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Mohammed's Radio, Mexican Radio, and others
I wasted some time this morning. And it's all Kymm's fault.
Well, no, not really. It was like this, officer: I had to sit and wait for something else to happen anyway, and earlier this week I finally finished getting RealPlayer working on all the various Unix platforms here at the Institvte, and I got to thinking about that ImagineRadio dingbat on Kymm's site ....
I don't approve of streaming media. I believe they waste bandwidth. If I were queen of the universe, the web would be for words, GIFs (non-animated), and JPEGs. Nothing else. None of that fancy stuff. No push media, no stock tickers, no streams, no movies, none of that. You want music, go play a CD while you surf. You want movies, get off the computer and go watch one.
(I'm divided on this whole MP3 thing. On the one hand, I love to see Big Record Companies squirm as they realize their stranglehold on an industry is vanishing. On the other hand, it's a really impractical and impermanent way of getting music.)
But ... but ... I agree it's a temptation; I myself have loaded a number of movies in my spare time here at work, where I can (my other gripe about movies and streams is that unless you have a T-1, as we do here, forget it).
And being able to hear only the groups I'm interested in almost makes radio seem attractive. As I said to SDN the other night, I haven't listened to radio of my own volition since before I was in high school. The medium does nothing for me. But if I were the programming director ....
It was an interesting exercise. I refuse to play the ranking game, so every artist was either a zero (don't ever play) or a "you decide," where I let the computer figure out how much to play it. Basically I gave the thumbs-up to certain groups and threw the whole list into ImagineRadio's randomizer.
I was very picky. My criterion was: If a random song from this group were played on the radio, would I like it? Even if it weren't one of my favorites from that group, would I still consider it acceptable and not change the channel? In other words, I was picking only groups where the odds were that I would listen to any track they've ever recorded. And there aren't many of those. I went through their entire list of artists and could only find seventy choices or so.
Of course, there are a few flukes. I made an exception for some one-hit wonders, because, really, what track for Katrina and the Waves are they going to play but "Walking on Sunshine?" Their other stuff was rotten, but I don't expect to hear any of it.
On the other hand, I can't afford to risk choosing The Offspring, because there's too much of a chance I'll get something besides "Pretty Fly" ... in the same way that I can't put in Kenny Rogers and First Edition, because there is a slim chance I might get something besides ... well, you name the one track I'd actually like hearing. Call it a trivia question. (If you want another trivia question, connect the two song titles in the title with the people who recorded them.)
And the reverse situation is true with Joe Walsh. I like his stuff in general, but I refuse to take the chance that I'll hear "Life's Been Good," his most famous track and also one of his worst.
No, it quickly became obvious that this was a very tricky standard to meet. No Elton John, because I don't have a switch that says, "Play only material from Madman Across The Water or earlier." Eurythmics is OK, Dave Stewart solo is OK; Annie Lennox solo is not. (I know, most people think it's the other way 'round. They're usually people who haven't heard Greetings from the Gutter.) The Police, yes; Sting, no. (Nothing solo after Dream of the Blue Turtles is acceptable.)
This is exactly the sort of pointless speculation that is fun to waste an evening on, a conversation among friends, usually with alcohol involved. Like the "what books would you take to a desert island?" question, or any of those damned lists of five.
Well, now ImagineRadio has given you the opportunity to actually try this thought experiment for yourself. Of course, plenty of artists are missing. (No Railroad Jerk? No Fatboy Slim? No Bluerunners? And those are just the first ones that come to mind.)
I'm not going to show you how to play my radio station, because I'm against that whole streaming media thing. If you really want it, you'll figure it out. Here's my list of artists that made the cut. And here's Kymm's. We have more in common that I'd have suspected, although I cannot understand what she sees in Green Day.
© Columbine
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