A couple of months back, I posted a writeup on the Last.fm service. Since that time, I have gradually moved away from that service and found another that was more to my liking. That service is Slacker Radio and it was first introduced to me by Guy via Twitter.

The most important feature about a music service, to me, is that it not be too repetitive. For this reason, I can’t stand listening to traditional radio for an extended period of time. I also want a service that isn’t littered with commercials, another reason I don’t bother with traditional radio.

These two requirements are what have me turned on to Slacker, although the commercials can become rather annoying at times. Unlike Last.fm which seems to plays music by popularity and tags, Slacker separates their music into categories. These categories give you the feel of traditional radio and allow you to tune into the classic rock or metal station. You can go even further and listen to rock hits from the 1990′s and so on and so forth.

While Slacker is not perfect, it does seem to have a vast library of music at your disposal. When listening to one station for an extended amount of time (like my nine hour work day), you may hear the same song two or three times. While this doesn’t beat an 16GB iPod on shuffle, it is enough variety to keep me interested.

The one annoyance with this service has been the frequency of commercials. I’m unsure what the song count is before the commercials begin, but when the same commercial is played two times in a row, it drives me crazy. I could pay a few dollars a month to rid myself of these commercials, but I don’t know that Slacker is feature rich enough to command a higher price than Last.fm and Pandora.

I don’t plan on moving away from Slacker anytime soon, unless I start hearing the same commercials three times in a row, in which case I’m out of here! One of these days I think I’ll give the premium service a try. Giving it some more thought, using the iPhone app commercial free, in addition to a commercial free work day, might very well make the service worth it to me.

Post from: Walt in PA

Slacker Radio

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My wife didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did, but I think that this video is absolutely hysterical. Now, its probably fair to say that I have a bit of a unique sense of humor and love stuff like this…

Post from: Walt in PA

Wrong Hole by DJ Lubel

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After a few hours of listening to an awesome variety of music, a version of a familiar song came on that I hadn’t heard before. The song was Plush by Stone Temple Pilots, the variation was that it was an acoustic version. Having a bit of a thing for acoustic songs, I made a mental note to look up the song when I was finished my project.

Later, while searching on Amazon, I found that the song I was looking for was on a greatest hits album entitled “Thank You”. Looking over the track list, I saw several songs that I used to listen to in years past. Rather than downloading the single song from iTunes, I went with the entire album.

While there isn’t anything on this album that I don’t already have buried somewhere in my CD collection, I thought it was a great compilation of songs to have for the occasional listen. Over the past few days I have played the album while working on random things and have really enjoyed having picked it up.

Post from: Walt in PA

Stone Temple Pilots – Thank You (Greatest Hits)

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She was apparently a big fan of the arts and would pop in in from time to time. I just so happened to show up before she sat down to watch it. My friend and I wound up getting into it and sat through the entire show. I never cared much for dance, but I loved the Irish Music.

From then on, I would make a point to watch it anytime it happened to air on PBS. I still enjoy the music just as much as I did the first time hearing it and stumbled onto a soundtrack some years later. That soundtrack was the inspiration for this post.

Anytime I have one of those days, where I just need to unwind, I load up the soundtrack and give it a listen. After a fairly long day of watching after the dog and putting in a couple of hours on a side project, I felt like a beer and a cigar. Before I could do so, I had to run out for a follow-up appointment and swing by my local Lowes hardware store.

Sure enough, just when I thought I could unwind, I had a couple of minor things pop up that delayed my beer and cigar a bit longer. When everything was taken care of and I could put a little time aside to unwind, I started looking through my MP3 collection when I saw my Riverdance Sountrack folder.

I loaded it into Winamp and hit play. While the music certainly isn’t something you would expect someone my age to listen to, it does wonders in helping me unwind. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen the show in person and would love to some day. Every once in a while the show comes to the greater Philadelphia area, but I always have something planned and can’t make it. One of these days I’ll finally be able to see the show live.

Post from: Walt in PA

Music to unwind to

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All of a sudden this song stopped me in my tracks and sparked a vivid memory of my childhood. Back when I was very young, less than ten years old, my grandmother used to watch me for a couple of hours after I finished school. From time to time I used to sit and watch a movie on VHS. One of the more entertaining ones I watched was entitled Labyrinth starring David Bowie.

Labyrinth was a movie about a girl that gets sick of watching her baby brother and wishes that monsters would come and take him away. Just as you would expect, monsters come and steal the baby away. When the girl realizes her baby brother is no longer crying, she goes to check on him. After a bit of a panic, an owl flies through the window and transforms into a wizard, David Bowie.

In order to get her baby brother back, the girl must travel through a labyrinth and claim her brother at a castle before he is transformed into a monster. Along the way the girl befriends various characters and eventually makes her way up and into the castle to save her brother.

The monsters reminded me of Sesame Street characters, or Muppets with an evil twist. Somewhere throughout the movie, David Bowie and the monsters break out into song and dance to Magic Dance. When I was young I thought this whole thing was very entertaining.

After talking about this movie, I think that I may just order it so that I can laugh at it and relive a little of my childhood.

Post from: Walt in PA

Music Triggering Memories

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A couple of months ago my brother got ahold of a few tickets to a show at Crocodile Rock to see Saliva and Sevendust. My father has a very open mind when it comes to music and was asked if he would like to go along with my brother and his girlfriend. I couldn’t make it that particular night, so the three of them headed out to the show.

This was the first concert my father has gone to in years and he was looking forward to it. A few days after the show they were all telling me how much of a good time they had seeing these bands in such a small venue. Having been to Crocodile Rock on several occasions, I was familiar with how intimate the shows tend to be.

After having such a good time, my father and brother have been keeping an eye on the show list to see if anyone of interest was coming to town. After a quick look at the schedule, my father made mention that he would like to see Stone Sour live, and my brother agreed.

Growing up I remember my father being a big Jim Morrison fan, as a result I have been very receptive to the music that is The Doors. While I don’t mind the poetry reading that Jim Morrison performed on several albums, I don’t care much for the readings that Cory Taylor does. For whatever reason I simply find it unappealing and get the uncontrollable urge to skip the track when it begins playing.

Since this conversation between my father and brother, and comparing the poetry of two performers, I’ve gotten a bit of a Doors buzz. While I enjoy several albums, I’ve found myself listening to The Soft Parade more often than the rest. I find its a nice change of pace from the Five Finger Death Punch that I can’t seem to stop listening to.

Post from: Walt in PA

Mixing it up with a little Classic Rock

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A few days ago I was checking out my tweets from earlier in the day and noticed some discussion on music between two people that I follow. Mike and Hayward were were talking music and somewhere along the lines a mention of the band 5 Finger Death Punch was made.

At one point in time I was very into metal. I attended three Ozzfests and numerous local shows which kept me fairly open to new bands. Somewhere along the lines I missed an Ozzfest show and slowly fell out of the loop as far as new music is concerned.

Without being up to date on the new music coming out, I stuck to what I knew from the past several years. On a whim I decided to look up the band and see what I have been missing as of late. After hearing a couple of songs via Youtube, I was compelled to pick up the album.

Its been a couple of days since getting a hold of the album and I’ve listened to it numerous times already. The music is crisp and flows very well from song to song. I’m not sure what I find more appealing, the instruments or the vocals. All in all I think that the total package is very catchy.

Since being sucked into this album, I’ve spoken to Mike a little via twitter and I have a whole list of new bands to check out. I’m looking forward to getting back into Metal, the same old stuff has been great over the past couple of years but was beginning to get stuffy.

Post from: Walt in PA

Five Finger Death Punch

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