhaps what’s craziest about being reminded of this track is that it's led me to discover that the Adventures released a new album a few months ago, their first in 30 years: Once More with Feeling. I’m listening to the first single right now - “My Imaginary Girlfriend” - and I am loving it.

2. Asia, “Two Sides of the Moon” (1996)

I’ve been an Asia fan since well before the term “hyperfixate” was a thing, but make no mistake about it, I spent a good chunk of time in my late teens hyperfixating on the history of Yes and all of the bands that connected to them, a situation made all the worse by discovering Pete Frame’s family tree for Yes. Suffice it to say that this is also why I became obsessed with bands like the Buggles and GTR, but Asia’s arrival on the scene just as we got MTV was what made them a personal favorite of the bunch, and it’s why I was primed and ready when, in 1992, the band decided to return with a new lead singer by the name of John Payne. This is a song from his era of the band, and it’s from 1996’s Arena, an album that I’m relatively sure didn’t even get a proper US release. This is probably also why it isn’t streaming, which in turn is why this song slips out of my memory for extended periods of time.

3. Aviary, “Mystic Shannon” (1979)

I literally don’t know anything about this band, aside from the fact that their self-titled album was released on Epic in 1979, but the Prog Archives website says this about the LP in question: “Fans of early Kansas / Styx mixed with the perfect vocal harmonies of Queen and even the Beatles (and) fans of late 70's / early 80's Pomp, you should definitely try this album. You won't be disappointed.” I concur. I have no idea how I came to have these MP3s, but I’m glad I’ve been reminded of them.

4. The Baskervilles, “Midnight at the Underground Club” (2005)

I don’t claim to know much about these guys, but I do remember that I was introduced to them through writing for Amplifier Magazine back in the day. It was a gig that didn’t pay, but it did lead me to discover a plethora of indie pop bands, including these guys. I can’t honestly tell you about another song on this album, but I sure did love this one, and I still do.

5. Beagle Hat, “My Secret Holiday” (2006)

I’m relatively sure that this was one of those albums that I picked up because it was in a Not Lame Records catalog and caught my eye because the band members were portrayed in artwork that intentionally mirror the look of the animated Beatles in Yellow Submarine. Beagle Hat are a Japanese band - indeed, this was a Japanese import - but the vocals don’t sound in any way Japanese-accented, and it took me a bit of Googling to remember why: the band hired David Paton, best known as the lead singer of Pilot and the vocalist on a number of songs by the Alan Parsons Project, to serve as their vocalist for this album. The fact that I’d forgotten this fact shows you how long it’s been since I last thought about Beagle Hat. Indeed, I didn’t even know that they’d put out a second album (2009’s Orange Groove). Alas, I doubt I’ll be getting it anytime soon, as the cheapest copy on Discogs is still almost $40 once you factor in postage, but what I’ve heard sounds great.

6. Bottlefly, “Long Time Coming” (2000)

I definitely remember coming by this London band’s debut album by way of a promo copy, although I’ll freely admit that I don’t know if I actually got it as a promo myself or if I picked it up in a used bin somewhere. Whichever it was, I remain staggered that this song wasn’t one of the two tracks released as a single from the record, because it’s an instantly catchy pop ditty. Once again, we have here a band who put out a second album that I knew nothing about until I started writing this piece, but I haven’t had a chance to explore it yet…aside, that is, from the closing track, which posits, “What if ‘Long Time Coming’ had been recorded by Elvis Presley?” (I still prefer the original version, but it’s a fun novelty for those who know how it sounded the first time around.)

7. Camouflage, “Motif Sky” (2006)

In 1988, the German synth-pop band Camouflage released what was up until that point arguably the single greatest Depeche Mode soundalike ever: “The Great Commandment,” from their 1988 debut album, Voices and Images. (It was originally released on cassette in Germany in 1985, but that’s a story for another time.) As a result of how much I enjoyed that single, I kept my eyes open for subsequent releases by the band, which is why I was aware of the release of “Love Is a Shield,” the first single from their next album, 1989’s Methods of Silence. Similarly, I was doing my journalism internship at RockFlash in 1991, when they released their third album, Meanwhile, which contained the single “Heaven (I Want You).”

After that, however, Camouflage’s US label let them go, and they didn’t have any more releases here, so I lost track of them until 2006, when I joined the now-defunct online music service known as eMusic and stumbled upon their seventh album, Relocated, which is where you’ll find this song. If you like what you hear here, then I’d highly recommend 2014’s The Singles, which’ll help you play catch-up on their releases up to that point. (They’ve only released one album since then: 2015’s Greyscale.)

8. Colin Meloy, “Pregnant for the Last Time” (2005)

This is kind of a double whammy, because to be perfectly honest, I’d almost completely forgotten about this Morrissey song.

Oh, sure, I own the CD single, because I was still in prime Morrissey-buying mode when it was released, but the song was never been released as a single in the US (although there’s a live version available on the American version of the “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful” single), it never appeared on one of his studio albums, and the only compilation on which it’s ever appeared - Suedehead: The Best of Morrissey - was also never released in the US, and even though I’m kind of a completist when it comes to Morrissey (or at least I was back then), I never felt the need to invest in an import copy because I already owned every song on it in some capacity or other.

Where was I? Oh, right, “Pregnant for the Last Time.” To be honest, it’s a bit of a trifle as Morrissey singles go - I’m a Mozzer apologist from way back, and even I’m surprised it wasn’t relegated to being a B-side - so I’m honestly not all that surprised that it slipped my mind. But upon seeing Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey on my iPod, I remembered how much I enjoyed that EP and how impressed I was by the outside-the-box choices he made for the songs he decided to cover (the other three songs actually are B-sides), so I thought it was worth sharing.

9. David Grahame, “Song Equals House” (1998)

David Grahame is another artist I discovered through Not Lame Records, and his is a fascinating story, as he found his biggest fame not as a pop singer himself but, rather, as a songwriter. Specifically, he co-wrote Mr. Big’s “To Be with You” with the band’s frontman, Eric Martin, and it proved to be a composition which sold that band so many copies of their 1991 single and album, Lean Into It, that it led to a major financial windfall for Grahame, hence the title of this tune.

Having said that, my experiences with Grahame in an online power pop forum were pretty rotten, and I’ve never forgotten them. Somewhere around here I’ve still got some of those emails, as they were so ridiculous that I actually printed them out, but I know from an old Facebook post that one reason he made a lot of enemies was because he canceled the pre-orders for an upcoming album, saying, “There will be no more albums in the future available to anyone associated with the indie pop community. In short, there are just too many idiots." Not the friendliest of folks, but certainly an outstanding pop songwriter, which made it all the more unfortunate that he disgruntled so many of us who loved his work.

Where is Grahame now? If I find out, I’ll let you know, but I can’t seem to find any record of him releasing anything new on his own since 2014, when he collaborated on a pair of albums with Lane Steinberg, and although he and his label (Dog Turner Records) did have websites at various points in the past, neither of them seem to have active sites now. In 2023, however, a 5-song EP of demos that he did for CBS in 1981 popped up on Bandcamp, and if you’re interested in checking them out, they’re being offered as a free download, so have at it.

10. Elliot Minor, “Jessica” (2008)

My daughter was born in 2005, and in 2006 I started writing full-time for Bullz-Eye.com, so my focus was either on her or on whatever was being released in the US at the time, since our predominant readership was, as one might reasonably expect from a site based in Cleveland, heavily American. I think it was sometime around 2011, i.e. when I stopped writing full-time for Bullz-Eye, that I started to look into what sort of British music I’d missed out on by not focusing on the stuff that wasn’t coming out in the States, and I’m quite sure that’s when I discovered Elliot Minor. In typical fashion, I discovered them after they’d gone on a hiatus that briefly ended in 2014 for a tour and a new single (“All My Life”), after which the hiatus resumed until late last year, when they reunited and recorded another new single, “How Does It Feel,” which came out a few months ago. It’s good, for the record, but “Jessica” is the song that made me start paying attention to them, and since I’d only ever owned a digital copy of the album and it isn’t streaming on Spotify, it was darned good to hear it again.