A Pandora Recommendation

If you're ever in the mood for some reflective, contemplative and completely ethereal, earth-transcendent, heavenly minded and holy music, then I suggest you listen to this Pandora music station, centered around the music of Palestrina. It's all acapella choral music that I've been listening to for the last hour or so. It's good for the soul, like stepping out into a warm rain shower in July, while the sun is shining.

I'm a Blues Man

I'm digging the blues...big time. All I listen to these days is my Son House station on Pandora. And the very, very cool thing is that I can stream Pandora on my iPhone! I work out in my shop and listen to the blues, or when I'm driving down to K'zoo I've got the blues playing. I love it!

Son House has an amazing voice and you can hear the depth of his humanity coming through every word he sings. I've learned a lot about the great blues artists and I'm discovering that the blues is my favorite music form. And I like the old blues--old school records with a scratchy record sound are probably the ones I like the best.

The blues make me happy.

If you haven't heard much of the blues lately, or never heard Son House before, click on my station and give it a listen.

Pandora

I have a new favorite radio station on Pandora. I was watching a documentary on the Blues by Martin Scorcese and was introduced to a blues singer I had never heard of before, Son House. I started a station and have been tweaking it for awhile. It's great having play in the background when I'm bopping around working on a project. It feels like it belongs in a hip, casual and eclectic coffee house. When I listen to the station it feels like I'm hanging out in that coffee shop on a cloudy, lazy Saturday with a newspaper in my hands and the coffee shop golden retriever at my feet. It makes me think of a sleepy little town, lined with great oak trees and strewn with antique stores with floors that creak. There's a mom and pop hardware store next door, complete with all of the original fixtures and a potbelly stove.

Not bad for a radio station, if you ask me. And it delivers.

A New Pandora Recommendation

I just discovered the singer Alison Sudol who is a young twenty-something daughter of English teachers, a lover of C.S. Lewis, Lewis Caroll and fairy tales, with an incredibly haunting voice. Her artist name is A Fine Frenzy, taken from A Midsummer's Night's Dream by Shakespeare.  With that kind of pedigree, no wonder I took to her music right away.  

A New Favorite

Here's one of my new favorite songs. It showed up on Pandora not long ago and soon I bought it from iTunes. It's an adaption of a Bob Dylan song, To Make You Feel My Love. Check it out.

Miscellany

Pandora rocks. I've said it before, but I really enjoy it. I think the definite way to go is to use the Quickmix feature. Alison has made the observation that when she listens to a station, the music all starts to sound the same. After hearing her make that remark, I began noticing the same thing. After discovering the Quickmix, I've mainly been using that, mixing three or four of my favorite stations and continuing to tweak the songs that get sent my way. It's reached a point now where every song that heads my way is one I really enjoy. I've been listening for the past couple of hours to my Quickmix and I've only booted a handful of songs, with only one repeated tune. So cool. As I tweak a few more stations, I'll add them to the Quickmix, thus giving me more variety, but still with songs I really enjoy. Oh, and one more cool thing about Pandora, (if you have an Apple): If you have the Airport Express, and if you use a freeware program called Airfoil, you can then send streaming audio like Pandora through your home stereo system. Now THAT'S cool! (Imagine that--a positive Mac comment. What's the world coming to?) My only frustration with Pandora has been the sound quality from only using the speakers on my computer and this could take care of that.

On a chocolate note, apparently when word got to the United Way offices about my auction item, the women in the office got excited and then began asking about "the chocolate guy." The wife of a guy I know works in the office and says he has a few women from there in mind for me when I'm ready to date. Apparently some of them will be at our concert and I'm thinking they'll be stopping at the chocolate table. Maybe it's true what they say about chocolate being the way to a woman's heart. I'll let you know...

On to a Netflix recommendation: if you're a fan of Shakespeare, I recommend the Canadian show called Slings & Arrows. I heard about it on NPR and thought I'd give a try. The story surrounds a Shakespeare company set in the New Burbage Theater. It's clearly inspired by Stratford and even uses some iconic Stratford actors such as William Hutt. It's not the tamest of shows--there's some sex and some dalliances here and there, but nothing lurid since it's a network show. The Canadians apparently can say the F-word on network TV however, which doesn't bother me, but in the interest of full disclosure I figure I'd let you know that you'll hear that once or twice per episode. It's a show that's really grown on me. The characters are believable and and most are likable, though there are a few that annoy me, but that just makes it more like real life, right? The production of a major Shakespeare play in each season is the backdrop to the characters and their lives. The production then becomes a foil for their personal stories and relationships which often parallel what goes on in Shakespeare. Each season's climax centers around the production of that season's play and I've had goosebumps watching and hearing Shakespeare's words unfold. It's reminded me how brilliant Shakespeare really was. I highly recommend it.

And finally, I think I'm done messing around with my blog. I liked the red, but found it hard to read, and the black background before was even harder on the eyes. Let me know if this is a pain on your eyes, will ya?

A Pandora Recommendation

I recommend creating a K T Tunstall station. Good stuff from this Scottish singer.

Josh Rouse Again

This'll make you happy:



And Alison, since you haven't heard Rise, this one's for you:

Joshua Radin

I think so far my favorite find on Pandora is Joshua Radin. He's just been around a year or two, and his first album, We Were Here, was released last year. He was an amateur musician, but a friend of his was such a fan, he helped him gain nationwide notoriety by getting one of his pieces put into the soundtrack of the TV show Scrubs. I suppose it's handy having a friend who's an actor. Apparently the viewers liked the tune so much, they clamored for more and a new recording artist was created.

I bought one of the tunes, Closer, and listened to it many times over. I finally stopped at Best Buy the other day and picked up his disc. It's rare that I find a CD where I like every tune, but this is it. I think if I were a singer, this is they type of music I would want to make. Joshua Radin I think has catapulted to the place of being my favorite artist. It's music that finds me grinning from ear to ear on a regular basis.

I highly recommend buying the CD.

A New Pandora Recommendation

I'm really digging a guy named Joshua Radin. I created a station of his stuff--very cool, mellow tunes. Let me know if you like him.

My current favorite

Pandora's so, so cool! I'm always discovering new artists and new songs. Right now my favorite song is called Rise by a guy named Josh Rouse. I'd never heard of him before Pandora.

At least check the tune out on iTunes, or better yet, buy it. It's worth a buck to hear it. It's happy music, with a hip, 70's inspired groove that can't fail to raise the spirits. It's perfect music for a road trip too. I'd say I've listened to it at least 20 times.

Pandora Kicks You Know What!

I have really derived a lot of enjoyment lately from Pandora. It's so cool! My latest acquisition is a song by Josh Radin called Closer. I've never heard of the artist or the song, but as it's played several times over the past week, I decided it's a winner and bought it. I'm adding about three songs a week or so, and by now I'm really dialing in a few of my radio stations such that it's rare that there's a song I don't like on it.

I think there are ways to link to another person's list of radio stations. I'd like to find out how to do that, and if any of the three people who read this blog use Pandora, let me know!

More Kudos for Pandora

So I've been using Pandora for just a few days. I've already bought some songs that I really like that I wouldn't have any clue about if it wasn't for Pandora.

Check out Astair by a guy named Matt Costa. It's one of those tunes you can listen to over and over, if you ask me.

And Blindsight by Glenn Phillips is a great late night, mellow tune, which is perfect for right now as I type this. Glenn Phillips was the lead singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket and he was the warm up band for Nickel Creek when I heard them earlier this summer. I really enjoyed him but had forgotten about him until this showed up on Pandora.

And my brother turned me on to Neko Case this summer, so I started a Neko Case "station." So far I've bought two of her songs which I think are very, very cool: Things That Scare Me, and Hold On, Hold On.

Good stuff. I think my music collection is going to expand exponentially.