Secret Pop

Mar 21, 2006

How many times can you rediscover Pearl Jam?

I'm so immersed in comedy these days, I feel occasionally tugged to return to my previous passions. I once had a reputation for having awesome taste in music and for knowing about bands no one else knew about. That is a difficult reputation to carry or to sustain. At least for me. I'm too keen to be expert in all the categories. Ask me about books! Ask me about gastronomy! Ask me about the ancient art of warfare! Don't bother to ask me about celebrities and stuff, though. I just get my information from Defamer and The Superficial just like you do. I used to see a lot of live music. Now, I see a lot of live comedy. I don't necessarily not want to be able to do both. I feel the onslaught of metanoia. At least a temporary brand of it.

So last summer, Brad introduced to me this awesome and ingenious thing that was then called Music Plasma. It's basically just a relational database, but it creates a visual map of your preferences and uses them to suggest other things you are likely to enjoy. It is now called liveplasma, and it now includes movie preferences, too. You can easily waste three days building your preference map, and why shouldn't you? With this and Pandora.com out there, you'll never have to listen to a song you actually directly like again! And I used to let Amazon.com and my Real One Player tell me what I might like. The very idea.

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