There's nothing quite like the shuffle function on an iPod. I know plenty of people who hate it; to them, listening to anything but an album in its entirety is sacrilege. But for a variety of reasons, layabouts like myself greatly benefit from its random nature. Shuffle makes the hard decisions for me.

It also functions as a safety net, since music tends to get lost on even the smallest iPod. That's never a bad thing: Shuffle recently unearthed for me, during a trip into work, one of the great lost gems in modern music, the self-titled debut from Liverpool's the La's. Though I don't always put it on, given the amount of new music funnelling in, a quick shuffle took care of that, and I have since been spinning it around the clock.

It's an amazing record, made more impressive by the fact it was the group's only effort. It's not the only one-and-done in history. Here is a rundown of the best one-act outings in music. Oh, what could have been.

1 The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977). It's amazing to think that during its first incarnation, the legendary punk group was together a grand total of three years. That's a whole lot of boundary-pushing in a short period. The band's lone studio outing featured two generation-defining tunes (Anarchy in the U.K., God Save the Queen) and another pair (Pretty Vacant, Holidays in the Sun) that were seminal. Though their career output has been dulled by a slew of compilations, their debut is the first, last and everything of their career. Not bad for a bunch of snot-nosed punks.

2 Jeff Buckley, Grace (1994). Artists who achieve a great degree of popularity following their deaths almost always suffer from overexposure. Tupac Shakur is the blue-ribbon winner for posthumous proliferation, but Buckley isn't far off the pace, with a whopping 10 releases issued since his death. You need but one: Grace, his amazing debut. Buckley was half-finished recording his second album when he drowned in 1997, leaving a legacy unfulfilled.

3 The La's, The La's (1990). If there's an obscure band with a back story as good as their music, it's these temperamental Liverpudlians, who fought against having their music released (it eventually was, though against their will). The drama quotient was high, especially for a group whose lone album barely cracked the Top 200 on the North American charts. But the songs, including the incomparable There She Goes, are legendary. The La's reclusive leader, Lee Mavers, remains one of the most adored frontmen in England -- on The La's you'll hear why.

4 Operation Ivy, Energy (1989). Of all the bands pogoing around the Berkeley punk scene in the late '80s, Operation Ivy was considered most likely to succeed. Green Day, another act from the fertile neighbourhood, wound up millionaires, but for many the era is marked by Operation Ivy's ragged ska-punk. Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman of the group went on to form platinum punks Rancid, but the exuberance of Operation Ivy's lone full-length is unlike anything else of the time.

5 Mother Love Bone, Apple (1990). The after-effects of Andrew Wood's fatal heroin overdose led to the formation of Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog, so something good came out of a very bad situation. Wood, who died at 24 a month before Apple's release, never saw the album hit stores, but one of the best Seattle albums in history lives on in his absence.

6 David & David, Boomtown (1986). David Baerwald and David Ricketts, L.A. musicians whose pop rock deftly chronicled the underbelly of life in the Reagan era, scored big-time with the hit Welcome to the Boomtown. Baerwald and Ricketts never had the sales to match their critical acclaim, however, and their credits as co-writers and musicians on Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club remain their only major milestones, aside from David & David's solid debut.

7 The New Radicals, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too (1998). Gregg Alexander is a unique performer of Todd Rundgren-like abilities, blessed with the talent and smarts to both salute and critique pop music from the inside out. Alexander was a failed solo artist when his newly formed group, the New Radicals, saw its first single, You Get What You Give, skyrocket in 1998. Reaction to the tune heaped praise on Alexander, who quickly tired of the limelight and disbanded the group in 1999, not long after copies of Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too had passed the one million mark in sales.

8 M/A/R/R/S, Pump Up the Volume (1987). A group like M/A/R/R/S is one in a million. This collective of British musicians (the name is an acronym for the players involved) made one single together and then split, but not before changing the rulebook forever (more than 25 samples were used, opening the door for groups like Coldcut to enter the charts). Better for lightning to strike once than not at all: Pump Up the Volume is a work of cut-and-paste genius, a club track that transcended dance music and went on to notch a Grammy nomination.

9 4 Non Blondes, Bigger, Better, Faster, More! (1993). Linda Perry has become a successful producer and songwriter-for-hire (Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson) since the breakup of her first group, 4 Non Blondes, which hit paydirt in 1992 with its debut. Some think she has yet to recapture the magic of that album. Bigger, Better, Faster, More! spawned three singles, but none bigger than What's Up, a Perry song that stood out from the grunge-infested waters.

10 The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers (1976). Known as the group from which singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman, drummer David Robinson (later of the Cars) and keyboardist Jerry Harrison (of Talking Heads) emerged, the Boston quartet burned brightly during its brief incarnation. The Modern Lovers' self-titled debut, which was not released until years after the band's breakup, remains a favourite of rock fans, and is No. 381 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

mdevlin@tc.canwest.com