Second Thoughts

Maybe I was a little overzealous at the idea of a second blog. I've been writing more in my long-term project and haven't really had the time to do with this that which I had wanted.

That's not to say that it won't ever happen, just (and this is as much to myself as it is to whomsoever may have decided to be interested in this) don't expect too much.

The above being said, I still feel the need to add something more substantive to this post. The inherent pun in the title is too good to not make good on.

Lately I've found myself on a bit of a musical journey. There are really two things that I've been doing to that end. First, I've been listening to huge amounts of Pandora and last.fm on my phone--partially inspired by the fact that I didn't feel like I was getting my money's worth out of the data plan that I am obligated to pay for given the phone that I use. Secondly, I found a website where you can pretty much search for any song you can listen to, and stream it right then and there.

It is a pretty amazing thing. I've known about it for a while, but only used it to listen to well known songs that I had no desire to listen to repeatedly (ever again?).

Since the increase in usage of Pandora and last.fm, however, I've found myself wanting to listen to specific songs that came up in the shuffle. This way, I am able to do so.

I have always like various sorts of music, and at one point either late in middle school or early in high school I said to a friend that I could like just about any kind of music if I listened to it enough. I also said that that didn't mean that I would like every song, nor did it mean that I liked all kinds of music at that point. I was also heard to remark that there were specific sorts of music that I didn't like and knowing the dangers, I avoided because I had no desire to incidentally start liking them.

So, even though I've liked various sorts of music in the past, and believe that I am susceptible to like most sorts of music at some point in the future, I have stuck fairly consistently with indie rock since high school. The notable exceptions, in my opinion, are a slowly gained familiarity with classic rock (ie Led Zeppelin) and Neko Case.

It is also noteworthy that I don't think I bought any albums from bands that I wasn't already familiar with between 2005 and this past January.

For the last month or so though, things have become quite a bit more varied, and the forecast is for even more change, I should think.

It was the Pandora station for Interpol that got this whole ball rolling. Several songs from The Arcade Fire came up in the rotation, and I liked those songs quite a bit. So, I did the logical thing and moved on to an Arcade Fire station. That led me to Band of Horses, which was a good find.

Some random day at work, a coworker mentioned that a neat band had played on Saturday Night Live the previous weekend. The band was called 'Them Crooked Vultures.' When I found out that former Led Zeppelin bassist and all around instrumentalist John Paul Jones was playing in that band, I decided to look up Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to see what they were up to these days, as well.

The next thing I know, I'm on this crazy bluegrass kick because of Robert Plant's duet album with Alison Krauss.

A noteworthy result of listening to the station for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, is that Alison Krauss has been a part of a whole lot of musical efforts over the past two and a half decades or so, so a lot of the music that was coming up in the Plant and Krauss rotation included her other works.

Another band that came up fairly often was The Cowboy Junkies. So far I don't like all of their stuff, but whenever anything gets played in conjunction with P&K, I usually like it.

So the musical adventure continues, I'll keep trying to expand my horizons, and I have a few different avenues to take to do so.

There. That was a mundane adventure (of sorts), right?