Date:August 18, 2008
Miracler:
RB
Location:
San Francisco
Some RB diversions:
Free chai while watching the latest Bollywood musical at Naz 8
Fave bike blog
Fave daily dose of music
Fave podcasts: Just the Facts, The Onion Network News, and Ted Talks
Fave waste of time
Fave YouTube thangs: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
22 comments:
When Richard "Rabbit" Brown sings: "How you wanted me to love you and you treat me mean
How do you want me to love you, you keep on treatin' me mean
You're my daily thought and my nightly dream
Sometimes I think that you too sweet to die
Sometimes I think that you too sweet to die
And another time I think you oughta be buried alive"
we all learn who is truly the loneliest monk...
-BT
"Sometimes I think that you too sweet to die, and another time I think you oughta be buried alive"
Honestly, that's one of my all-time favorite lyrics...
Many, many great introductions for me. Love lots of it, love the cover, love the YouTube of the starlings. Thank you Mr. Blank!
Lots of new-to-me stuff here. Yep - that Richard "Rabbit" Brown lyric pretty much spells pencils down for blues-writing. "Chokin Kind" is wonderful. It was nice of you to mix things up with a little hard bop here at the 3MPMP. And I'm totally having a daughter so I can name her Selda Bagcan Patterson.
"The Divided City" - I tore through my records looking for it, but no luck. Yet I know I've heard it a thousand times. Did "All Things Considered" use it as a bumper or something?
Just got back to town & played the Russ mixes to mini-family in family room. Liked, & am gonna keep, most of the songs -- which is unusual. I like how the songs are from different genres but somehow sound right together. Do we have any musicologists who can say why? Lotsa minor key songs? Certainly some production thing going on with non-overdubbed "thin"-sounding instruments -- tinny organ, stringy guitar. Particularly like the Jennings & Nelson waltz -- not my usual thing but I've been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash lately. And also the Buck 65, which I'd never heard before. Nice Jamaican-style groove. Speaking of which, I like the Al Barr & the Cimarons but prefer the Cimarons without Al Barr -- been listening to'em on Pandora. I like that DJ Spooky selects Trojan Records album it's from. Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood has a similar Trojan selector album that's great. I'm going to see Greenwood's classical piece tomorrow. Not a big Radiohead fan but that Greenwood is a hip music cat, as is Mr Blank.
Wow, Sam--you are one articulate music lover. I'm usually like "hey, these songs sound real good together!" but can't say why. Also, I've been checking out your Facebook updates of the Pandora stations you've been subscribing to, and I'm right there behind you, scooping up whatever you're doing. Good stuff.
Russ, another fine mix. my faves: the Brasilian stuff, that Darondo guy (soooper grooooovie) and a bunch of the album covers. Glad we made an exception there for you.
And as for that tawdry slut Betty Davis, I think my husband dated her back in the day. It did not end well. Not well at all.
I cannot believe what a wonderful is Pandora, & I'll probably have more to say about it on 9/15, when it's my turn to 3MPMP (that's a verb, isn't it?) -- if the government's special extra-high royalty rate structure for internet "radio" hasn't shut them down by then. Feel free to check out my Pandora stations -- http://www.pandora.com/people/openhandwebmaster -- but be warned that I have (the maximum) 100 stations, & most of them are experimental, & many of those are failed experiments that I will eventually delete. My only 2 stations that I'm happy with are Sam Koritz Station -- http://www.pandora.com/stations/e374d349c636913af403395b65879dc3bd857e8c2474ad0f -- & Sam's Swing Station -- http://www.pandora.com/stations/bd742705ccfa47dd7ca20e4638558840425ba2910f7abf8b
I'll probably merge them eventually.
Wowzer! I feel sullied after listening to that Betty Davis. I fear — or celebrate? - that I've become a nasty gal myself. The power of music, eh?
Thank goodness for Secos e Molhados' giddy love to bring me back from the funky funk.
Doug,
"Chokin' Kind" is a groover for sure; I believe it was recorded by Swamp Dogg at Muscle Schoals but I'm not 100% on that.
Origianlly I was thinking of an all instrumental mix with a lot more hard-bop but I figured that wouldn't be very listener friendly. Still, I had to find a way to get Tina Brooks in there.
I'm not sure if that particular Gabor Szabo tune has been used on NPR but I do see that he is being featured in the latest issue of Wax Poetics. I can't wait to read the the article.
As for Selda, she absofuckinlutely deserves to have babies named in her honor.
Thanks Sam, I'm gonna have to check out more of the Cimarons -- that's the only song of theirs that I'm familiar with. And I am def gonna have to spend more time with Pandora. I do love it but I get frustrated when they stop letting me fast forward. I understand why they have to have that limit in place; it really wouldn't be "radio" if you could just keep fast forwarding.
Daniel, I spent so much time hitting repeat when my pal, Jon, turned me onto Secos e Molhados I'm surprised my neighbors didn't complain.
And Stephen, yes! the starlings. I'm glad you clicked through to that. I've been a little bird crazy the past few years -- I love the crows in Cuepertino -- and starlings continue to amaze me.
I just listened to Russel's mix and My first standout favorites are: John Fahey's sweet song and Didn't I by Darondo. I consider myself to pretty up on old r&b and I never heard of Darando before.
My boys and I both grooved the whole time.
thanks!
Jeanne-Marie, I finally jumped into Fahey's massive catalog last year. Went a little crazy, as is my nature when I first discover something. All I can say is that his playing is soooo beautiful. And that version of "Sligo River Blues" is perhaps my fave. As for Daronda, I discovered him on one of my favorite blogs Soul Sides (http://soul-sides.com/). He got a lot of press last year when that single was re-released. Apparently he's a former pimp from the Bay Area with a storied past -- which I guess you can say about just about *any* former pimp.
I'm glad your boys liked the mix too, which makes me wish I had paid more attention to the love of "dad rock" (not meant as a pejorative) in these parts and made the mix a little more "family" friendly -- i.e. no Betty Davis or Ghostface. And it brings up another thing I've been wondering about and that is how/where people listen to these mixes. I always listen to them on my ipod while on the shuttle, commuting to work. And I sort of assumed most folks probably did the same but it sounds like people are mostly listening to the mixes while at home on their stereo. Something I'll keep in mind for next time.
I think you get 8 "skips" an hour in Pandora but you can set up up to 100 stations so that's not a problem for me -- I just go to another station when I want to skip & can't. You can also so something like set up 30 stations for the Beatles White Album -- one for each song. The Ob-La-Di station will play childish Beatlesque music, Rocky Raccoon will play Beatlesque guitar-pickin' folk, and Rev # 9 will play experimental sound recordings. And you get 8 skips per hour on each station.
BTW, you were right about being liberal with the thumbs-down.
Correction: you get 6 skips per hour on Pandora.
Ahh, you're a clever monkey. I'll probably get into Pandora more when I finally get around to picking up one of them fancy 3G iphones. Folks keep telling me it works great with the phone.
got the phone yesterday and am enjoying pandora quite a bit
thanks for the prodding. i suspect i'll make some good discoveries
I agree about the Pandora skipping limit being annoying...Sam, doesn't it take a while to go through all the songs of an album and create a station for each? Maybe it's just my tendency to want to de-clutter as much as possible and only preserve the "cream", but I'm not sure I would want 20 stations for the same artist. Also, considering the stations are supposed to get more refined as you keep rating more songs, I feel like having too many stations would defeat that purpose...unless you are just looking to be introduced to new artists here and there whom you can track down independently.
I'm definitely a thumbs-downer about 70% of the time and it doesn't take long for me to decide whether or not a song should go. That means I'm kept from further listening to a station after about, oh, 10 minutes. Also, if I'm enjoying a certain kind of mood with that station, I wouldn't want to break it and switch to something that I'm not feeling.
What I'm trying to say is, Pandora needs to stop with the rules. They are so good about being as liberal as possible for their users in so many other way and sticking to their guns (even it means taking one for the team), I'm surprised they enforce this at all.
I'm looking forward to your mix, Sam. Based on your Pandora activities that I'm constantly seeing on Facebook, I'm guessing you have a pretty wide range.
Thanks for this mix, R. My favorites: #1 Darondo, #2 Buck 65, #3 John Fahey
I actually don't put songs by the same artist in different stations -- I was just using that as example of how easy it is to skip more than 6 songs per hour, while continuing to listen to essentially the same sort of music. It's not possible to make a "cream of" everything station. Let's say you like slow dub & fast metal. You don't want to put them in the same station, or you'll end up with some unholy mixture -- late-'70s New Wave or something. So you want to have a number of stations rather than one superstation. My feeling is that if you really want to skip 1/3 of the songs a station is playing, then you're not in the mood to listen to that station, & should switch to one of the others. Pandora isn't going to relax the skip songs rule. To do so would violate the company's agreement with the music industry and they would be shut down. As it is, the guy who runs Pandora announced last week that they'll be shutting down if WA DC doesn't change their royalty structure, in which Internet "radio" pays much higher per-song royalties than does satellite radio (I think radio radio doesn't pay any royalties).
I've already chosen most of the songs I'll put in my mix -- I'm trying to keep it pretty cohesive -- a lot of instrumentals, Jamaican & UK stuff. I could do whole 'nother mix of swing tunes.
Best,
- Sam
Hiya Sam, I'm just tough to please when it comes to music, I guess :-P
As for the possibility of Pandora having to shut down, I'm aware of the legal ramifications of lifting the limit. I guess I wasn't very clear, but I was actually implying that it's time for the music labels to die.
"When the industry finally capitulates and realizes that they can no longer charge a meaningful amount of money for digital recorded music, a lot of good things can happen.
First, other revenue sources can and will be exploited, particularly live music, merchandise and limited edition physical copies of music. The signs are already there - the live music industry is booming this year, and Radiohead is releasing a special edition box set of their new album for £40.00 simultaneous to the release of their “free” digital album.
Second, artists and labels will stop thinking of digital music as a source of revenue and start thinking about it as a way to market their real products. Users will be encouraged (even paid, as radio stations are today) to download, listen to and share music. Passionate users who download music from the Internet and share it with others will become the most important customers, not targets for ridiculous lawsuits." ... and so on.
I tend to agree with these projections. And in doing so, I see Pandora as a brilliant platform for no-limit, free distribution of music to those who enjoy it most.
Hi Luce,
Yeah, anything that we consume would be better if it were free & unlimited, while maintaining the quality of a commercial product. Realistically, though, the government is going to keep enforcing recording owners' contracts, & the recording companies are going to keep selling their recordings, rather than giving them away. In fact, record companies are charging more than ever for rights to play their music: http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/pandora-could-b.html
Pandora is more likely to go out of business than to get rid of the rules they're legally obligated to follow. As it is, it's my favorite music media.
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