Pandora Rocks

Thanks to the Music Genome Project you can have music wherever you go, delivered on internet “stations” that not only reflect your musical tastes, but actually offer suggestions that let you discover music that you didn’t know.

It all begins with the MGP. The Project started ten years ago when a group of “music loving technologists”…

….set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Here’s how it works.

You sign on to Pandora at: www.pandora.com. This is free, supported by ads that appear off to one side of your “station list.”

If you are using the service for free you are limited to …I believe…forty hours a month. I popped for the Pandora One service, add-free music 24/7, for 36 dollars a year.

Since I am a Jazz fan I began by entering the names of a couple of Jazz musicians I like… I think it was Muggsy Spanier and Joe Venuti…and Hey, Presto! I was off and running. When I couldn’t think of new artists to add, Pandora suggested new ones and I began to discover music I hadn’t known before.

As I write this I am listening to Jerry Mulligan and Stan Getz on my “Cool Jazz” station. I have also built, and continue to build, a general jazz station and a station devoted to string jazz.

Using Pandora has broadened my musical experience. I started my String Jazz station by entering “Stephane Grappelli” and “Django.” Pandora suggested artists I hadn’t known. Who knew there were so many great jazz string men?

Pandora “shuffles” the music on each of your stations so that you are not always listening to the same order. It will also shuffle music between any number of your stations if you wish. If Jazz is not your thing, there are all sorts of alternatives: Classical, Rock, Country, Reggae, Latin, R&B, etc etc etc.

Want Pandora on your iPod/iPhone? They have an app for that.

Give Pandora a try…I think it’s terrific.

There was once a small boy who loved hats. Cowboy hats, fireman hats, coonskin caps, yachtsman hats, baseball caps and so forth. He would often wear  two or three hats at the same time. When he helped his Daddy work around the house he would wear his “construction man” hat. If he was helping in the yard he would wear an old Cubs baseball cap backwards and that was his “garden man hat.”

One day his father said to him, “You have lots of hats. Did you know that you have a hat that I can see but you can’t?”

The little boy didn’t know this and he was puzzled. He reached up and rubbed the top of his head, but he couldn’t feel anything. He looked at himself in the mirror, but he couldn’t see anything. He got down on his hands and knees and scooted over to Amy, his dog, to see if Amy could smell anything.

Amy just rolled over to have her stomach scratched.

The little boy asked his father what sort of hat it was and his father said  “It’s a Hug-Me-Kiss-Me Hat” and you always have it on when I look at you, even under your other hats, and even when you’re asleep and even when you swim under water in the ocean.

The Pitch Man

I have a weakness for really great pitchmen. I love the inspired con artist on the street corner urging passersby to find the queen in the three-card shuffle; the woman selling cookware at a county fair who keeps the spiel rolling while she slices, shreds, boils and otherwise destroys perfectly good food.

I go to fairs and expos for the pitchmen. I have miracle polishes to make my wheel rims look like silver. I have a supply of magically absorbent sponges that suck up soda spills and doggy errors from rugs. I have a small jar of anti-fogging goo guaranteed to keep eyeglasses fog free.

I can be spellbound by a bible thumping evangelical preacher conjuring up images of hell and damnation like a modern day Jonathan Edwards.

Why do I buy that stuff or drop money in the collection plate? Because it seems only fair to repay an artist for his performance.

As wonderful as these masters of the pitch are, none of them can match the selling performance of the Greatest Pitchman in The World: Apple’s Steve Jobs. Jobs is the master of the laid back pitch.

I watched Jobs launch the iPad twice just for the pleasure of the pitch, slowly forgetting that what was being pitched was a big iPhone I couldn’t make a call on. I didn’t care… the pitch was just so neat.

A “pitch” is not just an advertising gimmick. The Geico Gecko is a wonderful advertising campaign, but it’s not a pitch. A pitch is word-driven, it’s a performance, a seamless oratorical flow. It is acting of the highest order, leading to belief. And now we will all want iPads.

Except the Fuhrer, who is very disappointed. (Click)