Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Pandora

I pulled up Pandora a little while ago, because I have yet to get iTunes on here or my music, and if you don't understand that, read my last blog. We're not going there. Anyway, Pandora. Occasionally, I admit it does get on my nerves, but I was willing to forgive it when I found one of the greatest stations ever created, the Film Scores station. But then it kept trying to slip in some sort of new-age nonsense in there as if I wanted it. But overall we get along.
I felt a need to go looking for old-time 1920's style music today, and in the process I found an entire station just for opera! I had already been going through the trouble of trying to build one the hard way, working my way from Luciano Pavarotti, because the man was amazing. Well, that was a lengthy process, and now I have a handy ready-made station for it. But, since I wasn't looking for opera in the first place, I continued my search for nice 1920's ragtime, having already found a nice Early Jazz station. This time, I got distracted by one called Choral Music. I admit it, I love choral music almost as much as I like good opera, better, sometimes. So, naturally, I added that station too. Having satisfied my curiosity in that field, I resumed my search for what I actually intended to find, only to be waylaid by a station entitled Showtunes. Generally speaking, I'm not obsessed with showtunes or anything. I'm probably classified as a passing fan, only truly interested in Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. But, I added the thing anyway, and it pulled up Chicago and we became friends. This made me quite happy, and I went back to finding that ragtime again. Finally, I found that there is no ragtime station and this was disappointing. Not to be deterred, I asked it to make a station centered around Scott Joplin. I think Pandora must be trying to increase its good karma, because it instantly gave me a string of perfect ragtime songs, just like I wanted. So, as of now, Pandora and I are very good friends. This will last until I go back to my Train station (funny, isn't it?) and it decides to pull up a live version of a song. I hate live versions, but does Pandora let you tell it that? Of course not. But until that or a new resurgence of new-age I-wish-I-was-music pops up, we shall remain on good terms.
That'll do, Pandora, that'll do.