Top 6 songs for hackers and tech-geeks

've has this idea of collecting songs that are computer themed, or otherwise of interest to tech/computer geeks for either the musical or lyrical content. Today I finally made such a list. So without further ado, in no particular order:

1. Deltron 3030 - (tie!)Virus and Upgrade (a Brymar College Course)

Deltron 3030 is a concept band/album created by Del, Dan the Automator and Kid Koala. Set in the year 3030, it pits our hero Deltron Zero against a government run by huge corporations (sound familiar?). Choice lyrics from Virus:

You see late in the evening / Fucked up on my computer and my mind starts roaming / I create like a heathen / The first cycles of this virus I can send through a modem / Infiltration hits your station / No Microsoft or enhanced DOS will impede / Society thinks they're safe when / Bingo! harddrive crashes from the rending

and Upgrade (A Brymar College Course) (In computer simulated voice):

Here at Brymar College we can get you prepared for the 31st century with advanced programming in quad-rendering and Java+++ scripting language. We offer advanced job placement assistance. So upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter.

2. Bad Religion - 21st Century (Digital Boy)

Seems to me a lot of hacker-types are anti-establishment and anti-authority. So it stands to reason that a few of them are probably old-school punk-rockers. Released seventeen years ago, this song may well have foreshadowed current privacy concerns over RFID enabled passports and the USA's unpopular federalized ID card:

And I don't want it / The things you're offering me / Symbolized bar code / Quick ID, oh yeah

3. Combustible Edison - Solid State

This track may not have much to do with computers, but the lush and hilarious electronic bubbling, gurgling, and tinging sounds would make it the perfect background music for the elevators at IBM headquarters. One could also picture listening to this while roaming amongst clinical rooms of server racks, or perhaps putting the finishing touches on some home-brew electronic doodad out in the garage. The song does have a couple lines of lyrics at the end, but they are all but undecipherable, and besides, I am fairly sure they are in Spanish, so I wouldn't be able to decipher them anyway.

4. Fatboy Slim - Slash Dot Dash

Well, this is pretty self explanatory. Lyrics:

Slash dot dash dot slash dot com...

...and variations thereof repeated ad infinitum

5. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Code

As best as I can tell, this song has nothing to do with web scripting, but with a title like that, I had to add it to the list. Here's a lyrical sample:

From lives I've tried to lead / To the one that I received / Each painted sign along the road / Will melt away in source tags and in code

6. American Analog Set - We're Computerizing and We Just Don't Need You Anymore

Another song that appears to have nothing to do with computers other than the name. It reminds me of a poster on motivation I purchased from despair.com. I have included this song simply because I like AmAnSet so much.

...

And finally, we have a dishonourable mention:

Ricky Martin - She Bangs

I listened to this song thinking it might be a nice little ditty about UNIX shell scripting. Much to my shock, it wasn't about computers at all! It's about loose women, and loose morals! For shame, Ricky Martin, for shame. The music is terrible too...

So there you have it. Think my list sucks? Think you could do way better? Did I forget a totally obvious song? Well, send it in to me along with a link to your blog, website, publically addressable networked toaster, or whatever, and I'll put it up here.

Daniel de Oliveira has sent in this:

Hi man. There's another one from Bad Religion: I love my computer. But I think it's specially a computer running windows, if you see the lyric. lol

That is all