iPod Rediscoveries: 10 Songs I'd Forgotten About That I Found On My Old iPod, Vol. 2

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

As you may recall from the first installment of this feature, I found an old iPod that I thought was busted, managed to get it working again, and since then I’ve been going through the 13K+ songs on this thing, reminiscing about the stuff that I most likely haven’t heard since whenever the iPod was last working properly. I did 10 last time, and suffice it to say that there are most decidedly more songs that are worth of taking the spotlight, so…here we go again!

1. Enya, “My! My! Time! Flies!” (2008)

I did a double take when I saw this song on my iPod, partially because I didn’t remember the song at all, but mostly because if you’d asked me where my knowledge of Enya’s catalog ended, I almost certainly would’ve said it was Shepherd Moons, but even at that, I would’ve called it “that blue album,” because I don’t even remember it well enough to know its title off the top of my head. But this would’ve come out while I was writing for Bullz-Eye, and upon listening to it, I can definitely tell why I liked it. Rather than being another ethereal epic, it has a beat that makes it a proper head-bobber, and by God, there’s even a guitar solo at the 1:40 mark! Of course, it wasn’t released as a single, and it’s buried as the next-to-last track on an LP that’s generally perceived as a Christmas album (it kind of is, but it also kind of isn’t), so almost no one outside of her fanbase would’ve heard it. But you should hear it. It’s an unexpectedly bouncy bit of fun.

2. The Foxglove Hunt, “A Concealed Weapon” (2008)

As a child of the ‘80s whose musical tastes were profoundly shaped by MTV, it’s no wonder that I grew up to be a synthpop fan, so these guys were an easy sell as soon as I heard them. It also didn’t hurt that one of the members, Ronnie Martin, had been a member of Joy Electric, another synthpop band whose work I really enjoyed. (If you’ve never heard their very silly song “Sugar Rush,” give it a spin and try to keep from smiling.) This is the only album that the Foxglove Hunt has ever released, sadly, but it’s one I’m glad to be reminded of.

3. The Frank Popp Ensemble, “Goo Goo Muck” (2005)

Well, of course, any punk fan worth their salt knows this song from the version done by the Cramps, just as any millennial knows it as that song that Wednesday dances to in that episode of Wednesday, but I found this version on eMusic after falling in love with a completely different song by the Frank Popp Ensemble, one that sounds absolutely nothing like this one: “The World is Waiting.” To be honest, though, I’ve been so focused on the album from which that song comes - that would be Touch and Go - that I really did forget about both this self-titled album and this cover.

4. Frazier Chorus, “Bye-Bye Little Bird” (1995)

To be fair, this is less a song that I’d forgotten about and more a song that I remember on a semi-regular basis, only to find that it’s from the one Frazier Chorus album that’s yet to make its way to Spotify. I first discovered these guys when they were signed to Charisma Records in America, with their album Ray catching my eye in particular because it was produced by Ian Broudie, a.k.a. the man behind the Lightning Seeds, with an impressive production career that included Echo and the Bunnymen, the Three O’Clock, the Fall, and the Icicle Works. (He produced the Icicle Works’ If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy, Sing His Song, which goes down in my personal history as the first CD I ever owned.)

After falling for Ray, I found out that they’d released their debut album, Sue, in the UK a few years prior, so I successfully procured a copy of that as well, but it would be a five-year wait for anything else from the band. Finally, Wide Awake came out in 1995, and I enjoyed it as much as the albums that had preceded it, but this song was always a particular favorite, possibly because I loved the way lead singer Tim Freeman delivered the lyrics:

“Well, you′ve fallen from your tree / And it's all because of me

With your wing in a sling / And a grudge against gravity

Well, you′ve fallen from a height / Like a poor little crippled kite

And we'll never know whether your feathers

Could ever be used in flight…”

Look, I never said it was Shakespeare, but Freeman’s just got such a lovely British cadence that it makes me smile every time I hear it.

By the way, just as a closing sidebar, it continues to amuse me that Tim Freeman’s brother is actually Martin Freeman, from the original UK version of The Office and, among other things, The Hobbit. I had a brief chat with him when he attended a TCA press tour for the first season of FX’s Fargo, and when I told him I was a fan of his brother’s band, he was positively gobsmacked, which pleased me to no end.

5. Gas Giants, “I Hope My Kids Like Marilyn Manson” (1999)

I was and remain a big fan of the Gin Blossoms, so when I heard that frontman Robin Wilson had decided to do a side project called the Gas Giants, I was immediately on board. I don’t know how he feels about the premise of this song in 2025, given all of the shit we’ve found out about Marilyn Manson in the interim, but it’s still just as jangly and catchy as ever.

6. Gladhands, “Get Real” (1999)

These guys first came together in Omaha, Nebraska, but by the time I discovered them via their work on Big Deal Records, they’d already relocated to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I loved them as soon as I heard their second album, La Di Da, bounced backwards to find their debut, From Here to Obscurity, and then I was fortunate enough to secure a promo copy of their third album, Wow & Flutter, which - like its predecessors - was supposed to be released on Big Deal. but if it ever actually did come out, I’ve literally never seen a copy of it.

That’s a real shame, because it’s probably my favorite of their three albums. Fortunately, it did secure a Japanese release, so people eventually got to hear it, and I don’t personally know anyone who doesn’t love it, so I hope that’s worth something to the guys. I saw them live twice, and they were great both times, but the first time was an outdoor show where my friends and I were really the only people who’d come to see them. In fact, they actually had their crew come out and sit with us so that they felt like they were playing for at least a slightly larger group of people.

7. Gordon Michaels, “Bermuda” (1979)

Although he may look at first glance a bit like the Eighth Doctor wearing the Tenth Doctor’s wardrobe (or maybe that’s just me, because it’s a pretty nerdy thing to think), Michaels is an unheralded late ‘70s singer with yacht rock musical sensibilities that I really dig. He only ever released this one album during his heyday - 1979’s Stargazer - and I have zero clue how I came to possess it, but my guess is that I probably stumbled upon some yacht rock site that offered up MP3s of the album since it wasn’t in print. Now it is, however, and you can secure a copy through his Bandcamp page, along with his other albums.

8. Grant Hart, “Barbara” (1999)

When it comes to the solo careers of the former members of Husker Du, there’s no question that Bob Mould is the one who’s forged the longest and most consistent of the trio. Of course, he also has the advantage at this point, what with Greg Norton having spent 15 years away from music while he was running a restaurant and Grant Hart, well, having died in 2017. For the longest time, the only solo song I really knew by Hart was “2541,” and that was because it had been covered by Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens as well as Marshall Crenshaw. In fact, I’d almost forgotten that I’d ever heard his 2009 album Hot Wax, so I was surprised when I hit “play” on this track and discovered that it was kind of a baroque pop ditty.

9. The Gravelberrys, “Wonder Where You Are Tonight” (1993)

My memory of how I found my way into being a Gravelberrys fan is a little hazy, but I think it started with discovering their song “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Daydream” on a compilation of indie Canadian bands, after which I ordered a copy of their debut CD, Bowl of Globes, from Not Lame Records. This is the song that leads off that album, and I always remember it for the opening lyrics, which is either ridiculously good or just plain ridiculous, but either way I’ve never forgotten it: “Doing nothing / Watching TV / Listening to little Stevie / Wonder where you are tonight.”

At the time I discovered the band, I was fascinated by the fact that the frontman, Paul Myers, was the brother of Mike Myers. Paul, however, is and always has been an artist in his own right - it didn’t take me long to realize that - and in addition to this album, I’ve continued to be a regular investor in his books, including his Barenaked Ladies biography, his history of Kids in the Hall, and the soon-to-be-released John Candy: A Life in Comedy.

10. The Housemartins, “Hopelessly Devoted to Them” (1987)

As much as I love physical media, I cannot deny that streaming makes it much easier to listen to music, particularly when you have so much physical media that you can’t always access everything you own. That said, when you focus on streaming over physical media, you’re limited to whatever’s cleared for streaming, and for whatever reason, only the Housemartins’ two studio albums have ever been available for streaming in the States. As a result, I often forget about the additional tracks from the band that are on their best-of collection, Now That’s What I Call Quite Good, including this B-side from their “Five Get Overexcited” single that closes out the compilation. I don’t know the last time I’d heard it before playing it again on this iPod, but the lyrics all came flooding back, and I loved it.