hogpath

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.

Twitter is out of control. It just celebrated its year anniversary and like so many innovative web 2.0 software apps that come out many (including myself) ask, "what's the point?" You hear those phrases like microblogging and the web going esp. I just signed up yesterday and I'm on it. As I type and numbers count down my alloted characters left I feel we've created some new form of haiku. There's an inherent poetic in the forced brevity. A lot out there is written about it and as corny as the esp thing is, I feel it, and I do see that this is where newsmedia is going. If you are a reporter or a media institution twitter is the real time.



Today I learned about twittervision and now my head is officially spinning. A world map, either flat or 3d, your preference and the map shifts around to display all the twits going on in the world in real time. All the world's languages pop up and the randomness is incredible. Humanity's consciousness is all laid out in front of you. Out of control. Inspiring.



twitter.com/hogpath