Music To Run To . . . Part II

[El Gordo]

I'm not sure where 'running songs' end and just 'favourite songs' begin, but if that means favourite songs at the rockier end of the scale then I suppose (of the stuff that people are likely to know) mine would have to include:

Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
The Doors - Light My Fire
...in fact pretty much anything by Hendrix or The Doors.
Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen...not a huge Springsteen fan but this will always remind me of the whooping and yelling as we crossed the start line of the Chicago marathon.
I Feel Fine - The Beatles - again, pretty much any early Beatles
Highway 61 - Dylan

An honest answer to the question is that I don't have favourite music to run to because I never run with music, but I'd like to try more. Am just about to buy an iPod Shuffle, so will no doubt be doing more of it. I quite like the idea of the Shuffle, where you just load it up with hundreds of tunes, then get them popping up in a totally random order.

My true preference, for a long run, would be to have a whole range of stuff so that I'd get a variety. Plenty of old favourites like the artists mentioned above, plus some newer stuff that I'd like to listen to more like the Kaiser Chiefs, Antony and the Johnsons, White Stripes... these will sound like unadventurous choices to people familiar with the current music scene, but I can only really go on what I come across on mainstream late-night TV. I'm sure there are tons of other, less well-known but interesting bands around. And all that newer folky stuff that I need to catch up on - Damien Rice, Beth Orton, and the more obscure things I hear whenever I catch the Mike Harding Show or those Gaelic folk shows from Radio Scotland that the BBC offer in their Listen Again facility.

But best of all, I'd like to be able to download and listen to Late Junction, an amazing, but little-known nightly programme on R3 from 10:15. They play a staggering variety of often unusual but always fascinating stuff from Mongolian folk to modern jazz; from Bach to Tom Waits. You never know what's coming next. I recommend it. The Beeb always keeps the last week's shows online for relistening.