Pandora's Hot Box

Excuse my sophmoric humor. Humour if you’re from England, or as they say “The U.K.”

Anways, excuse my excitement, but I have recently been turned on to one of the only true beauties left on the internet. I’m sick of most of last year’s fascinations. All that thrills me now is Netflix, funny Youtube videos, my email, google images, you know, the most basic human needs… But I’ve recently been introduced to spice, the salt and pepper to add to my meat-and-potatoes internet diet. The names on the tag reads Pandora, and in tiny letters “streaming radio awesomeness.”…

My friend Donald has told me about this great service since December, or something like that, but I have chosen to ignore him for the past months because I could not believe that streaming internet radio could actually be any good. Boy-oh-girl was I wrong.
The premise is simple: Choose an artist. Just name one of your favorite artists, go ahead, make the first step. Pandora then builds and entire radio station around the sounds of your artist, using something it call the “MUSIC GENOME PROJECT” to select songs and artists that are similar in flavor, using simple tags it attaches to songs that help determine what you like. Basically it is smarter than you.

“Hey Pandora, I like M.I.A., but I don’t know what else I’ll like.”
(ROBOT VOICE) “YOU’LL LIKE THIS. IT’S FRENCH.”
“I don’t know Pandora, I mean, didn’t president Bush tell us the French weren’t the best allies recently? How could I go against the pres, you feel me?”
(ROBOT VOICE) “OH HO HO! DON’T BE SILLY. WE DIDN’T CHOOSE IT BECAUSE IT’S FRENCH, WE CHOSE IT BECAUSE ACCORDING TO YOUR TASTES YOU ENJOY:
SYNTH ROCK
ELECTRONICA INFLUENCES
MILD SYNCOPATION
HEAVY BASS LINE
HEAVY SYNTH HATS…
BEEP BEEP BEEP, THOSE ARE YOUR RESULTS.”

As you can see, Pandora looked past my cultural bias and got to the core of the matter, I really do love synth pop with mild vocal harmonies, no matter what language. Say you’re tired of hearing one genre of music… simply add another artist to your mix. Now Pandora will cross-pollinate these two artists and show you what music is similar to each of these artists, and perhaps what kind of music would occur if TV On The Radio’s bassist left, had a baby with Freddy Mercury, and their baby sang the lyrics to a Daft Punk song over smooth jazz. Yeah, it’s that cool.

This might be the greatest way to find new music in history. Better than your bestfriend’s cool older sibling’s friend who’s boyfriend know some A&R in New York. Yeah, for real.
Here’s the link again, don’t wait months and months like I did.
www.pandora.com

Friday Friday

I am wearing an awesome shirt that says "Lock It Up!" and features a picture of Don "Campbellock" Campbell.

I started the day off watching a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright, which I did not make it all the way through. I've eaten three granola bars today, and I'm about to hit up the Cleveland Wok aka the motherland aka the best. It's at my little brother's request.

I am very tired, but it's time to snap out of it and jump on the old bike-a-roo.
Oh, and my best gal has a new blog and she talked about yarn-bombing, which is something I've never heard of and thought was very cool, and she is too.

Sionara.

Hanging out in dark alleys with strangers

I've spent the last two nights re-visting some of my favorite spots with Donald and Jeb and a photographer Xavier Nuez. I've spent the days sitting in my basement trying to figure out why my Protool's configurations do not work anymore. I have to wake up in 3 hours to go take down my art show, which means I will not be going to sleep.

Good morning world.