I’m on my third pair of speakers for my laptop. I blew out my last pair as a result of bumping up the bass via last.fm. There’s buzz about the decline of social media but last.fm has me everyday, all day, motivating me to buy music from itunes or amazon or wherever. I have been schooled.
I started off on Pandora.com a while back, not a bad site, and it always provided nice tunes while I ate dinner. However if you type in an artist to create a radio station it wasn’t often before you heard repeats. And try some Detroit techno, Chicago house, or some Puffy Ami Yumi J-Soul- forget about it, you’d get nothing.
So I heard about last.fm. Tried the Puffy Ami Yumi test. You got J-Soul all day all genres and all types of artists. It led me down the way into minimal Japanese Avante Garde tracks, one after the other, found some cat named World’s End Girlfriend. Serene and inspired.
I tried the Detroit test, threw on some Carl Craig and Recloose, and eventually was led with some UR and Drexciya. DAMN! All of this is streaming and full length tracks.
So I gave it the Brazilian test. Threw on Gilberto Gil and I discovered Elis Regina. Falling in love with 1970s Brazilian ladies all over again for about the fourth time now.
Threw in Chain Reaction and I got Fluxion, Maurizio, Aril Brikha, and Vladislav Delay.
And my ultimate test which I haven’t gotten past. I’m stuck in dubland. Threw last.fm Augustus Pablo and I’m stoned cold listening to deep dub crates all day. The Heptones, John Clarke (who I hadn’t heard of- had to buy that cd), Sly and Dunbar, Jah Stitch, The Revolutionaries, on and on.
Last.fm is pretty slick. You can download a little free app that acts as a player and scans your itunes, figures your tastes and finds those who are likeminded individuals.
I’m here for a long time – I’m taten155. And don’t ask me about that Hannah Montanna on my playlist or the YMCA for that matter.
