Carleen directed me to a sweet little site called last.fm - a music social networking site which allows you to share your musical tastes with those who have similar tastes. You download a little program which syncs up with your favorite music player (iTunes, in our case) and uploads the list of titles that you listen to. After a few days of listening to music, it’ll hook you up with people who listen to similar music as you. The problem in my case, is that I’m not looking for similar music, I’m tired of listening to the same crap I have listened to since college. Once upon a time I was very musically savvy. Now however I’m so out of the loop (and to be honest I don’t mind being out of the loop - most music you’d normally hear today is horrible), that I need the help of a site like this to get “hooked up”.
Man, I couldn’t even get this post finished without Liam waking up. Now you know why you haven’t heard from me too often.
LATER: Ok, I had a few more things I wanted to say before I call this post quits. First off, I wanted to point out that in the comments Chrissy calls me “old”. Granted she has a point, and she highlights something that I wish I wouldn’t do - generalize, especially negatively. Most music today isn’t horrible, let’s face it, I may have been playing drums for 12+ years, but I’m no Neil Pert, so who am I to criticise? A more accurate statement would have been: “Much of the music that I hear of late does not appeal to my aural persuasion.” But I will point out, young lady, that I’m only 4 years your senior 
Back to last.fm. I have hit a few bad spots on the site, although they’re not enough to turn me away - yet. The site is a tad slow, actually, awfully slow sometimes. But that probably comes with any social networking site, so that’s hard to blame them. Compared to MySpace last.fm is Speedy Freakin’ Gonzalez. Also, some of the music recommendations are a bit “off”. Certainly, the recommendations are spot on as far as what I’m listening to, however for example they recommended Nirvana (a valid recommendation, based off what I’ve been listening to). Now, when they recommend something, they list a few bands that that band sounds like, so you can get an idea what they sound like. Well they compared Nirvana to Green Day. Huh?! Carleen pointed out that it may be that instead of being based off what the band sounds like, it’s based more off what people who listen to that band also listen to. So in other words, people who listen to Nirvana, also listen to Green Day.
I’m also hoping to get more obscure recommendations, most of what I’ve been recommended so far I’ve heard before, I’m looking for new music, a new sound, not more of the same. That’s a feature I’d like to see, a setting where you can determine what kind of recommendations you get.
Still, I do have to give it a few days, they do say that recommendations get better the more you listen.
My biggest problem is that I’m clueless as to what I really want to listen to. After the Jam band/Grunge era of the 90’s came to a close, I was pretty clueless, musically. I suppose I could go back to soak up a few of those bands I missed out on, like moe, Phish, etc. But I think I’m more interested in World music, especially Scandinavian folk/rock like Garmarna, Gjallarhorn; and Celtic Rock like Celtic Soul (I got a thing for Irish women.). Also, female singers with smoky/jazzy voices - in the vein of Fiona Apple and Tori Amos (speaking of her, I need to pick up her new one…). I just heard Ani DiFranco yesterday, and I may just give her a second listen. Cindy gave me a few tracks each of Belly and Rasputina - the tracks she gave me were great, but when I went a listened to more of their stuff, I really disliked it. I’m also thinking about checking out some Brazilian stuff. Anything with really good drums will get me into it the quickest.
Off to listen…Enjoy stuff!
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