Good Music I’ve Discovered on Pandora Radio

posted by Rob on October 15, 2008 at 2:38 am | Comments (3)

Currently, I earn a living by retouching photos on a freelance basis for various ad agencies and retail companies. One of the companies I work for has an extremely strict tech department. When I started working there a few months ago, I tried to listen to radio stations on iTunes, but discovered that iTunes was removed from the Macintosh at my desk. I tried going to different online radio web sites, but they were all blocked. I thought, “Oh well,” and continued working on images.

Later in the day, I heard music coming from my coworker’s computer. At first, I thought she must’ve been listening to a CD, but then I remembered the tech department removed the CD drives from everyone’s computers. Was she listening to a portable radio? No, because I didn’t hear any commercials.

I asked, “How are you listening to music?” and she responded from the other side of the partition, “Pandora.”

“What’s Pandora?”

“It’s an online radio web site.”

“But I tried going to different online radio web sites and they’re all blocked.”

“Not this one.”

I typed www.pandora.com into Firefox and the site actually came up. Excellent! I registered, searched for Belly, and was listening to music on my own custom online radio station. How did this slip by the tech tyrants?

One reason I like Pandora is that I’m able to teach it what type of music I want to listen to. By clicking “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” for each song, I can fine-tune my station to a specific era (e.g. 1960s, 80s, or 90s), genre (e.g. pop, alternative, or jazz), or tone (e.g. upbeat, slow, or acoustic).

That first time I used Pandora, I narrowed my station down to 1990s female alternative rock. It played songs by artists I knew, like Belly, Juliana Hatfield, and The Breeders, but it also played songs by artists I’d never heard of, like That Dog, The Muffs, 100 Watt Smile, and The Girls from the Clouds.

That’s another reason I like Pandora: I haven’t willingly listened to terrestrial radio since 1996, so discovering good new music has been a challenge. With Pandora, I’ve been experiencing many great songs for the first time. These songs might not be new, but they’re new to me and it’s exciting listening to good music that’s outside of my comfort zone.

Here are some artists and songs I’ve heard on Pandora and really like:

100 Watt Smile – “Furry,” “Aorta,” and “Dewlaps”
The Amps – “Bragging Party”
The Blow – “A Night Full of Open Eyes”
Concrete Blonde – “Happy Birthday”
The Eames Era – “Got Your Note”
The Ether Family Presents – “Driving the Sun”
The Fastbacks – “Lose”
Giant Drag – “Slayer”
The Girls from the Clouds – “Saw You with a Girl” and “Bye Bye Wintertime”
Sophie B. Hawkins – “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”
The Histrioniks – “Underneath It All”
Land of Talk – “Magnetic Hill” and “Breaxxbaxx”
Looker – “Jet Screams”
Loquat – “Swingset Chain”
Magnapop – “Stick to Me”
Aimee Mann – “The Moth”
Mary Lou Lord – “Some Jingle Jangle Morning (When I’m Straight)”
The Muffs – “Saying Goodbye”
The Ohsees – “Guilded C.”
Over the Rhine – “Born”
Oysterhead – “Mr. Oysterhead”
Scanners – “Bombs”
Second Story Man – “Catalyst”
Sleater-Kinney – “Light Rail Coyote” and “Leave You Behind”
Sleeper – “Statuesque”
Rachel Sweet – “Shadows of the Night”
That Dog – “Minneapolis,” “Gagged and Tied,” and “Cowboy Hat”
The Trolleyvox – “I Am Annabelle”
Jane Wiedlin – “Icicle”

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