The random single project

So, I wanted to keep my part of the site moving. Also, there are a lot of CD singles here - 456, as of late December 2003 - some of which I've owned since the mid-nineties and some of which are brand new. So here's the plan: approximately every week (yeah, I know it's been more like every month lately) I'll use an online Random Number Generator to choose one of the five shelves, and then count a randomised number of discs from left to right, then pull out whichever single I get to, listen to it, watch the CD-Rom content (where applicable) and jot down anything I fancy saying about it in a freewheeling kind of way. Needless to say, if I come up with a disc I've already done, I shall generate new numbers.
As I discovered while doing my research, some of these generators are more random than others, computers being all but incapable of thinking randomly. I suspect the one I have settled on may only be a psuedo-random generator, but that's enough for my purposes; the idea of using externally generated numbers in place of the simpler "close-my-eyes and point" method is to give singles in cheap card sleeves as much chance of being picked as the ones in nice big boxes. I chose to listen randomly rather than simply ploughing through from 'A' to XTC in the hope that this would prove more interesting for me and for anyone else who happened to read this. Over time, this should give a fairer picture of my record collection than if I'd chosen which ones to write about.

As if to prove the point, the very first disc I "found" by this method was a Lightning Seeds single I hadn't played for at least a couple of years: in fact, the last time was probably when I did listen to the whole collection in alphabetical order. Certainly not the coolest or best record I own, but one I cared about at the time and enjoyed revisiting.
One extra note: the dates below refer to the dates when I drew the numbers, which is unlikely to be the same day when the article goes up. Equally, the shelf positions are as they were then, before any new acquistions affected them. UPDATE: Since January 2005 I have also started buying DVD singles, which are for practical reasons still on the same shelves.


Below is a chronological list of all the discs I've written about so far:

12th December 2003 Lightning Seeds - Perfect CD1
14th December 2003 Chemical Brothers - Music:Response
21st December 2003 Cinerama - Don't Touch That Dial
10th January 2004 Shed Seven - The Heroes CD1
11th January 2004 Badly Drawn Boy - Silent Sigh CD1
14th January 2004 The Coral - Dreaming of You CD1
21st January 2004 The Charlatans - Weirdo
25th January 2004 Hefner - The Hefner Brain
8th February 2004 Chris T-T - Eminem Is Gay / The Headcold Bit of the Winter
11th February 2004 The Delgados - American Trilogy
22nd February 2004 The Coral - Don't Think You're the First CD1
24th March 2004 Badly Drawn Boy - You Were Right
1st May 2004 McAlmont & Butler - Falling
29th May 2004 Radiohead - Go to Sleep CD1
10th June 2004 Asian Dub Foundation - Real Great Britain CD2
21st June 2004 Seafruit - Hello World CD1
3rd July 2004 Coldplay - Clocks
25th July 2004 Catatonia - Road Rage
9th August 2004 Salako - Ventimiglia EP
31st August 2004 The Supernaturals - I Wasn't Built to Get Up CD2
25th September 2004 The Electric Soft Parade - Empty at the End/This Given Line CD1
16th October 2004 Panjabi MC - Mundian To Bach Ke
17th November 2004 R.E.M. - Drive CD2
20th February 2005 Ben & Jason - The Wild Things CD1
13th March 2005 The Zutons - You Will You Won't...
11th April 2005 Feeder - Seven Days In The Sun