<p>Pandora lets you type in an artist or a song, then it combs the data base for similar artists that you might enjoy. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.pandora.com%5B/url%5D”>www.pandora.com</a></p>
<p>Who is going to find all these sites in the Empty Nest?</p>
<p>I’ve been running Pandora for a while now, I love it. Strong recommendation from this corner.</p>
<p>Cheers,</p>
<p>It does seem like a cool site. Still, when I typed in my favorite artist it didnt recognize her: **Leslie Feist<a href=“she’s%20wonderful”>/b</a>.</p>
<p>Ill try others. Thanks.</p>
<p>There’s about a 0% chance that Pandora wouldn’t recognize Feist, since she’s way over the hipster popularity threshold. Maybe you should try “Feist” simply, since she doesn’t use the “Leslie” in her solo career.</p>
<p>Anyway, let me predict what Pandora would tell you: Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, Jenny Lewis/Rilo Kiley, Emiliana Torrini, Postal Service/DCFC, Edie Brickell, Rickie Lee Jones. Maybe Cat Power, Beth Orton.</p>
<p>One of the cool things about Pandora is that you can also put in a song title and then get more songs similar to it as opposed to just putting in the band name. For instance, I like some Creed songs but when Pandora was chosing one hard rock song after another I realized I needed to narrow what it was I liked about their music and put in the song, “My sacrifice”, which is why I bought the cd - just for that song. I’ve been listening to them for about year after a recommendation from my son (even posted it on here) and really like it. It’s like your own radio show without annoying dj’s or commercials.</p>
<p>(I was right about using “Feist”, wrong about all the artists except Beth Orton. Generally, Pandora went way more obscure.)</p>
<p>After a few weeks listening to Pandora, I found it a tad repetitive, so I migrated to [LastFM[/url</a>]. It takes a few minutes to set up, but ones you have it going, it’s great. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://nugs.net/]Nugs.net[/url”>http://nugs.net/]Nugs.net[/url</a>] is one of my favorite places for streaming music. They have a nice radio station for those who like non-mainstream rock (it’s also heavy on The Dead, Allman Brothers, and some other “classic” rock bands). You can also listen to [url=<a href=“http://stash.nugs.net/stash.asp]entire”>http://stash.nugs.net/stash.asp]entire</a> live concerts](<a href=“http://www.last.fm/dashboard/]LastFM[/url”>http://www.last.fm/dashboard/) and a [podcast</a>](<a href=“http://nugs.net/nugscast/060824.aspx]podcast”>http://nugs.net/nugscast/060824.aspx)through them.</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>Thanks, you’re right.</p>
<p>Interestingly, it didn’t suggest the band she emerged from and still collaborates with, “Broken Social Scene” (fun and interesting band). She’d be a hard one to pigeon-hole. </p>
<p>I saw her in the city last winter, she was bunched-up with a bunch of other artists–mostly from the loose collective around “Broken Social Scene”–and she sounded not at all like them, it was like seeing Neil Young warm-up James Carter. </p>
<p>She’s as idiosyncratic as they come, in pop. “Let it Die” was, for me, the album of the year in 2005. I would have added Sufjan Stevens to the list (though tipping melancholy), but Beth Orton is right on (though not as wide-open as Leslie). Maybe even Ani DiFranco (another of my favorites). Another comparison: the Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach collaboration on “Painted from Memory” (sans a great voice). Chan Marshal is close, but no cigar. </p>
<p>Cheers,
Very cool site!</p>
<p>Well, no Broken Social Scene because that’s not how Pandora works. It has some weird analysis protocol which uses people to break down songs based on things like rhythm pattern, melody, instrumentation, language, etc., but that doesn’t even notice actual organic connections. Interesting, but still pretty primitive and hit-or-miss in terms of actually identifying things one would like. I prefer the old fashioned methods – research, talking to knowledgeable people (like my daughter, who, as librarian of her college radio station, hears approximately everything), reading liner notes, listening to a lot of stuff.</p>
<p>If you haven’t heard them, I would check out Heap and Spektor, who are eclectic in the some of the same ways Feist is, and also, like her, more grounded in European song-forms than most American post-folkies. (Sorry to use the “E” word, but it’s appropriate here.) Also Fiona Apple – I just remembered her. And Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes, Gothic Archies), who is sort of the reincarnation of Cole Porter. And Bright Eyes, for that matter, who has a nice cover of “Mushaboom”.</p>
<p>Sufjan: everybody likes him except me. I can like individual songs (“Chicago” – the theme song for my daughter’s move last fall – and “Casimir Pulaski Day”), and appreciate the instrumentation and all, but if I hear more than a couple songs in a row I am bored. But, hey, if you like cute, hippie, SNAGgy, fundamentalist Christians – and you probably do – he’s Da Man.</p>
<p>Interesting site. Seems very hit or miss. I didn’t like much that it associated with k.d. lang. Seems the narrower the style of the artist you enter, the better. </p>
<p>If an artist has a long, varied career spanning different genres it really doesn’t know what to do. Everything But the Girl: is that the acoustic phase, the smooth jazz phase, the electro/trance phase? It can only handle one.</p>
<p>Liked most of the Loudon Wainwright III associations though.</p>
<p>
and if you’re a Christ-o-phob (anti-christ-ite?) stay away from Bach…and of course Sufjan. Imagine saying you need to like Orthodox Jewry, or even understand it, to like the Klezmatics, as I do. </p>
<p>Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side</p>
<p>*andy would bicycle across town
in the rain to bring you candy
and john would buy the gown
for you to wear to the prom
with tom, the astronomer
who would name a star for you
but im the luckiest guy
on the lower east side
cuz i got wheels
and you want to go for a ride</p>
<p>harry, is the one I think you’ll marry
but it’s chris that you kissed after school
well im a fool
there’s no doubt
but when the sun comes out
and only when the sun comes out
im the luckiest guy
on the lower east side
cuz ive got wheels
and you want to go for a ride
the day is beautiful and so are you
my car is ugly but then, im ugly too
i know you’d never give me a second glance
when the weathers nice all the other guys
don’t stand a chance
i know professor ***
makes you feel like a woman
but when the wind is in your hair you laugh like a little girl
so you share secrets with lou
but we’ve got secrets too
well one, i only keep this heap for you
cuz im the ugliest guy on the lower east side
cuz i’ve got wheels
and you want to go for a ride*</p>
<p>Guess who? I used to have this sung to me over and over.</p>
<p>For that reason, I’ve got everything the man’s done…but then, I’m not prejudiced in my musical tastes; for me–and Miles–there’s two kinds of music, good and bad. Fwiw, anyone who would call Sufjan Stevens a fundamentalist Christian is a little week in identifying the religious-artistic experience. He gets exactly zero play on any “Christian radio” from what I hear, and I don’t need to guess why. </p>
<p>For instance, I wouldn’t think you should need to identify as a far left lesbian to like the musical/personal experience of Ani DiFranco, as I do; or, Jewish-Buddhists to like Leonard Cohen. </p>
<p>Like Fritjof Shoun, I more or less acknowledge the transcendental unity of religious experience–all religious experience: and music as such is as religious as we human beings get. For me, religion and music are non-political if not non-sectarian: from Sharam Nazari, to Ofra Haza; Bach to Mahler; Ani to Sufjan. </p>
<p>Give it a shot, JHS.</p>
<p>I was a DJ on the Dartmouth Radio Station my freshman year. Unfortunately, I got bored with it.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Answer is…</p>
<p>Magnetic Fields</p>
<p>I’ve given Stevens plenty of shots, since a year ago he was approximately ubiquitous, including my car anytime there was offspring in it. The Christian part was a little dig, sorry . . . I don’t actually even notice it, although my daughter, who likes him enough to pay attention to the lyrics and was familiar with his pre-Illinoise work, does. I think his absence from Christian radio relates both to style (i.e., he doesn’t sound like country or lite metal) and to his marketing decisions. In terms of his actual background, education, family, and community, that’s who he is.</p>
<p>I appreciate religious music (and poetry – I am kind of a Spanish and Italian Renaissance fan) plenty. MY favorite records from 2005 included Cheb i Sabbah’s versions of Maghrebian (and one Yemeni Jewish) women’s religious music, La Kahena, King Britt’s remixes of Sister Gertrude Morgan, Death Cab For Cutie’s very spiritual Plans, and Bright Eyes, who pretty much wears his faith on his sleeve, too. I even liked Matisyahu the first 100 times, and if there’s one religious group I have emotional problems with it’s Lubavitcher Hasids. Not to mention the usual suspects – Bono (back when I liked U2), Bach, Aretha, Palestrina, Mozart, Rev. Gary Davis.</p>
<p>
This would describe quite a few popular and successful artists. As for his lack of Christian radio play, Id say it has more to do with a line, and others like it, in a song you claim to like: </p>
<p>
The last line, of course, refers to the life of his girlfriend being taken. I choke-up when I hear it.</p>
<p>The vulnerability and doubt expressed in this line does not even approach any orthodoxy in any religion. I would suspect, not in orthodox Christianity either. Fwiw, I think the verdict is already in on this one: Sufjan is an artist with artistic sensibilities, not an evangelist with Christian dogma. </p>
<p>As for Sufjans lack of commercial or college radio play, Id say it would have more to do with his non-ironic faith in god. The biggest college radio in the NYC area is the Fordham station, I listen to it regularly; even with all his critical acclaim, Ive yet to hear him played there. Maybe I just missed it. Heard him on WNYC onceit was a classical music show wherein he was compared to the arrangers of the tin-pan alley era great show. I’m not without criticism of the man, I have to be in the mood. Illinois was great, as was “Michigan” and Seven Swans." His latest–out-takes from Illinois–is tedious.
Do you mean his agnosticism or his bisexualism? ;)</p>
<p>Seems you have an eclectic taste in music JHS, too bad this interesting eclecticism does not extend to expressions of faith and religion in the small victories and endless defeats of a life lived. </p>
<p>Its all so fascinating; so human and so divine–even, I would argue, within the faith that unites the largest community of ‘believers’ on this continent–Christianity. I expect they are good people, by and large.</p>
<p>Perhaps Im reading you wrong and this is all intended to be ironic. Was that a wink?</p>
<p>Huh?</p>
<p>I would argue that orthodoxy in every religion I know about makes a place for vulnerability, certainly (it may even be required), and even doubt, since the lurking presence of doubt is surely part of human religious experience. But I don’t see “doubt” per se in that lyric. It’s questioning, certainly, but from within a religious framework. (And it’s very moving, too.) There’s no suggestion that God doesn’t exist, more a sense of weariness at His mystery and the challenge of loss. </p>
<p>I also really like the reversal-echo of one of my favorite “Christ” songs, U2’s “With Or Without You”, where the speaker’s plaint is that Christ continually gives himself away. Too much giving, too much taking, too much beauty, too much pain. It’s Jonah. </p>
<p>I don’t understand why you assume that I would draw a dichotomy between an evangelist and an artist. One can be both; John certainly was. One can even be a dogmatic evangelist and an artist: see Blake. Anyway, I don’t think I suggested that Stevens is a dogmatic evangelist, only that he is an artist for whom Christianity is a constant, important part of his life, as is well illustrated by that lyric.</p>
<p>Bright Eyes, yes, is agnostic I suppose, and nothing like Stevens in his religious identification, but he seems to spend an awful lot of time worrying about God, much more than a non-religious person would. I wouldn’t argue that he is orthodox anything, only that he cares about religious issues more than most semi-alcoholic, pill-popping, serially nonmonogamous songwriters outside of Nashville. (And you say he’s bisexual??!? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but he sure seems to hit a lot of balls out of the park batting right, so to speak. I honestly had never heard that he was a switch-hitter. My interest in Bright Eyes has not included learning much about his actual life, except involuntarily, but the first thing you ever hear about him is the women.)</p>
<p>Sufjan on the radio: In Philadelphia, last August and September, on the Penn station (similar to WFUV, but less folky; not really college radio), about every 15 minutes, alternating between Chicago and Jacksonville. (That was hyperbole, but not much.) Illinoise got voted #4 in the year-end listeners’ poll. Plus it got played on the Princeton station and in a lot of stores, restaurants, car stereos, iPods, etc., and, I think, on some WB TV shows.</p>