Top 9 Songs For Geeks
Ok, so I’m a geek, I came to terms with the unavoidable fact around about the same time that it became cool to be a geek. Until then I soldered bits of old radios together and kept a diary in the form of C64 code (stored on a cassette tape!) in the clandestine safety of my bedroom. Now those facts are the sort of things I’m happy to boast to the world about. And I have a soundtrack as powerful as Sequoia. Here are my top tracks to write PHP ‘for’ loops to:
Datarock: The Blog - Listen
OK so not the best track on Datarock’s recent album ‘Red’ but with a Tim Berners-Lee sample and a condensed history of the Internet, definitely the geekiest!
Autechre: Flutter - Listen
Created in response to the Criminal Justice Bill of 1994 which banned ‘repetitive beats’ in public places (or anywhere with over 21 people present). No two bars of this ten-minute tracks have the same beat. Quite a feat, and surprisingly listenable… considering.
The Smiths: Frankly Mr Shankly - Listen
The fantasy resignation letter every geek wants to hand to their idiot boss.
The Beatles: Tomorrow Never Knows - Listen
As any annoying pub quiz veteran will glibly tell you, TNK is officially the first ever techno track, and it’s from 1966!! Not bad considering it was done on a 4-track at a time when the charts was home to the likes of Jim Reeves and The Four Tops.
Slagsmålsklubben: Kom Igen Kommissarien - Listen
The story goes that SMK were just another cool Swedish pop band until their guitarist/singer didn’t turn up for rehearsal one day and they plugged an old Casio keyboard into his guitar amp and just rocked out the bossa nova accompaniment.
Barenaked Ladies: The History of Everything - Listen
The theme tune to every geek’s favourite sitcom ‘Big Bang Theory’ charts quite literally the history of everything, with a middle eight that ponders the future of everything too, so you really have it all there in one two-minute song!
The White Stripes: Seven Nation Army - Listen
A massive hit upon its release in 2004 and an instant classic, this track was on the band’s second studio album ‘Elephant’. The album was recorded in two weeks at Toe Rag Studios in London which is famous for it’s 1960’s setup - have a look here. The White Stripes were reputed to have used nothing post-1963 in the recording of Elephant. That’s basically off the geek-points scale.
Jonathan Coulton: Code Monkey - Listen
‘JoCo’ is a singer-songwriter and basically an alpha-geek, a power-geek. He’s turned his nerdiness into admirable achievments such as his ‘Thing a Week’ project where he released a song a week, Code Monkey being the most well-known. He releases his music under a Creative Commons licence to encourage people to make remixes, videos and other crazy mash-ups with.
Avenue Q: Teh Internets Is For Porn - Listen
The hilarious theatre musical ‘Avenue Q’ is responsible for this internet hit in which Trekkie fesses up on all our behalf to the real reason we love t’interweb. In terms of geek-factor this World of Warcraft mashup says it all.
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