James Griffin: Crikey, a true blue shuffle

James Griffin. Photo / Dean Purcell

My iPod has been taken over by aliens; Australian aliens.

It all started when I had to do this thing where my job was to sit and chat, in front of an audience at Auckland's Real Groovy store, with the Australian singing, songwriting and now memoir-writing genius, Paul Kelly. It was part of the Auckland Arts Festival. Getting to sit and talk to one of your musical heroes: a tough job, I know, but someone had to do it.

So, not wishing to make a complete idiot of myself in this conversation, I embarked on a bit of a Paul Kelly refresher course, listening to as much of his music as I possibly could. So I set the iPod to K for Kelly and played away, and all was good with the world.

But listening to the same musical artist, any artist, even Paul Kelly, for a protracted period of time inevitably leads to the moment where you need to listen to something else. And so after a few days of Kelly-ing I reset my iPod to its default "shuffle songs" setting. Shuffle is how I normally listen to my iPod, when I'm working and when I'm in the car and, on occasions, when I'm alone in the house and can crank things up and dance while I'm doing the dishes.

So, on shuffle, it kept playing Paul Kelly. But not only Kelly, because that would be indicative of some kind of fault within the circuitry of the iPod. No, now my iPod was throwing Kelly into a mix consisting of nothing but the music of his countrymen - Hunters and Collectors, Nick Cave, the Go-Betweens, Weddings, Parties, Anything; G.W McLennan, Mick Thomas, Men At Work, Robert Forster, Mental As Anything and on and on.

For reasons known only to itself (and maybe some geeks in California) my iPod has set itself to "Australian" and, as far as I am aware, no such setting exists on or in my iPod. I swear, on one particular day, I managed to drive all the way from Rosedale to Ponsonby accompanied by nothing but music by Australian artists. All Australian, all the time, all on my iPod. Freakish.

Now I'm well aware of the vagaries of the iPod's shuffle, how the nature of the word "shuffle" means it can throw up two songs by the same artist, one after the other. I think my personal record is three Clash songs in a row - never a bad thing.

I also have this theory that iPods, like humans, have good days and bad days. Some days my iPod shuffles in synch with me and presents me with nothing but the right music for how I'm feeling at any given moment. On other days it throws up only tunes that are out of synch with the way I'm feeling - upbeat when I need to chill, introspective and gloomy when I need my soul to fly - so I am forever having to hit the fast forward button to keep my day on an even keel.

My concern, now that my iPod has gone all Australian, is not only that it will never return - so I can hear music from the other countries of the world - but that of its own volition it will start importing Australian artists I really don't want on my iPod. I mean, maybe it will start with tracks by artists I don't actually mind, but I'm pretty sure I haven't loaded on my iPod: AC/DC, Midnight Oil and maybe even a little bit of Kylie. But what if it starts dropping in artists I definitely didn't put there: John Farnham, Rolf Harris, the Little River Band, Air Supply, Jon English?

And then what if Savage Garden rises from the grave to haunt me? And what if I'm driving along one day and Peter Allen's I Go to Rio comes on and, in my frantic need to stop it before it drives me insane, I drive off the road?

Oh my God, The Wiggles are Australian. Will this horror never end? Or, even worse, will I have to get a new iPod?

Disturbing developments indeed. But on the upside, Paul Kelly was a thoroughly lovely man and I would heartily recommend his How to Make Gravy book/CD set as a present for anyone. Just tell them to think twice before loading the songs on their iPod, because no one has any idea where that might end.

Oh, and as I am writing these words, my iPod is playing. And it has just thrown up a song by Mark Seymour, Australian, formerly the lead sing of Australian band Hunters and Collectors. I swear, I am not making this up.