Music to Ride Motorcycles By

Could it be that Apple, makers of the iMac, iPod and iPhone amongst other fine domestic consumables, knows more than it’s letting on? Not in a general knowledge, Stephen Fry kind of a way, but in an emotional intelligence, thought reading, 'Big Brother knows all' fashion (Big Brother being the Orwellian version, not the sordid mess that has become the Channel 4 voyeurfest, naturally).

Utilising the shuffle feature on my iPod, whilst seeking a little musical distraction from the monotony of the treadmill (a literal treadmill, at a gym, not an allegory for the working week) produced half a dozen tracks in succession that, had I been able to programme the machine to a cycle called ‘Match my mood’, or ‘Tell me what I want to hear before I know I want to hear it’ could hardly have been bettered. And whilst being aurally stimulated, my mind flew from a room full of heavy equipment and, frankly, torturous hardware, tinged with the vague scent of let’s-call-it-perspiration, to bikes.

So, those tracks, then. First up, Gallows Pole from the post-Zeppelin album No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded. A barrage of rhythms, energy and fused English and North African instruments, it feels inappropriate to grin to the repeated refrain ‘Swinging on the gallows pole’, yet grin I do.

Next, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds, Hiding All Away. More dark, brooding lyricism, bursting into power and glory, music to drive tanks to.

Third, a real surprise, Weak by Skunk Anansie, a song I hadn’t heard in an age. Here, though, just right, and a vocal performance by a machine gun-toting angel.

After this, the iPod started to show off. Lost in music, to quote the completely unrepresented Sister Sledge, and still enjoying a small glow from Messrs. Page, Plant and Cave, what could have been better than Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll to kick on with? Nothing. And then three minutes and forty-two seconds of consummate boogie later, the handclaps and piano of Nick Cave’s Supernaturally, from the Lyre of Orpheus CD. What is there not to love about a song that rhymes ‘When the dead come rising from the seas’ with ‘With a teddy bear clamped between her knees’? I just hope the bear was suitably named.

Treadmill slowing, senses ringing, musical methadone’s required. And for a final time, Apple provides, in the shape of Jack and Meg and 300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues, a whimsical, stuttering, explosive outpouring of torrents at, at least, 300 miles per hour.

Now a more technically adept type would have provided neat little links to samples of each of these six pieces by way of bringing the reader closer to the notion of track following track, perhaps to understand why I think that this mini compilation album would be the perfect soundtrack to ride a motorcycle to. Ahem. Note the word ‘more’.