I have this problem with my iPod, “The Egg and We” as iTunes knows it. I select a song, which The Egg plays just long enough for me to recognize and build some excitement, and then it cuts to the next track. This auditory tease repeats, often through an entire album.
I first notice the phenomenon while listening to Tracy Chapman. A couple of strums short of talking about a revolution, I am jolted to the next track. I adapt easily, soon piqued to learn how fast your car is and what it might do for our future, but am again left ignorant and unsatisfied by this mysteriously ornery Egg.
Spinning my cursor back to the beginning of the alphabet, I try another staple – Al Green. The Egg manages one “baby” but is apparently no longer glad you’re mine.
I am no longer baffled, but incensed. Al Green! Is nothing sacred?
Perhaps it’s only the older tracks that are experiencing technical difficulty, something to do with overuse (the obvious tech-savvy hypothesis). I move through the A’s down to, that’s right folks, Alanis Morissette. Yes, I still have this and yes, it is still good. No, I am not currently accepting criticism about my inability to let go of 90’s music. The Egg apparently also likes Alanis, playing through the album and providing the perfect opportunity for a bad joke about irony. I will let it pass.
I continue listening and, one after another, artists succumb to The Egg’s conspiring will: Erykah Badu, Janet, even Michael Jackson. When it refuses Shakira and Juanes in a single session, I reach a disturbing conclusion: my iPod is racist.
Further experiments on The Egg provide deeper insight into its bigoted nature. Tegan & Sara, the money card of would-be disenfranchised musicians, play normally, ruling out any anti-queer, -foreign or -female sentiments that the device may have been harboring. Perhaps the name is to blame. “The Egg and We” is a restaurant in Nabokov’s Pnin. Like my iPod, the WWII era was not the most welcoming to artists of color.
A final test, however, puts the Holocaust theory to rest. The Egg plays Matisyahu without skipping an “Adonai”.
