If you haven't ever hear of this sweet site, let me introduce you to pandora.com! This is one of the best sites the internet has ever created! A buddy at work introduced it to me about a month ago and I've been listening to it nonstop ever since. Pandora is an internet-radio site where you enter an artist or a song and you "create" a radio station that plays music from that artist or similar artists (based on something called the music-genome project). I don't know how it works but as the various songs play you can definitely agree that they all relate in a general way within each station you create.
So this week on my ever expanding list of created stations I decided to take a trip down memory lane, as in "riding with my mom from ages 4-10 listening to New Mix 107.5" memory lane. My station anchor? None other than the classic Wilson Phillips! It shouldn't be hard for anybody to imagine me belting out "Release Me" or "Hold On" without hesitation. I will say that listening to their songs this time around I've noticed every song has a quasi-bridge-guitar solo that would be described as the antithesis of a "face-melting guitar solo". Seriously, even when Wilson Phillips was at their peak performing to a packed stadium, there's no way during one of these solos the hired professional guitarist was thinking, "I'm shredding the guitar to Wilson Phillips!" Be that as it may, I take them for what they are: a classic easy listening group who dominated the airways in their time. Their station offered up plenty of other soft-hits gods (like rock-gods, but soothing and romantic!): early Madonna, Tiffany, Pat Benetar, Richard Marx, Lionel Richie, Chicago (or Peter Cetera, their lead singer who later had a solo career. I note this because I heard all these songs and kept thinking "I know this song but I've never heard of this guy! So I investigated). Basically every song that comes on I mark the "thumbs up icon" because I love it. (One downer to note-after about 6 hours straight of the same station you start to get repeats of all the same songs).
My "coming out" of the soft-hits closet this week has had a couple of interesting effects: 1) all my coworkers who at first were ripping me and acting all "manly" like they didn't like what I was listening to within hours were crooning right along with every song. Either they love it like me or had mothers who also listened to "New Mix" and FM100 in their youth (probably a little of both). 2)I keep discovering old favorites again and again through all these links, at which point I discover another old memory! Some of the favorites from this week of soft hits: Gloria Estefan (You know you want to "Get on your feet!") Mr. Mister ("Take these broken wings"), Michael Bolton (Yes, THAT Michael Bolton! I even heard a new sweet song, "How can we be lovers if we can't be friends?" that was just too catchy to not enjoy), and of course the kings of the 1-hit wonder soft hit, Toto (you know how FM100 plays only Christmas music through December? I think the rest of the year they have an automatic "Africa" every hour on the hour. Seriously, I never switch to that station without getting myself some "I bless the rains down in AFRICA! boom, boOm, bOOM, BOOM! Gonna take some time to do the things we never HA-AAA-AAAD! ooo, ooo!)
Pandora-awesome. If you have some other sweet golden oldies for me let me know.
4 comments:
I just tried the Pixies on Pandora. I got some sweet old school pre grunge but post first punk movement stuff, some grunge, some new stuff and some decent indie stuff.
Dont forgot one of the Hand family favorites of Toto. "Rosanna...Rosanna" There was a cute girl that work at IV...italian village...Rod had such a crush on named Leanna!!!! Which he immediately changed to lyrics too. So there was lots of Leanna..Leanna going on in my life.Great blog Brandon. And hey all Brandon fans out there...he has an AMAZING talent. He can consume a whole bottle of salsa at La Puente. It was awesome to watch. Flames were coming out of his ears but he still had a mission. Lova ya Bran DON
Brandon... great blog... PANDORA ROCKS...but I must challenge your knowledge and memory of the late 80's... early 90's love songs. In fact... I'll go as far as bet you a plastic carton of sugar cookies that TOTO was bigger (and far better) in their prime than Wilson Phillips ever was.
I guess we all have different tastes in music... but when I think of good soft-rock music from that era I think of Chicago, Phil Collins, Heart, Kenny Loggins, Steve Winwood, late Billy Joel, early Mariah Carey, and yes... even Richard Marx... but Wilson freakin' Philips... in my mind their music is stuck somewhere between Milli Vanilli and Roxette... with perhaps a pinch of Bette Midler... truth be told... I'd be surprised if Wilson Philips ever played to a sold out arena anywhere (I could be wrong).
TOTO meanwhile... peaked about 8-10 years earlier (won a bunch of grammys back in 1983)... but actually had enough big-time material to release a greatest hits album... which included not only Africa... but some other pretty good stuff including... I Won't Hold You Back, Make Believe, I'll Be Over You, Rosanna, and Hold the Line, and 99.
You want some super cheesy (but very catchy) songs from that era... how about some good ole' STAKE DANCE classics... such as "I'll Be There" by Escape Club... or "When I'm With You by Sheriff" (awesome song).
For some odd reason... I actually think the soft rock hits during the 70's are a bit more timeless than those from the 80's. Some of those mid-seventies artists were pretty good... The Eagles, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Bread.... more timeless stuff if you ask me.
Of course... if you want your co-workers to really give you some wierd looks... just turn Pandora on to a little bit of Air Supply...or maybe some Kool and the Gang!
Great Post... thanks for reviving some old memories!
i have no sweet golden oldies for you...but...if you type in arcade fire you will not be disappointed! by far my favorite station
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