Pandora’s Box

Okay, let’s get this out of the way. My first experience with Internet radio was with Last.fm. And I know there are many others: Deezer.com, Mee Mix, Musicovery, Play It, Slacker, as well as many other similar kinds of services. I really liked the way that Last.fm worked, but it stopped working for me, so I switched to the Music Genome Project and Pandora.

It is nothing new, but if you aren’t using it, you should be. I’ve found so many great artists this way. Just tonight, I discovered Pink Anderson (the Pink of Pink Floyd) and the Red House Painters. I feel a little ashamed that I only discovered them tonight, but I can’t be smart all the time. Red House Painters came up right after I entered American Music Club as a new station. I discovered Anderson on my Old Blues stations that I have been tinkering with for a good six months now.

The great thing about Pandora is that I use it while cooking and sometimes (every night) someone comes on who causes me to stop everything and find out more. And, of course, it is good for commerce, because I just bought three new CDs (sorry folks, I still like CDs—and albums; I bought Presenting… Julie Andrews and the first John Prine album last night) because of what I heard on Pandora tonight.

The bad side is that I heard The Kid With the Replaceable Head by Richard Hell and the Voidoids. This made me think, “I should really get Destiny Street again—more because of the liner notes than anything (it isn’t as good as Blank Generation) because Hell makes it clear whose guitar solos are whose (not that I really need to be told; Ivan Julian is a better guitarist than Robert Quine—I just think Quine is more creative, which is not a slam against Julian; he’s great and enormously under-rated). But the only copy available is almost $100. I suppose that isn’t so bad when you consider that you can’t find my second book (now out of print) for less than $100—usually around $150). I don’t even own a copy!

Update: 25 July 2010

Destiny Street has dropped to $30, while by book has gone up to $200 used or $400 new. One good bit of news: I found out that the book was not dropped; the publisher just went out of business.

0 thoughts on “Pandora’s Box

  1. I still buy CDs, too! I am glad to see a fellow CD aficionado. At one point I had over 1000 CDs, but due to my rather larger Heroin and Cocaine habit at the time I sold most of them. The only ones that I did not sell were ones the stores would not take. Slowly I have been rebuilding and I probably have a little over 100 now. I would have to count them to get the exact number, but I am too lazy.

  2. @Kat – Life is much easier without a large dope habit! I’m glad your collection is on the mend.

    I once bought a downloaded video. It sucked. And then the computer hard disk died and I lost it. There ought to be a better system, but all that Apple and company have done is try to make more money rather than making the system work better for [i]paying[/i] customers.

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