Pandora

[Scott Dolan]

np: Paul Grabowsky


Never heard this cat before, sounds really nice. Has Branford and Lovano on the front line. Good stuff.

[Chris D]

So I start a Coleman Hawkins station, and the first track it plays after Bean is from Lester Young (!) Well, OK, if you say so....

[rollhead]

So I start a Coleman Hawkins station, and the first track it plays after Bean is from Lester Young (!) Well, OK, if you say so....

Lester Young (gasp!) next thing you know Ben Webster (wow!) will come up!

To Tristano. Um, OK.

Chris ... what would the proper selection be? Herbie Nichols?

[Chris D]

Lester Young (gasp!) next thing you know Ben Webster (wow!) will come up!?

I just found it funny. After all, Pres took a lot of heat for having a tone so different that Hawk's. Whose wife was it who took Lester aside and said, "We'll find you a tone"? Update: After five selections, three have been from Young, one from Webster and just the original from Bean.

Chris ... what would the proper selection be? Herbie Nichols?

I didn't think it improper, but it was not the first selection I would have chosen. Nichols, yep, maybe Andrew Hill or Elmo Hope.

[Boris Badenov]

Well, it gave me John Denver, Jim Croce and -- worst of all -- Bread for Jesse Winchester. On the other hand, it also gave me Merle Haggard and Mel Tillis!

[Boris Badenov]

Petula Clark turned up the 5th Dimension (cool; I love Marilyn McCoo's voice) doing "Never My Love," then Yoko Ono doing "I Want My Love to Rest Tonight"!

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Cecil Taylor's station swings wildly from the sublime to the cliched.

But so far The Louvin Brothers station is consistently good, Bill Monroe, Merle Haggard, Tommy Collins, Hank Snow, Ray Price, plus the boys themselves.

[steve(thelil)]

I think it is "sincere" (no ulterior motives) and should get better the more songs it "knows". It seemed not to know my choices of novelty records / Artists (such as Senator Bobby's Wild Thing, They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha, Dean Friedman's Ariel).

Nonetheless, it is REALLY fun to play around with. It lets you do 10 stations for free. I'm cooling my jets before deciding whether to pay for more.

[Scott Dolan]

I'm not rushing to subscribe either.

But, $36 for a year isn't unreasonable at all.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

I think it is "sincere" (no ulterior motives) and should get better the more songs it "knows".

I'm not so sure. My Doo Wop station is starting to get a lot of repeats. I'm wondering if they have a limit to the number of songs on a station, rather than an ever expanding search. In that sense, stuff like the CT station is a better deal since the cuts are longer.

[Surfer]

np: Paul Grabowsky


Never heard this cat before, sounds really nice. Has Branford and Lovano on the front line. Good stuff.

I have the Grabowsky Tinkler Rex Live disk and its very good. They're from Melbourne.

[Scott Dolan]

I have the Grabowsky Tinkler Rex Live disk and its very good. They're from Melbourne.

I have the album they played from today on my wish list at Barns And No Bull. The one track I heard was outstanding.

[Scott Dolan]

Now why in the hell was this moved to Other Music?

[steve(thelil)]

Itchy trigger finger.

[groover]

The Grateful Dead station started out with an impressive deep catalogue selection, "Morning Dew/The Eleven" from "Two from the Vault", then daringly followed up with "Angel of 8th Avenue (Live)" by Mott the Hoople.

A couple of interesting live Garcia band selections followed before returning to more live Dead, "Walkin' Blues" from the recent "Truckin' up to Buffalo".

[Scott Dolan]

My Coltrane station opened up with the long version of Ghosts this morning.

They really know how to sweet talk a guy.

[groover]

One interesting thing is that they identify the Grateful Dead with major key modality, which, while largely true, means there are a few tunes in the Dead's repertoire that their Grateful Dead station will probably never play, like "The Other One", "Estimated Prophet", and "Loser".

[groover]

I started a station based on the Grateful Dead's "The Other One", and it did recognize minor key tonality as one of the criteria I'm now looking for. Yet it isn't playing any Dead, not even "The Other One", since it doesn't consider minor key tonality a characteristic of their music.

However, it did play Jeff Beck's version of "'Cause We've Ended As Lovers", and a tasty Howard Wales-Jerry Garcia live track, "Space Funk".

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Yet it isn't playing any Dead, not even "The Other One", since it doesn't consider minor key tonality a characteristic of their music.

Have you rejected any of their choices? My experience has been that when you tell them not to play something they often respond with a song from the station-name group or artist.

[groover]

Have you rejected any of their choices? My experience has been that when you tell them not to play something they often respond with a song from the station-name group or artist.

No, I haven't. It's interesting enough to see what they come up with on their own, which has so far been some intriguing instrumental tracks from obscure bands such as Y & T, Friends of Dean Martinez, The Mercury Program, plus another fusion jam from the Wales-Garcia live set and a couple of tracks from the venerable Quicksilver "Happy Trails" live album.

[Kevin L]

Seems to be weak in the "world" music area. I plugged in Ravi Shankar, thinking that would be an easy hit but no dice. Caetano Veloso came through but almost everything in the string wasn't really in the same ballpark (Johnny Mathis, Jimmy Buffet, Elvis Costello), only one Brazilian.

From the Pandora FAQ: "The collection is amazingly diverse and covers every type of music except classical and world."

[Brian Olewnick]

From the Pandora FAQ: "The collection is amazingly diverse and covers every type of music except classical and world."

Ah, thanks Kevin. Though it did have at least a smattering of Brazilians.

I always, of course, appreciate isolating millions of musicians who don't happen to be American or British into "world". Us and them, baby.

[Scott Dolan]

Rock on, (Ollie)!!!

[Ron Thorne]

My first foray into this Music Genome Project wasn't exactly impressive. Nor was it surprising, frankly.

First, I entered the song title Witchi-Tai-To. Pandora then asked me if I meant to search for:

• Witchi-Tai-To by Brewer & Shipley
or
• Witchi Tai To by Harper's Bizarre

_____

Then, I entered Jim Pepper, to which it responded:

Is Jim Pepper an Artist Name or a Song Name?

I went along and clicked on Artist Name, to which it responded:

We found several. Which Jim Pepper do you mean?

• Art Pepper
• Jim Glaser
• Pepper Adams

_____

Oy!

[Jazzzoline]

There is some similar thing on a canadian site
radiolibre.ca
I didn't try it, but I hope canadian music can be found there. Not that Céline Dion couldn't be found on Pandora, but...


Strange Internet has to be split "by country".

[groover]

My first foray into this Music Genome Project wasn't exactly impressive. Nor was it surprising, frankly.

Unfortunately, Jim Pepper's recordings are hard to find anywhere these days, aren't they? Try something more widely available and you'll get better results. They do seem to have a pretty good jazz library at their disposal, once you tap into it.

[rollhead]

I e-mailed a comment on Pandora to its head honcho, Tim Westergren, he responded, in part, with this:

"We definitely need to fill out our jazz collection - hopefully people are sending in suggestions to suggest-music (at) pandora.com "

[rollhead]

by the way ... i told a guy here at work about Pandora. He tuned in on it, and sent a nice e-mail to Tim at Pandora.

My buddy here at work just got a "Pandora" t-shirt in the mail.

Isn't that the shits? I spread the word, and my buddy gets the t-shirt.

What's with that?

[Scott Dolan]

It just adds more to your downtrodden aura.

[rollhead]

It just adds more to your downtrodden aura.

A fellow gets his ass kicked, and you have to rub salt in his wounds.