Fun with iTunes Genius

Recently this gentleman made me aware of how much fun the iTunes Genius feature can be. It's a little bit like Pandora using your own library. Very good when you're in a specific mood--you only need to pick one song that fits the mood, then hopefully Genius takes over. It has some weird gaps (like, it doesn't recognize King Crimson? WTF!?), but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.

I thought up a little game to play with the Genius: pick two artists, as far removed from one another as you can imagine. Start with a Genius playlist based on a song from the first, and then pick another playlist based on one song in the first playlist. Rinse and repeat. See how many steps it takes to get from one to the other.

I got from the Sex Pistols to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in 4 hops. Same era, but diametrically opposed with regard to musical ethos. Woot!

OTOH, I had to give up on my attempt to hop from Miles Davis to Nine Inch Nails. FAIL!

One tip I've come up with already: David Bowie appears to be the iTunes Genius version of Kevin Bacon; all roads seem to lead through Bowie.

New Song: Niagara Falls

On Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend last year, I found myself in a car with cs10, racing towards Burlington, Ontario to try and see a movie. We didn't get there in time, in large part because of the looooong delay getting over the Peace Bridge (and no, neither of us wanted to show up fifteen minutes into the film). 

Once I got over being annoyed by this, it occurred to me that this was a seriously modern problem: I was ticked off because it took me a whole forty minutes to cross the Niagara River while sitting comfortably in a climate-controlled box, shielded from the Buffalo winter. 200 years ago, the problem would have been arriving at the other side safely, let alone how long it might have taken. 

This week's entry is sort of about that. 

Niagara Falls {GET the mp3 HERE!}
(c) 2009 Mark Frey

mighty water rushing down in walls
her river tamed by Ellet and Roebling
and the turbines make her sing

modern day
cross the tumult on a blacktop highway
meanwhile, computer screens
console aging stockbrokers and anxious teens

and bit by bit all the barriers fall
and our world becomes terribly small
and still more barriers fall

everywhere
everywhere I go, they're there
high tension wires and concrete
grid by grid the towers repeat

stratified
streets and poles and lines we've tied
around the planet's growing girth
raw material in strange rebirth

and bit by bit all the barriers fall
and our world becomes terribly small
and still more barriers fall

So
so it's hard to ever get away, and how
how should we cope with it all?
miles of wire wrapped around a hollow ball

Ah, 1990!

While cleaning up and trying to empty the house of things we won't need once the baby arrives, I ran across the pre-show mix tape cassette (!) I made for the University Theater production of Faust from my senior year in college. This is the show marg and I met on; she was the tech director and I was the sound designer.

Most of my work on that show involved special effects sound cues, like trying to make it sound like a cute little lap dog is transforming into a slavering Hell Hound behind Faust's desk. Mostly done on reel-to-reel tape; I was actually pretty good at splicing the stuff. Anyway, I also had to get a pre-show music tape together at the last minute, with my main instruction being to choose stuff "that people will recognize." Here's what I figured would do that job well, ca. early 1990:

the Spirit of Radio (Rush)
Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)
in a Big Country (uh, Big Country)
the Big Sky (Kate Bush)
Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
Should I Stay or Should I go? (the Clash)
Don't Go Back to Rockville (REM)
Don't Go (Yazoo)

Good for a chuckle or two. I should point out that this was 2 years before the Wayne's World movie and a year or so before the re-release of the Clash single, so these songs were less iconic/overplayed at that point.

I'd probably make different choices today, but OTOH I still like all these songs too. Pretty sure they're all still in my iTunes library.

New Year, New Song. It's that simple.

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you had a good 2008 and will enjoy health and prosperity in 2009.

A lot of us worry too much. We worry about little things, we worry about big things. Sometimes we can't tell the difference. We like to talk about what we're worryin' on. I guess that's what this song is about. Sort of. 

Critical Issues (get the .mp3 here!)
(c) 2009 Mark Frey

Lint in my pocket, the status of talks
noise that it's making, child safety locks.
Which is the strongest, who is to blame
where's my enigma, does he love you the same?

Guns in our grade schools, the price of the show
that dream that you're chasing
hey, no-one will know...

Critical issues, these are critical issues
the meat of the matter, a critical issue.

Drinking and driving, embezzlement news
broken colliders, nothing to lose!
Blood on the sidewalk, what we're having for lunch
framing the image, spikes in the punch.

Whom did he sleep with, when did it break
cultural cesspool
is it a sin to like steak?

Critical issues, they're all critical issues
the crux of the biscuit, a critical issue.

Randomized survey, unstable market
which way is up, where can we park it?
Junk in the sky, ice in my drink
the color of money, what will she think?

Trouble with OPEC, fields of fire
reasons for leaving
the length of the wire...

Critical issues, these are critical issues
the point that I'm making, a critical issue.

Critical issues, so many critical issues
the tip of the iceberg, a critical issue.