I Am Very Tall

To be honest, I never really started listening to music until high school, when the magical combination of a CD burner and a dormitory full of guys with music collections (well, just one guy really) gave me access to as much music as I could ever listen to in one sitting. But for the longest time, I would simply listen to music an album at a time, taking in the good with the bad. Having listened to plenty of full-length albums, I can definitively say that for a select few albums, there is some added value to listening to the whole thing front to back. To this day, I cannot listen to Dark Side of the Moon unless it starts up from the beginning. That being said, most albums are approximately 50% crap, with good albums taking that percentage down to about 15%. As soon as I realized this, I finally began to make playlists, and life has been different ever since.

Most people would look at my first playlist and either conclude that it is crap, or at best, charmingly dated. Rusted Root is on it, as is a song from the worst Dave Matthews Band album ever (which is saying something, depending on your views on that band). There is, however, one song that I look back on and can kind of nod to myself and say, "Not incredibly shabby." And here it is. Some pretty badass fingerpicking. Even better, it doesn't include the man's singing, which he admits sound like, "geese farts on a muggy day." Which is precisely why it is infinitely better to listen to this song, and not to the whole album.

Leo Kottke - Cripple Creek