Usually, when I do an Audio Addiction its for a specific album, but I’m bending my own rules a little bit and doing “double disc” AA this time around. I got the three most recent Kings of Leon CDs this past Christmas, and I’ve been slightly obsessed with two of them ever since. Not to say that I dislike Aha Shake, Heartbreak, but it hasn’t worked its way into my blood like crack in the same way that Only by the Night and Because of the Times have.
I fail at blogging. I wrote this post like three weeks ago and thought I published it. Apparently not. Here it is anyway.
The biggest difference between this and previous PJ records is that its…happy? My first reaction when I started listening was, “huh? what happened to the dark and brooding PJ I know and love?” After I got past how different it was from their previous albums, I quickly realized how good of a straightforward rock album it is. It easily takes its place as one of my favorite PJ albums.
The most recent song to get really heavy repeat play on my CD player.
Carbon Leaf is a band from Richmond, VA that has attained some pretty significant regional success, but has only made it to #136 on the Billboard charts. Nonetheless their 2004 release Indian Summer has been one of my favorite albums since I got it last year. I hadn’t listened to it for a little while and I had forgotten how catchy and addicting this track is for me. One of the things I like the most is the lyric phrasing and alliteration throughout the song. A bonus is that its a pretty simple song to play on the guitar and its one of the few that I’ve sort of learned so far.
Hope you enjoy.
Apparently this has been around for a while and I just didn’t know about it, but if you’re in to music and you like finding new stuff you should definitely check out Pandora Radio. Pandora Radio is an Internets radio station created by the Music Genome Project, where they’ve identified some 400 characteristics to describe music at its most basic level, and use a really complex algorithm to group songs and artists together.
The beauty of Pandora, in my limited use so far, is that you just punch in the name of a song or artist that has the kind of music you’re in the mood to listen to and it will use its magic to play songs that fit right in with that mood. So far my experience has been that its extremely accurate in the selections that it makes for you to listen to.
By creating a profile for free, Pandora will also remember the stations you’ve created based on your song or artist searches so that you can cue a past request right up when you get back to the page. I don’t know how many different stations you can have. I only have three at this point, but I would have to assume that it would be quite a few more than that.
There are a couple of limitations in functionality that people will probably dislike, but they’re understandable given licensing rules Pandora has to deal with from the the publishing companies. You can’t hear any song you want at any time. You do get a limited number of song skips per hour and you can sample pretty much everything they have, but you don’t get on demand songs. The record companies just won’t let that happen. So if you want to hear a specific song immediately, try your luck at YouTube.
My only other complaint that I have at this point is that some of the technical stuff doesn’t seem to want to play nice with Chrome. Some of the layout/CSS stuff doesn’t seem to want to agree with Chrome. Also, you have the ability to get more information about whatever artist is playing at the moment or additional information about the song your listening to. The problem comes in that the site provides this information in a pop-up, which Chrome blocks everytime, forcing me go through my pop-up blocker to get to the additional information I want to read. Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying.
Like I said before, if you’re looking to hear a specific song right away, this isn’t the place for you, but if you want to listen to the kind of music you want to hear, and maybe find a new artist or two along the way, Pandora is a great place to do that. Without a doubt, its an improvement on crappy radio stations that play the same songs over and over and make you sit through commercials all the time.
I’m totally stealing this idea from TJ (I hope he doesn’t mind), but I finally had a good shuffle that wasn’t interrupted by a law lecture or encore break from one of the PJ concerts I have on CD so I wanted to throw it out there.
Basically, on a “Shuffle Friday” he takes his iPod, hits the shuffle songs option and lists the first five that come up, sometimes with a few comments on the song or artist. Often his regular readers will do likewise and share their shuffles in the comments. I always thought it was an interesting way to see what other people listen to and chance to discover artists you may have never heard before.
So without further ado, here’s my shuffle.
1. World Wide Suicide – Pearl Jam (Pearl Jam): One of the singles off their most recent album. Social commentary on the war in Iraq with some great lyrics.
2. Forgive Me – Missy Higgins (On a Clear Night): Great singer/songwriter from Australia. Puts on a good show too.
3. Comatose – Pearl Jam (Verizon Center Concert): Another one off of the self-titled album. This is their performance from their show here in DC in 2005.
4. Goodnight My Friend – Vertical Horizon (Running on Ice): From the earlier mellow days of VH. This isn’t one of my favorite songs of theirs, but I could have done worse.
5. Soma – Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream): Some of that 90′s rock that I love so much. One of the lesser known tracks from Siamese Dream, which I “rediscovered” not too long ago and have been really enjoying again.
So that’s it. If you have the urge, shuffle your iPod and tell me what you come up with.
I’m completely hooked on this song right now. This one comes off of the second disc of the Lost Dogs and Rarities album. For context, Lost Dogs is a compilation of B-sides from singles they released and songs that were recorded during sessions for previously released albums that didn’t make it on the list. For what its worth, I think some of PJ’s best songs can be found on Lost Dogs, this being one of them.
I can’t really explain why I like it so much. Just a really cool, quiet vibe to the song. I will say that the opening guitar riff is perfect wake up to on my iHome.
Paint a picture visions only grey
Light your pillow. Lay back. Watch the flames.
I’ll tell a story but no one would listen that long.
It’s hard to imagine. It’s hard to imagine.
Ohh [x4]
Tear into yourself count days on your arm.
Ah the beating ticking like a bomb.
After having seen all that they saw.
It’s hard to imagine. It’s hard to imagine.
Ohh [x4]
Things were different then. All is different now.
I tried to explain. Somehow.
Things were different then. All is different now.
I tried to explain. Somehow.
Ohh [x4]
Things were different then. All is different now.
I tried to explain. I hope this works somehow.
Things were different then. All is different now.
I tried to explain. Oh, somehow.
Ohh [x4]
I love my Freakonomics daily desk calendar. Some totally random facts about totally random stuff. I thought these three days last week were worth sharing. For a little context, facts and figures are often bunched into a themed topic so here are the facts in the order I pulled them off.
10 December 2008 – On US roads, roughly 185,000 drivers, passengers, and motorcyclists have died since the last NASCAR racing death. (crazy to think about considering how fast those guys go)
11 December 2008 – According to the Centers for Disease Control, the rate of serious injury is higher for people who ride horses than for people who ride motorcycles. (great argument for me getting a motorcycle one day. yes I do want one, sorry mom.)
12 December 2008 – The people who get hurt riding horses are, like people who get hurt driving motor vehicles, often under the influence of alcohol. (You can get a ticket/arrested for riding a bike while drunk. I wonder if you can get an RUI if you’re drunk on a horse. What if the horse is drunk, but you’re sober?)
Interesting anecdote about the 10 December fact. One of my poli sci professors in college had a pretty interesting life before he settled down and got his PhD. He told a story once of hitchiking through Louisiana or some such place back in the day when hitchhiking was a more accepted form of transportation. He said he got picked up by a guy who raced cars professionally at a pretty high level. The guy said he felt safer on the track than he did on regular roads because even though they were driving so fast, everyone knew what they were doing and weren’t near as likely to do something stupid that would cause an a wreck.
So I’m pretty late to the game on this one but this CD is awesome. Music critics, who I rarely agree with, having been raving about Feist since her single “1234″ was used in an iPod Nano commercial (maybe even before that). I heard the first single and was definitely a fan, but I didn’t get a full introduction until my friend Dave, who listens to a ton of bands that most people have never heard of let me borrow this CD. (I think Dave is trying to get me to have some decent taste in music)
So hear is where I feel like I’m going to fail as a music critic. I have a very hard time explaining exactly why I like this album so much. The album as a whole is sort of a eclectic mix of folky, poppy, funk covered in a blanket of Indie. Cris says she reminds her a bit of Jonie Mitchell. One thing I definitely like is that the music is different from most things you hear these days, but is still accessible. Sometimes you get artists who get a ton of critical acclaim, but the music is just too out there for many people to really relate to. I feel that hurdle with Feist.
Another thing that I really appreciate is the variety that you get the in tone and mood of all of the songs on the album. While they are all quite different from each other in many ways, they all have an underlying thread that allows them to fit together comfortably on the same CD. Without pushing my poor skills of description further here are videos of two of her songs that I think nicely show some of the interesting variety.
Honey Honey
How My Hear Behaves
One of the new features in the latest version of iTunes is Genius. The Genius sidebar looks at information about songs that are in your library and recommends other songs from the iTunes music store that you might be interested in buying. There is also a feature that creates playlists for you based on your music. To create a Genius playlyst you select a song that is in your library, press the Genius button, and iTunes will cull through your library to put together a set of songs that it thinks will go well together, using your selected song as a starting point.
Needless to say, my first couple of tries met with some really mixed results. The playlist when I used Smashing Pumpkins Cherub Rock as my starting point was good enough to keep. However, when James Taylor turned up in a playlist based on Judith from A Perfect Circle, I quickly became skeptical. A few more tries with the Genius button met with equally random results.
The folks at Wired.com provide some explanation on how Genius works and a few simple ways to get better Genius results. I haven’t tried these fixes yet so I honestly don’t know how they’ll work out. One serious problem I’ll have is that I have adjusted the genre for many of the CDs that I’ve ripped to my computer and I’m not sure how much I want to try to go back and change those to match what iTunes has. I’ve had some serious disagreements with how iTunes places certain artists into genres; James Taylor’s Greatist Hits being labeled “Rock and Roll” is a perfect example.
If anyone has any experience with Genius or how to improve the results, please share.