Music Craziness

Hmmm, since I last wrote here I have experienced an incredible amount of music. Where to even begin?

I continue to use Pandora, though not as exclusively as when I first discovered it. One trend I've noticed is that you have to be careful what you "Thumbs Up." The reason is that the more things you approve that you may like, but are farther from the starting song, the more general and even bland the station gets. Thus a lot of my old station are far less distinct than I would like. For example, what started as a Beatles station became British Invasion. But then it has kept expanding and now it's become just a general 60's and 70's station. Thus I created "A Day in the Life" station, starting from a song I really like. And then I've only really been approving songs of a similar experimental vein. But it is so hard when a classic early Beatles song comes on to NOT give it a thumbs up. So I just leave a lot of songs unrated now.

My physical has grown quite a bit. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I got the essential "1" album by the Beatles. I know I already mentioned The Fire Theft. I also got a couple of records at a yard sale- S&G's Greatest Hits album (it's a classic) and the Eagles Greatest Hits. I'm not a big Eagles fan (they're ok), but this is the best selling album in the US of all time (19 times platinum) so I figured it would fit well into my growing collection. My trip to NY to see Her was very fortuitous. She gave me Paul's excellent album Chaos and Creation for my birthday. Then Bekah gave me something great- the White Album. While their went to a great little used music shop in North Port Village- "Permanent Records". I had to leave a bunch of great bargains behind, but I walked out with Stereolab's newest, "Fab Four Suture", (quite good), a promo copy of Theivery Corp's newest original lp, Lovedrug's first full length (a rare find- and quite good!), and an America vinyl (I can't remember the title). All for about $20 :) The America album officially belongs to Christine and me since it was her idea. It has a lot of good songs though (eg Sister Golden Hair) and we got to listen to it together. In the time since then, I've gotten a few more items. I ordered another Beatles essential, Revolver, on Amazon marketplace. Next will be either Sgt Pepper's, or Magical Mystery Tour. Then maybe Rubber Soul and Abbey Road. Slowly but surely I'm building my collection. Oh, I also discovered that Harrison's first solo effort, the triple lp All Things Must Pass is a must have- I heard a bunch of songs on Pandora. He was just bursting with great stuff after all of the Lennon-McCartney suppression. Oh, I also need to get the classic Odessey and Oracle by the Zombies.

I also discovered a great new online service through Dave at work. It is a cd trading site called "lala". Check it out. Basically you list cd's you want to trade and if someone wants it, you send it to them with special mailers that lala send you- a lot like Netflix. For each cd you send, you get one off of you "want" list. You only pay $1.50 per cd. The more you send, the more you receive. My only problem right now is that I don't have many cd's I want to get rid of. I may try to pick up random used ones that I find specifically for trading. We'll see. I did get one cd completely for free just for signing up. And it's a great one I've wanted for a long time- "How It Feels to Be Something On" by Sunny Day Real Estate. It was there first album after rejoining. And to me, it is one of the best 90's emo albums.

And then there are all of the library cd's! there have been so many. At this very moment while I'm at work (scanning) I'm listening to "Bachelor No. 2" by Aimee Mann, which is surprisingly recent (90's). She sings my favorite song on the I Am Sam soundtrack (all Beatles covers), Two of Us. This is a pretty good album. I said surprisingly recent because most of what I've been getting is from earlier decades. I don't have time to go into it all now because I need to go to my other job, but lets just say its been a broad and vast musical experience the past couple of months. I've discovered things as diverse as Fleetwood Mac and the Clash, , Led Zeppelin and Marvin Gaye! So yeah. I have to go to the library today actually- who knows what else I will discover?

New Sidebar

So on the sidebar, you should see some Pandora stuff... kinda cool huh? It shows recent songs that I "bookmarked" while listening to Pandora. I bookmark songs that I just like or who artists I am curious about and don't want to forget.
So there :)
I may also add one with my current stations... we'll see.
Jon

Open the Pandora's Box

Check out www.pandora.com . This is an amazingly cool internet radio site. It creates customized radio stations based upon the musical characteristics of songs themselves rather than simply upon the tastes of other people.... It's an interesting philosophy and theory of doing internet radio. Whatever the case, it's good and their catalog is extensive. Plus its a nice and polished site. www.pandora.com.
And just for the fun of it, you can check out my profile and see my stations. I've bookmarked lots of songs I either liked or want to look at more...
http://www.pandora.com/people/canjecricketer

Beatlemania Continues + Folk

Pardon the formatting- Myspace is such a pain...

Time for the latest music updates. Beatles continue to have a high play-count, and I just purchased the high value "1" cd- 27 #1 singles! Good stuff. I also bought the debut album of The Fire Theft, which is the reorganized form of the pioneer emo band (and best emo band ever) Sunndy Day Real Estate. It's pretty good. Not quite as good as "How It Feels to Be Something On" (IMO the best "emo" album ever).

Other things I'm listening to: -David Bowie- BBC sessions from the late 60's/early 70's. This is good rock music. -LOTS of REM. Such a classic band. Their msuic from the 80's is amazing. I knew there had to be good music from the 80's! (I've never been a fan of all the cheesy synth driven 80's rock/metal etc;) -The Who- Another good british invasion band. THat's kind of my focal point these days, though I'm listening to lots of other stuff too. -Innocence Mission- I had forgotten all about this group. I checked out there "Now the Day is Over" cd- quite a soothing and restful sort of cd to listen to before you go to bed. Plus they have lots of free mp3's on their website! Karen Peris has an amazing voice. -Folk in general- so lots of Dylan, and others. This is mostly on internet radio, especially WWW.PANDORA.COM . If you haven't been there, check it out! It's a great internet radio site. I've been especially working on my folk station. I've been discoverings lots of good folk/folksih stuff, including some of the great women artists. I really like Joni Mitchell's work so far. I've only heard one Joan Baez song, which I'm sure will incite Jessica if she reads this. -a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now-

The White Album, etc....

This was from April....

The White Album- need I say more? Ok, I will. Absolutely amazing. I hadn't heard of a lot of these songs, but this double-ep is stellar. I especially like the first disc, with Dear Prudence, ob la di ob la da, Glass Onion, Blackbird, and others, but disc two is great as well, with Mother Nature's Son and Revolution 1, and lots of other fun stuff. THe Goodnight song is a blast as well. HOw, I say, how did they do it? I don't think anything will ever compare to the Beatles.

"Matador at Fifteen"-a good compilation of music by the label that brought us Interpol, Yo La Tengo, and Steven Malkmus.

Starflyer 59- picked up their rerelease editions of their first two albums, which both include rare ep's. "Silver" and "Gold." This is classic mid-90's shoegazer alternative rock. Also picked up their second to most recent album, their worst yet- "I Am the Portuguese Blues," but it was a demo for a buck 25 so who can complain?

Stavesacre "Collective"- another cheap demo. Stavesacre was/is a good band when you're in the mood for something a bit heavier.

Paul Simon "On My Way, Don't Know Where I'm Going"- good stuff here- pretty much hits highlights through Paul's post-S&G days. Lots of good songs. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" is really funny. Also includes a disk of rare live recordings, including a very different Graceland-ish version of "Mrs Robinson."

James Taylor "October Road". Christine got me into James Taylor ;)

Smashing Pumpkins "thirty-three" ep- I'm really rediscovering this classic band of the 90's. Not quite as good as the "Tonight Tonight" ep, but another good bit of late pumpkins. I missed a lot of their stuff the first time around (ie back when they were still around)

The "Downtempo" station on Rhapsody radio- I can't get enough downtempo.

Viva Voce- So I bought a cd by this obscure Christian band back in the mid-late 90's and really liked it (album was Hooray for Now), but never heard anything about them again. Last week I was at the Barsuk site downloading some free Deathcab, when I noticed that Viva Voce not only still exists but is signed with Barsuk apparently. Since I last heard anything about them, they've released two LP's, one of which I listened to on Rhapsody. So that was cool. THeir sound has changed a bit from their edgier, more experimental earlier sound to a polished sort of Yo La Tengo/Ivy-esque sound. Good stuff!

Music Fixation

So I've really been enjoying writing on myspace.com about what I'm currently listening to. But what I don't like is that it gets really long and then I have to delete old stuff. But I like keeping the old comments around, so I think I'm going to start posting music stuff on this blog. So I'm going to repost above my most recent myspace post and the content it replaced....

So what's this do?

Now I'm trying to see what "BlogThis!" does. Blogspot seems to have a lot of different features, and I'm trying to figure out how they all work. So far, things seem a little clunky for logging into your own blog if you start out on someone else's blog. Of course that's probably just me being lazy and not paying attention. ~jmp

Testing Photos

Well my prolific parents want to post images now, so I'm trying to figure out how to do that. Let's see if this works.
I think it did!
Well, now back to prolific writing on the High Priesthood in Israel... ~jmp

another day at work

Today I'm at the library once again. This time I am scanning copies of some really old documents from the early days of Winona Lake. In fact, it was known as Eagle Lake back then, and there really wasn't much of a town here. The main thing that was here was the Spring Fountain Park. It's all very interesting.

I like this job because it generally involves a lot of variety. Plus when things are scanning, I can do email or browse the internet, so that is fun.

Speaking of work, I'm actually going to be fixing a computer for someone tomorrow and get paid for it! So that will be interesting...

the beginning

Well I'm finally starting a blog. I've been wanting to for a while as I think I could be quite a "bloggy" person (more on "blogginess" later). So now it is reality. I can at least post on other people's blogs now too...
So this really isn't very interesting 'cause I'm actually on the phone and I need to go.... (random fact- Christine is eating vodka chocolates right now)