As a music nerd, sometimes you have ideas that you toy with that you THINK would be cool, but have a hard time finding fellow nerds to help you complete the journey to realize them. My friends have known for some time about my passion for all things music and took in stride my suggestion of a possible game to play by e-mail.

I asked each if they wanted to play a game of “Follow The Title”, a rolling song list created by matching part of a song title picked by one “player” to the next picked by the next “player”… and on and on until a magical threshold at which time I will undoubtedly create a mix tape (DVD) of all the songs.

I mean, that is the ultimate goal, but I discovered that just playing is far more fun than I even imagined.

This whole game is by no means my idea. I have seen it done many times. Recently I saw a version of it on a web site where people did the same thing but with album titles instead. They posted a picture of the album with their entry. It was cool to see the connections between the albums. I thought I would give it a go, with song titles, emailed between some friends. So I sent the following e-mail to the 3 participants:

Four Man “Follow The Title” Official Rules

Welcome!

We will play in this order:

Spike, Josh, Michael, Otis , but please include us all by using reply all.

The rules are simple. Your song title must have a common base word (Ride and Riders or Riding are all acceptable) or a common theme (Storm and Thunder and Hurricane are related and acceptable). If your connection is too weak there is no punishment but the scorn of your fellow music nerds. 

Please include your name, the Artist and “Title” of your selection, ex:  Jimi Hendrix – “In From The Storm”

No repeats please.

Nothing is too obscure, or off limits… the fun is to see what kind of weird collection we can accumulate.

I’ll begin…

Song list:

Spike, Jane’s Addiction – “Stop”

After one round I was grinning like a fool. This was exactly what I wanted! I played Janes’s Addiction – “Stop”, then Josh played The Smiths – “Stop Me if You’ve Heard this One Before”, followed by Michael playing Marvin Gaye – “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”. Otis then finished the round with fIREHOSE – “What Gets Heard”. The transition was nice.

Last night it came to my turn and the song title to me was “Do You Understand” by The Apples In Stereo”. I took my external hard drive with my entire music collection on it and searched it for the word YOU. There were a mind boggling list of possibilities.

I had The Who – “You”, a great song actually written by John Entwistle. However, Michael had played The Who recently, so that one was shelved. Then I came across Zapp – “I Can Make You Dance”. Zapp is some awesome techno funk, but I wasn’t sure they were ready for that. Remember, I plan on making a mix of these songs and I envisioned them skipping that song every time. There were several Wayne Hancock songs, but I had played Johnny Cash and I wanted to save Wayne for later. The Rolling Stones – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”?… no. I almost thought about putting on a more unheard track “You Got The Silver” but in the end decided not to. As I perused the list I was smiling. This is the type of nerd fun I love. “I love this!” I declared to myself.

My ultimate YOU selection was “I Want You (She’s So Heavy) an uncharacteristic jam by The Beatles off of Abbey Road that goes into a heavy drone at the end for a long time then just cuts off leaving your ears ringing. When I saw it in the list I knew immediately there could be no other YOU track. I figure the guys will pass it on the mix, but I love it. I had to put it on.

Otis made a Google doc for us to work from and we started including (as good music nerds do) accompanying info, like the album and date of release. Even some notes. Man, is there no depth to which we will sink (or rise)?

There are certain bands I have in mind to work in, just for the juxtaposition pleasure, but need to find a good match first.

A I write this we are done with 4 rounds. I love it. Each of us brings our own unique taste to the mix. That is what a good mix is right? Here is our list so far:

Additionally, I have decided as a side challenge I will also create an alternate list of just Prince songs that correlate to the songs in our 4 man mix. It’s like I am assigning myself extra credit homework. Sigh. Too much?

Prince 4 EVR !

Anyway… Josh, Michael and Otis… thanks for playing !!

Your turn Josh.