Pandora=music=love

Remember on this space when Henning gushed about Google Earth being The Future?
I'm kind of feeling the same way about this music site. I'd heard about it on NPR when it wasn't yet completed, but I guess it is (sort of) now.

Pandora

It's called the Music Genome Project and it's just what I needed to get me back into listening to music.
It's free (with ads, but you're listening, not watching so who cares) or w/out ads, you pay.

A rundown: Enter a band you like.
I entered The Monkees.
It says "you like melodic pop with harmonies and a blend of electric and acoustic instruments".
And the player loads a never ending supply of music that fist the bill. If you don't like it you click on it and click "I don't like it" and it remembers that you don't like, say, 90's Rembrants style pop.
If you do like it, you can 1) look it up on All Music Guide 2) download the song on itunes 3) buy the album on Amazon. And it will shape the future songs based on what you do like.

HOWEVER it delves into some obscure stuff that you can't find on Amazon. Which is so cool.

So enter the Monkees, and what do I hear?
Everything from Yo La Tengo to The Hollies to Jackson Browne to The Only Ones (who I never really heard and now I must check out!) to Hefner to really early YES.

Crazy finds (and I've only been listening an hour) :

--An obscure Kinks tune from a 70's (?) movie called Sahara. Good tune. "In a Foreign Land"
--A psychedelic song that I haven't heard since The Purple Stars Sound did it (Russ' old band in the 80's)--"Smell of Incense" by Southwest FOB. I hadn't even thought of that song since the day after that PSS concert when my friend and I tried to figure out how to play it.
--A Brian Setzer song that I always thought was like Crowded House or Gram Parker or something. I totally knew the song but never knew he ever did 12 string jangle stuff "The Knife Feels Like Justice".

Highly recommended, this site. Just when I thought I could stop being a music nerd.
I wanna get a job at this place.