Music Monday: Snap

Several years ago, before I owned an iPod or other Apple product, I had ripped all of my CDs and stored them on an external hard drive. When I wanted to add a song or album to my MP3 player, I only had to drag the file or folder to my player.

Easy.

A couple of years later, I purchased an iPod, and eventually, an iPhone, and I had to deal with iTunes to get my music onto my devices. And life became considerably more complicated.

Because iTunes sucks.

For some reason, when I synch my iPhone, certain songs that I don't want on my phone tend to appear, like Jonathan Edward's version of Three Blind Mice, a song that one of my daughters danced to with her comp team.

Other songs were not appearing in my iTunes library: albums that were on my external drive but, because iTunes is so persnickety, they were unavailable for download.

For a couple of years, there were some tunes that I started to miss and wanted to add to my iPhone, so to make that happen, I had to create a folder in my iTunes directory and copy every missing song to it. It took some time, but I was finally able to add some nearly forgotten songs to my device.

When my iPhone dies, I'm moving to Android.

One of the songs that I missed and now have on my device is a song by British Columbia's long-running band, 54-40. I first learned about this band in 1986, when I completed an internship at The Ottawa Citizen, where I reported for the Entertainment department. One of the reporters was clearing out some old material and gave me a cassette of their second album, titled after the band. I fell in love with Baby Ran and I Go Blind (Hootie and the Blowfish destroyed this song several years later).

One of my favourite songs from 54-40 comes from their 2008 album, Northern Soul. For me, Snap is a great cycling tune, with its driving beat that gets me pedalling faster. When I searched for the video to the song, however, the pace of the video was not what I expected. The band simply stands and plays their song (no story, no special effects, no action). They just stand as though they are performing on The Late Show with David Letterman.

The video isn't interesting to watch, but the song is great, nevertheless. Just close your eyes and enjoy.


54-40 - Snap on MUZU.TV.

Happy Monday!