December 20, 2005
The day hasn't come yet, Don
In high school and college, I was all about music. I played in bands, I wrote for music magazines, I spent a fair amount of time at shows. Once, when a band I liked was playing an 18+ show and I was only 17, I volunteered to roadie for them so I’d already be in the club when tickets were being taken. But in the last few years, I feel like I’ve passed into that realm of stagnant music appreciation I always saw in adults -- the feeling that nothing quite beats the bands you already know; that everything good has already been done before, and everything new is just off the mark.
Oh, sure, there have been a few new bands I’ve been impressed by. The Shins are delightful, some of Franz Ferdinand is wildly catchy, there’s a song by Hot Hot Heat that I can’t get out of my head and I happily discovered Ted Leo and the Pharmacists a few months ago. But I’ve noticed that I rarely take old Weakerthans CD’s out of my car stereo, I haven’t bought a new CD in months and, even though I have Sirius satellite radio and check out the modern music stations, I spend most of my time listening to NPR. What’s going on here? Am I that old already?
I think not. Instead, I think I’m just not exposed to good music the way I once was. When I went to shows and hung out with music snobs in high school and college, finding new bands was easy. Now it’s not. And quite frankly, I don’t have the energy or drive to go searching.
But today, a friend sent along a great little free tool that just might make a difference: Pandora, a free online customized music player. Just plug in a song or a band you like, and the site plays songs it believes share similar qualities. You can give it feedback -- this song’s good, that song’s bad -- and it promises to use those opinions to hone its skills.
The concept is brilliant. The execution is, well, getting there. I began by typing in “the Weakerthans,” and the station played a great Weakerthans song. After that, it played a band called SouthFM, which was so-so, followed by something by a guy named Jason Lowenstein, which I didn’t like at all. Then came “Tonight You Could Steal Me Away,” a song off the new Spin Doctors album, which I’m not ashamed to say I enjoyed a lot. I’ve been listening for about 20 minutes now (and continue to as I write this post), and I haven’t found any new favorite bands yet. Also, I get the sense that the program doesn’t quite understand the Weakerthans, and isn’t really playing songs that share the same qualities. However, the music isn’t terrible and Spin Doctors were the only group I had even heard of, so I consider that a victory.
And if I want a change of pace, all I have to do is stray from the Weakerthans. It's a big leap, but this time I think I can handle it.
Posted by Jason Feifer at December 20, 2005 12:06 PM
Comments
From the Sirius web site:
It’s like hearing college radio but never having to go to class. Nothing but music to the left of the mainstream. Hear today’s indie rock from artists like Interpol, Death Cab For Cutie, Snow Patrol, The Shins and more.
What we play: My Morning Jacket, Sleater-Kinney, The Dandy Warhols, Pixies, Radiohead, The White Stripes, The Shins, Arcade Fire, Death Cab For Cutie, Bright Eyes and many more...
I've been a pandora member since this summer and it's opened up a whole new world of cool bands!
Posted by Jeff at December 20, 2005 12:37 PM
Keith, be honest: Do you work for Sirius?
The station you're referencing is "Left of Center," which I listen to pretty frequently. Still, I have gripes. The station, like all of Sirius's music stations, functions too much like commercial radio stations (minus, yes, the commercials). They have annoying DJs and bumpers that try oh-so-hard to sound edgy. They also run on what appear to be regular rotations of music, so that I hear the same few songs over and over again. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Commercial rotations restrict the number of songs that actually make it on the air; satellite radio should be free from that, allowing for each day’s worth of content to sound totally different from the previous day’s.
They're also not very experimental. Yeah, I like hearing the Shins and Death Cab for Cutie, but I can hear them on mainstream stations, too. I expect a station like that to play tiny, undiscovered bands, but instead they play bands that may be on independent labels but have already hit it big. That's about as "left of center" as the Democratic party -- way more center than left. Fine for a political party, not fine for a radio station touting itself as some sort of alternative to the mainstream.
But the station does have some good moments. Some of the music is good and new to me.
Posted by jason at December 20, 2005 12:45 PM
Jason,
Do you really think your lack of interest in new bands is a matter of lack of exposure? It's long been assumed that someone's taste in music is developed during the teens and early 20's and remains stagnant after that. (This article discusses the point, although it doesn't really offer any proof other than that the author is telling us so:
http://radio.about.com/od/listeningtipstrivia/a/aa010305a.htm
In fact, interest in new music by those over the age of 60 is now considered a sign of dementia:
http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/society_culture/dementia.htm
(Who wrote that study, Dr. Demento?)
As far as Pandora goes, it's a neat device for hearing streaming full songs. As far as really discovering new music, it has its obvious limitations: I typed in Andy Statman, a great bluegrass and klezmer musician. It gave me Tito Puente, who many Andy Statman fans would perhaps like, and also Enrique Eglesias, who Statman fans would likely detest. Clearly there's an overly broad "world music" category.
But, I then typed in Matthew Shipp, an avant garde pianist. It came up with a station comprised of the top 10 avant garde pianists of the moment.
I realize that Pandora a user-interactive device that depends on users to improve the matches with their ratings, and I suspect the avant garde piano fans have been using it, while klezmer fans have been absent.
IT's a cool gimmick, but I still prefer to find out about new music from friends or radio stations like WFMU.
I subscribe to XM, but they constantly remove their most interesting channels whenever they get a new business deal. Recently, they yanked the "Unsigned Bands" channel for various French language stations that will allow XM to be sold in Canada.
Posted by Noah at December 25, 2005 02:43 AM
Post A Comment |