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On my post about last weekend's visit to music geek nerdvnana, my old friend Kara Joy left the coolest comment. In case you missed it:

you know i couldn't help but think of all of those sundays that we spent listening to kasey kasem, writing down every song in the order it was played until we'd get to the number one song - guessing what it might be. while my top 40 days of liking most music are long gone, i know that it was our ritual that set music so firmly in me.

When KJ and I were but wee ones - fourth and fifth grade - we spent a lot of Saturday nights at each others' houses. On Sunday morning we'd tune into the local radio station that played American Top 40. We'd spend four hours glued to the radio, writing down what Casey Kasem deemed the most popular songs of the week. There was often dancing and injuries involved, too. Were we listening to "American Top 40" the morning we were wrestling and I accidentally pushed her foot through the window? Probably, because I'm sure that was a Sunday morning. Sorry about that, Kara.

I love that I have the ability to carry 8794 songs in my pocket at all times. Actually, I can carry more than that; that just happens to be the number of songs on my iPod. I love that, when my plane hit turbulence on Thursday night, I could immediately zip to whatever song I wanted to be the last song I heard during my mortal existance. Funny that the song that was playing suited me just fine.

If I'd had my iPod when Clara Jane was born, I could have saved B. a 2 AM trip across the hospital and across the rainy parking lot to retrieve a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD I had to have at that exact moment.

Around the same time Kara and I were fixated on Casey Kasem, I remember going camping with my family, and trying to figure out a feasable way to take my turntable and 45s with me. Not a problem now. I take my entire music collection with me when I run to the grocery store a mile up the street.

For years I hauled cassettes (which I switched to after my failure in finding a workable turntable/vinyl transporation method) and CDs with me everywhere. I used to take a shoebox or two of tapes to the front porch with me, along with my Walkman, just so I'd have whatever song I wanted at the ready in the days when I'd sit on that porch for hours, doing nothing but listening to music.

What made me decide to finally purchase an iPod? I was fed up with all the damn CDs in my truck. I started using my computer as my primary music delivery devise in the house several years ago, which means the CDs gradually migrated to my truck. If I needed extra cash, I probably could have set up shop in a vacant parking lot downtown and made a small fortune.

All my life, I've found ways to keep up with my perpetual music jones. Now that the most perfect devise for music transporation is in my possession, I've got some problems.

I miss hanging around with my friends, waiting for that perfect song to come on the radio or MTV. I've become spoiled, and just like any other spoiling scenario, the wealth of goods in my possession sometimes leaves a bit of a hole in my soul.

Again, back in those KJ/Casey Kasem days, I often got in trouble for watching MTV and listening to the radio at the same time in hopes of hearing the perfect song. What song? It changed. It was whatever song was stuck in my brain, usually something that wasn't played very often. Top 40 was fine, but even back then, I would zero in on something obscure that I didn't get to hear on a regular basis. Hearing those songs was like Christmas.

Some of those songs, which I could listen to at this very moment if I wanted, since I put them on my iPod at the first opportunity:

• "Brass in Pocket" by the Pretenders
  
• "It's My Car" by the Waitresses
  
• "Original Sin" by INXS
  
• "And Then He Kissed Me" by the Chrystals (I loved '60s pop, especially girl group stuff, which could be a little hard to come by, aside from the 20 girl group songs everyone knows.)
  
• "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" by the Beastie Boys
  
• Anything and everything by Blondie
  
• "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen, which I waited weeks to purchase at my local TG&Y, because it kept selling out.
  
• "Born to Run" by, well if you don't know you probably shouldn't be reading this.
  
• "Up All Night" by the Boomtown Rats
  
• "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2, which used to scare the hell out of me. Twenty years later, I understood why.
  
• "This is Radio Clash" by The Clash
  

This list could go on for hours and days. So many songs that could send me rocketing out of my seat, dancing not just from the music but from the sheer, unexpected joy of hearing the song.

The surprise factor - that's what I miss. Don't get me wrong, I love and am grateful that I have these songs at the ready. But it's not the same.

Manjoo's review also touches on the laziness and ADHD the new technology breeds:

You put on something that you've been wanting to listen to all day. Lucinda Williams' "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" album, say. But you're three-quarters of the way through the first track, and even though you're really digging it, something about the scratchiness of Williams' voice reminds of something else entirely -- the Carter Family. And, hey, don't you have a copy of "Wildwood Flower" on here? Why, yes, you do. So you switch. But of course, putting on the Carter Family is going to remind you of Johnny Cash. And you have the feeling that you must, just this minute, play Cash's version of "In My Life" now. So you switch again. But you're a minute into Johnny and you start to wonder about the Beatles' original version of the track...

A glaring example that occured mere hours before I read this article on Monday: I had a hankering for some Loretta Lynn and went directly to "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man", one of her great duets with Conway Twitty. It's two minutes and thirty-two seconds long; you'd think I could make it through the whole thing. By the time Loretta's losing her mind because she's got to have Conway's loving all of the time, about two minutes in, I started thinking about how those classic Loretta and Conway duets might compare to "Portland, Oregon", the duet she recorded with Jack White almost three years ago.

Switch!

It was great to listen to the two songs together, to compare the differences in her voice over 25 years, refreshing to hear that she hasn't lost her bravado and spunk as she's gotten older. It was interesting to compare Jack and Conway, who couldn't seem more different on the surface, but who actually have a lot in common with the shared Loretta denominator. But by the time Jack's moving in fast and Loretta's taking it slow, I was thinking about The Raconteurs, and how Jack's guitrar work from "Portland, Oregon" might compare with his work on "Broken Boy Soldiers".

Switch!

And partway through that song, I started thinking about how Jack's dynamic is different in a band of men than it is with his White Stripes partner, Meg White, so I'm off to "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine".

Switch!

And then I start thinking about how their sound evolved, so I switched to "Astro" from their first CD.

Switch!

Boy, I really do love that bare-bones nouveau Detroit garage rock. Soledad Brothers! "Shaky Pudding!"

Switch!

Ten minutes and five songs later, I felt like my brain had been playing a schizophrenic game of Musical Chairs. I was a bit rattled, wholely unsatisfied, and more than a little disgusted with myself and my inability to just get lost in a song, acknowledge whatever song wanders into my mind while I'm listening. "Hello, 'Broken Boy Soldiers'. I'm in Portland right now. I'll be with you in just a moment," finish the first song that I just had to listen to before moving on to the next.

I haven't made a mix CD in well over six months. In other words, I haven't made a mix CD in the time since I bought my iPod. Mixes used to be one of my great creative outlets, and I've let it go. Why spend a few hours making a mix when I can just put it on Shuffle and let the machine do it for me?

I've also gotten woefully behind on discovering new music. Why go to the effort of getting to know a new song, new album, new artist when I can listen to "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" for the fifth time this week?

A list of albums sitting on my iPod that I've yet to listen to:

• "Taking the Long Way" by the Dixie Chicks, purchased in May.
• "Illinois" by Sufjan Stevens, purchased in April.
• "Stadium Arcadium" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, acquired in June.
• "Pearl Jam" by Pearl Jam, acquired in August.
• "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" by Neko Case, acquired in May.
• "Late Registration" by Kanye West, acquired in July.

Sadly, there are more. In the past, when I got a highly-anticipated CD, I'd make time to listen to it uninterrupted. I'd turn off the phone and just listen, maybe read the liner notes. I've only done that once since I got my iPod, when Springsteen released "The Seeger Sessions" in April.

These are growing pains, for sure. I need to find a new way to listen to my music. I've got more music and more access to my music now than I ever had in my life. I've got exactly what I dreamed of as a 10-year-old music nerd. I love it. I'm grateful. I'm so lucky to live in this time, and to have this problem, which really isn't a problem at all. I just need to adjust my brain so that I'm not taking it for granted.