Radio radio

I've been a huge fan of Pandora for close to two years now; actually my obession with it tends to wax and wane, but it's always there when I want it. If you've never checked it out yourself, give it a try--practically guaranteed to change your music-listening life--and if you're already hooked, you might want to investigate this list of 15 ways to get more out of Pandora. (Mac alert: many of these are PC-only, but the comments section of the post contains plenty of Mac-friendly variations.)

I found this item from LifeHacker, a long-established site I just recently discovered. I thik of it as a kind of "Hints from Heloise" for the tech generation. Today, for instance, there's a tip on wrapping headphones so they don't get tangled (although many commenters seem to prefer this method). Here's a quick link to LifeHacker's music-related tips.

Back to Pandora for a sec: as a soft-rock afficonado, one of my favorite stations out of 14 I've created is a salute to quiet pop mostly from the mid60s through the mid70s, but with a few more recent choices (since Pandora is built not around chronology or genre but the actual sound of a song). It's anchored to two bands: the Association and the Free Design. I call it ...

... Free Association.

While the Association and I go way back to my childhood (when my older sister somehow convinced me that "Windy" was about an owl), the Free Design (those current hipster darlings who emerged from Western New York in the late 60s) is much newer to me, and the station is a great way of working through their fairly large discography one song at a time.

In addition to the two namesake groups, this one plays songs by artists I already knew I liked (Badfinger, Wings, Andy Kim, Art Garfunkel and his sometime pal Paul, the Zombies, the Carpenters, Spanky & Our Gang, Todd Rundgren, Jim Croce, the Beach Boys, America, Steely Dan, and even the Velvet Undergound and Brian Eno) plus some I know but kinda cringe about (the New Christy Minstrels, Pure Prairie League, Showaddywaddy, the Anita Kerr Singers). But the real thrill is the growing list of acts I've never heard of till now. Some are solo performers old and new (Bob Dileo, Richard Swift, Pat Shannon, Sandy Salisbury, Jf Robitaille, Samantha Juste, Stan Rogers) and some are recent bands I've heard a teensy bit about (Ollabelle, Maritime). And then there's a steady stream of groups whose very names evoke a long-gone era I can't get enough of(Friends, Jon & Robin, Owl & the Pussycat, the Ivy League, Titus Groan, the Millenium, the Roosters, the Brokedown, Lady & Bird, Scene, Fancey, the Castaways, Gandalf). It's like a trip down somebody else's memory lane, and I dig it, man.

She's my shoo-shoo

Strangely enough, it was this post at my new favorite Beach Boys news source that alerted me to this interview with Sérgio Dias of Os Mutantes on the website of Light in the Attic Records. (They've got the first 8 Mutantes albums at around $14 apiece! As well as a whole bunch o' Free Design CDs for $10 each!)

The bottom of the OM Q&A page lists several tropicalia-related links, which is how I discovered the many Mutantes videos (mostly TV appearances) available via YouTube right now. Here's the grooviest of the 4 I've watched so far:



Remember, there's plenty more where that came from.

And doesn't this upcoming documentary look like a must-see?

Things I Found While Looking for Something Else, #2

So I'm online trying to find some important fact or other, and suddenly I decide to check out what's up with the CBC. (This can only mean there was something far more important on my to-do list, mind you.) I'd vaguely heard about a walkout a while back, but I'd sort of lost touch with the whole thing.

Turns out the official site is a bonanza of time-wasting diversions, starting with this not particularly revelatory "Protest Music Mixtape," which is really just a slide show with lengthy captions concerning the usual suspects.

I would not be wasting your time (only mine) with this information if that were the only thing I found. Nope, the real treasure trove came when I stumbled upon "the Alternative Canadian Walk of Fame" (or is it "the Canadian Alternative Walk of Fame"? the website lists both options--now, that's Canadian! And alternative, too...). The thirteen inductees include Tommy Chong, the Bob & Doug McKenzie movie, John "Plunderphonics" Oswald, and Chris Dedrick, founder of soft rock sensation The Free Design (originally from Western New York, by the bye, not our neighbor to the north, but so be it).

But two names on the list outshine all the others as far as I'm concerned. First and foremost is Mary Margaret O'Hara, whose lone full-length album, Miss America, is one of my all-time faves. I was lucky enough to see a concert of hers in NYC several years ago that was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed: an incredible balancing act between precision musicianship and a complete plunge off the deep end.

And speaking of the deep end, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to the second all-star on the Alternative Canadian/Canadian Alternative list: Nardwuar, the Human Serviette.



I first came across this singularly talented individual 6 or 7 years ago in the pages of Chart magazine, a Canadian (natch) music publication that I used to read as part of my record-label job. (I guess it wasn't technically part of my job to read the magazine, but I can assure you it helped me in ways I cannot begin to describe.) In every issue, Nardwuar would interview some unsuspecting musician or pop culture figure, asking a bizarre mix of incredibly stupid questions and incredibly well-informed ones. Sort of a precursor of Ali G, I guess (with a big touch of Tom Green, it occurs to me now that I've heard his voice)--only you frequently feared for the interviewer's safety. One month he's offering Henry Rollins a Powerbar at the end of a conversation, next month he's getting kicked out of a room by Courtney Love.

Now that I've found,or maybe re-found, his official website, containing not only written transcripts of the interviews but audio and sometimes video documentation of them, I may never be able to leave my computer again. There are years of these things to catch up on. Naturally I started with a 2005 interview with Dave Allen of Gang of Four, but the list of subjects/victims in the archives includes Geddy Lee, Gene Simmons, Gerald Ford (!), and Glenn Danzig--and that's only the letter "G." Enter this madness at your own risk. I cannot be responsible for the hours you are about to waste.

Oh, and that walkout?

Guess it's over now, but I completely forgot to look into it on the CBC site.