music, online

here are some small reviews about ways to listen to music online:

Pandora: Remember when this one came out? It was crazy. I haven't been that into pandora for a few years, and especially now with the ads they put on.  The music selection was too repetitious and I often didn't like the things they chose for me to listen to.

lastfm: I don't really get lastfm, except that I know I have an account there and I've listened to stuff.  Pretty similar to pandora but I like the selection better.  More independent artists, and you can listen to friends' "stations" of stuff they like.  You can compile artists you like and they play a selection -- I think.  Also, I think there is a way to hook up your itunes to it but I don't know about that.

8tracks:  My housemate told me about 8tracks.  On this site, you can listen to tons of playlists made by other users. I liked it pretty good for about a day, but then couldn't seem to find any playlists that I found consistently to my liking. There aren't ads, and theoretically this would be a good way to discover new music.

Grooveshark: My other housemate told me about grooveshark, and so far it's my favorite of these sites.  You put in an artist or song name, and you can add tracks to your play queue. I don't know how this is legal, but so far I've been able to hear lots of music I've been curious about, but didn't want to purchase. So far I think every artist I've searched has come up in their database. Somehow it searches all music uploads and makes them available. No ads!

Bonus Options:

NPR Tiny Desk Concert: I love getting these via the "All Songs Considered Podcast." Very famous musicians like Bela Fleck, or lesser known, but talented musicians perform a few songs at the NPR music office.  I've liked or really liked everything I've heard here.  It has been a good way to discover new music.

Snore and Guzzle Radio Hour:  Eclectic hours of music put together by an individual and downloadable to your computer. Thematic descriptions such as: " I’d say this radio hour would be a good soundtrack to accompany the study of the anatomy of flight and bird migration patterns."

Soundcheck's Critic's Week: The Decade in Rock

Now that I drive into work, I find myself listening to a lot of NPR, a station which used to be reserved for special road trips upstate. When I was able to leave work a little early last week, I managed to catch Soundcheck, while they were having a week where they reviewed the best music of the decade. I caught Critic's Week: The Decade in Rock, which was really interesting, and made me think much harder about a decade when I felt like music really wasn't at it's peak. I guess there was so much Britney Spears and Good Charlotte that it sort of blocked out The Arcade Fire and The Strokes and Regina Spektor and Muse and all the other great artists from the 2000s in my mind.

Ryan Schreiber, the featured critic, also noted the way that music became more and more individualized in the 2000s, citing the fact that you could look on anyone's iPod and find music that almost no one but them would know. I didn't finish the program, but I hope he expounded on the fact that having an iPod at all helps to create a sort of cult of music as personality. The collectivity of music (starting out at the basics, as most of music being created by a band, and moving toward collective music experiences like massive concerts which are then aired on television to an even more massive group of people) is starting to disintegrate just a little in the face of such individualizing technology.

Anyway, the small review is this: it was a very interesting program, and you should go listen to it. I'm planning to listen to the whole thing, and then hopefully check out the rest of the week's episodes.

88.1, non-corporate radio

There is such a thrill on hearing a song you like on the radio. It's totally different then playing it yourself. And that is what I like about the radio -- the element of synchronicity. If you hear something good, or something familiar, it feels important, like you are part of something larger than yourself.

That's why I got such a big kick out of listening to the radio as I entered adolescence, but I think we all know the limitations of corporate-run radio with constant advertising and limited music selection. I discovered 88.1 WKNC in high school when we used to (illegally) eat lunch in the parking lot with the radio on, and often heard the most ridiculous songs like one about T-rexes and their T-friends, and that one Streets song that has an alcoholic and pothead arguing about who is tougher.

I discovered other charms of this station, which is actually the college station of NC State University out of Raleigh. (They apparently have an unusually strong radio transmitting power for a college station so I can hear it almost everywhere in Durham, except for [infuriatingly] my childhood bedroom where it is a little fuzzy.) Late at night, driving in the car in summer, the station plays strange ambient techno that made midnight excursions around deserted downtown Durham extra weird.

Another charming thing are the PSAs that replace ads. You can hear a rap about not drinking and driving, an invitation to host international students in your home, and energy saving tips. You can look up their playlists, archived by time, on their website and so most people I know have these scraps of paper in the car with all these different times scralled in while-driving handwriting to look up when they get home.

AWESOME: Average Girl at Hank's Saloon

Saw an incredible show by Average Girl last night at Hank's Saloon. This makes 3 concerts that I've seen since last Friday (sort of a record for someone who goes to maybe 3 concerts a year). We also saw Youssou N'Dour on Friday (great, but too long) and David Byrne on Monday (sounded great, but we were so far away that we couldn't really hear, let alone see, so we left after a few songs).

It's pretty rare that I enjoy a concert, particularly one by a friend-of-a-friend's band, but this was really great, and I'm thrilled that I went. The music was awesome, the venue was cool (and right near Blue Marble!), and the crowd was really unassuming and friendly. There really isn't much more you can ask for.

Definitely check out Average Girl (either online or live) if you get a chance. They put on a fun show and the music is really very good.

A Larum

I heard about this cd this summer while listening to NPR (where I hear about most things). I ended up buying it on itunes, after listening to this interview with musician, Johnny Flynn. I was especially charmed during a segment in the radio interview when the journalist asked about his journal and ask him to read a bit from it. He shared some thoughts, written in verse, apparently composed on the bus on the way over to the radio station.

This use of traditional verse to explore contemporary themes is part of what I find most interesting in the songs. The use of old-folky instruments like banjo, fiddle, accordion, and guitar create pretty simple music that I think contrasts well with the words which apparently originated as poetry that Flynn wrote and then decided to set to music -- though I don't think they really come from any kind of first hand experience. Rather, they seem to be ruminations on old stories -- like Shore to Shore which seems to be about a bus crash in London, or Hong Kong Cemetary which I think is about visiting the place where his grandfather is buried in Hong Kong. I can't explain why, but I feel like the songs pull off the slightly melancholic tone and uses of words such as "flotsom" and "ne'er." The title comes a stage direction found in Shakespeare's plays -- reflecting Flynn's background acting in a Shakesperean theatre troupe -- and means, noise or commotion.