What's On My iPod

TagFest: Music

I listen to my iPod Shuffle during my daily commute. I can't stand the little ear bud headphones though; they hurt my ears. I discovered some foldable ones that I've been using for a few years now. They fit nicely in my bag but I don't take very good care of them. The cushioning foam on the left earpiece had gotten pretty tatty so I picked up a new pair at Target last week.

I like listening to rock but not very loud which is a problem now because my new headphones are pretty squeaky where the wires attach to the earpieces. I think the wires are too stiff. It's distracting from the music.

I love my Shuffle but I prefer to listen to the songs on each album in consecutive order—no random selections for me, thanks. Here are the albums currently on my iPod:

Default
Elocation
One Thing Remains
The Fallout

Fuel
Natural Selection
Something Like Human
Sunburn

Three Days Grace
Three Days Grace
One-X

Chevelle
Point #1
This Type of Thinking Could Do Us In
Wonder What's Next

What are you listening to?

BART Station Face-Off

Now competing for your musical attention...

In one corner, a solo cellist outside the Starbucks is featuring the soothing melody of classical refrains...

While over by the exit to the plaza, a mariachi guitarist sings songs of his people.

Who will win? Or will the cacophony serve only to alienate the transit-riding public?

Grodie Greenies

This morning as I passed through the BART station on my way to work I heard the familiar refrain of a Christmas carol. I think it was O Come, All Ye Faithful. The odd thing was that it was coming from a solo flute. Not the instrument you would normally think of when considering buskers in BART. A folk guitar with suspect vocals, an oddly voiced Chinese stringed instrument, occasionally a string trio, sure, but a flute? Not usually.

It made me reminisce a bit about the little green books our band director would pass out before the holidays: Christmas carols. We always played some in our December concert for a carol sing-a-long with the audience. We groaned and complained about them. They were not our favorite pieces, that's for sure. Thus our not-so-affectionate name for those books: the Grodie Greenies.

Pandora Rocks

Today Katherine turned me on to Pandora.com, where you enter your favorite musical artists and Pandora will custom-make a radio station for you with songs taken from their Music Genome Project which are similar to those artists. Give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to a song to help make a station just right for you. You can create more than one radio station and I would recommend doing that if you have wide tastes.

Click on the album art in the player to be sent to iTunes or Amazon to purchase tracks and albums or to find out more information. If you really like a song, you can add it to your Favorites list that you can view or print out later.

You can even add links for your radio stations to your blog! See my link in the sidebar to see what's playing at WKBJ. (not recommended for dial-up, sorry.)