Last month I marveled over the cute LastGraph which shows you a visualization of what artists you've been listening to on Last.fm lately in a neat way. Today I discovered this cute visualization: Tube Tags

I think it's only for paying Last.fm users since it says "VIP" next to the link. My understanding is that it shows the genres of music you've been listening too recently in a London Underground type of map way. Very neat.

Here's mine (31Kb PDF)

You'll have to believe it when you see it. Here's the orignal if you want to know who they are.

Orphaned Land is a great metal band from Israel who I've known about for some time but never researched much.

"Israel's ORPHANED LAND is probably the only band from this country that has managed to succeed at building up a huge following among Muslims and Arabian people"

I've never taken the time to listen to their lyrics and figure out what they're singing about. It's not a surprise that they're not pro one side only but I didn't know that they appeal to both sides which is quite fantastic.

Swedish band that plays classic heavy metal songs slower and acoustic. It wasn't until I listened to their songs that I actually stopped to think about the lyrics in some of the classics I thought I knew the lyrics to already but found out I didn't. It makes for a very cute blend that is irresistible. It's kind of like watching a hot girl changing the oil on a truck.

Their latest album has an equally "cute and catchy" title: Hymns in the key of 666

For Spotify users here's Paranoid on the album Lounge

If you, like me, like Opeth and Pain of Salvation and you like the piano, then do check out Kalle Kappner and his free mp3s on this website. It's beautiful stuff if you, like me, like metal.

I discovered one of his Opeth compositions on Last.fm and tried to buy it from iTunes and Amazon but nothing could be found. I then searched the torrents but nothing there either. Then imagine how happy I became when I found that he's giving them all away on his website.

Varg Vikernes, a.k.a. Count Grishnackh is a black metal musician, convicted murderer, arsonist and political activist. He's now in prison in Norway and also famous for his one-man band Burzum. I've just read this long interview with him from 2005 and thought it was really interesting.

I adore his music. Maybe not everything but most of it. It's music that even non metal heads would like because it's quite ambient and strangely melodic. His views are very old-fashioned, chauvinistic and racist and I'm not going to defend anything he says but I have to admit that I'm drawn to some of it simply because it's an unusual and different perspective. Some of the views he has reminds me of Daoism in that the right path in life is to live contently with the earth and not greedily search for material happiness the whole time.

Read it carefully. Some of it is quite offensive. Some parts are very profound, some are rubbish and some practical ones like the section about life in prison is really intelligent. Some quotes:

On our environment:

"I think the growing disregard for the environment, culture and heritage is a natural consequence of capitalism. When people care more about profit than the world they live in that is what happens. Capitalism in the "Western" world in turn is just a natural consequence of Christianity, because Christianity created a spiritual void when it ousted Paganism, and all that is left is materialism and a religion with no meaningful contents."

On women as equals:

"The modern women can no longer cook, they no longer want children and they are no longer warm, tidy and loving creatures who think spending time with their family is a good thing. They are probably too "independent" and "strong" to even have a family of their own. The only thing modern women have to offer men today is sex. So instead of being loving housewives who cook and raise children, they are reduced to being sexual objects only - and they are so messed up emotionally and intellectually that they often spend most of the money they make on their jobs on plastic surgery, cosmetics and tons of clothes they think will make them look good, in a desperate attempt to stay or become more attractive. Well, they have no other qualities attractive to men, so what else can we expect? This is the fruit of feminism. The fruit of "women's liberation"."

On the meaning of life:

"In the past we had a crude arrow and a crude bow, but at least we had something to aim at. Today our arrow and bow is very nice, golden, expensive, high-tech and fancy, but what good is that when we just fire randomly into the air, hoping we might hit something?"

On suicide:

"The suicide is the ultimate victory over the body, because the body's natural instincts will force you to try and survive, no matter what, while the spirit and hugr (mind, "soul") always seek to return to the gods. The suicide is also very attractive because it allows me to demonstrate the will to remove the effete, and to give room for the young and healthy, even if the effete is me - and naturally at one point I will become effete too, like we all will."

I've started exploring Last.fm now as an alternative and/or complement to Pandora which I still use.

Here's my profile page

I haven't yet fully understood how Last.fm works but I'm going to try to learn it the same way you learn to use a new wrist watch: baby steps.

The standalone player application works great on my mac at home but the Linux version segmentation faulted before the music even started so I'm going to use a much more interesting alternative on Linux which is to play Last.fm inside Amarok (which is tonnes better than iTunes by the way). Sadly the pause keyboard command doesn't seem to work.

One thing I do love about Pandora, is the ability to shuffle between various stations/channels. In Pandora I've got one station of heavy metal and one for Frank Zappa type music (amongst others) and if I stay for too long on one station it gets a bit boring. Let's hope this is possible with Last.fm too.

The last couple of days I've been listening to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band. It's a strange experience and the more I listen to it the more it gets to me. The reason I got this album was because I saw an old documentary about Captain Beefheart and there's this special album that they talk about that was meant to be so special.

I've never been a huge fan of Captain Beefheart. The only other album I've been listening to is Clear Spot where the song Big Eyed Beans From Venus can be found. Probably one of the best songs I know. Like with Trout Mask Replica, it took me a long time to appreciate Big Eyed Beans From Venus. It wasn't until I actually listened to the song that I realised why it was so fantastic.

Some of Captain Beefhearts music isn't really music. It's like seamingly random banging on instruments with lyrics that don't make any sense or reason. Captain Beefhearts music is better described as art. Abstract art if you like. I know it sounds pretentiuous but the more you listen to it the more it thrills you. Yes, you guess right, you can't dance to this kind of music. To some it might initially sound like a drunk hobo plus his drunk hobo friends who manage to switch on the power in a recording studio and record an album with made up lyrics as they record.

Anyway, about that documentary. They interview Matt Groening (the creator of The Simpsons none other) and he talks of this amazing album.

"So I bought it. I took it home, I put it on. It was the worst track ever. They're not even trying! They're just playing... randomly. But then I thought, Frank Zappa produced it so maybe if I play it again, and I thought... It sounds horrible but they mean it sound this way. And about the third or fourth time it started to grow on me. In the fifth or sixth time, I loved it. And the seventh or eighth time I thought it was the greatest album ever made. And I still do."

The documentary also mentions that it took the band eight months to record the album. Produced by Frank Zappa and without any money since there wasn't a record contract and hence no food except small portions of soya beans in really dire times. Also, they weren't allowed to leave the house except once a week, one band member was allowed to get food from the crocery store.

You can read more about this amazing album on this Wikipedia page. To give you a little head start, here's a snippet of an intro of the song Pena as an MP3 file.

I'll continue to listen to it and will probably like it even more. This is probably the "hippiest" blog on this site of the year.

UPDATE

Here are some additional links worth checking out if you're interested.

The lyrics of Big Eyed Beans From Venus, The lyrics to Pena and A writeup of an article about Matt Groening

UPDATE2

Here's a great article on epinions.com that contains a track analysis. I learnt a lot from this. "It is methodically calculated chaos"

I really do enjoy my Pandora internet radio station and it greatly pleases me to hear about the Pandora Version 2 which they emailed me about just a few days ago.

"As one of our most treasured early listeners, we want to make sure this transition works for you?-recognizing that you subscribed at a time when subscription was the only option. To that end, we've automatically given you a complimentary upgrade of your current quarterly subscription to an annual subscription-9 additional months at no cost to you."

Cool. Not only are they upgrading my subscription, they're also vastly improving the whole service:

"As you read this, we are releasing Pandora Version 2. In addition to many new features including bookmarking, station editing, playlist improvements and much fine-tuning, the new service will now include a free, ad-supported version. Listeners have the choice to subscribe and stay clear of ads, or use the free service which will gradually incorporate advertising."

What can I say? Use Pandora!!

I've been using Pandora for a while now. It's a Internet radio station where you create your own stations. When you start you enter an artist or a song or something and it then tries to play songs that are similar to that one you entered. So, I enter "Frank Zappa" and now it's playing songs that sound like Frank Zappa songs (and some Frank Zappa too of course). Songs do repeat I must admit, but it's not very often. It's not a free service like so many other Internet radio stations but unlike others, on this one you can fast forward. If there's a song you don't like, you click the little album icon that is shown and select "I don't like it". This skips that song and I hope to believe it remembers this and doesn't try to play that song again in a long time.

Likewise, if there's a song you like, you click and say "I like it" which just means it'll be played again fairly soon.

The price is really cheap too. It's $36 for a year or $12 for a quarter. If you want to you can try it for free for 10 hours which is what I did and was impressed enough to pay up. I really recommend this site to all readers of this page.

Another neat thing is that if there's a song you really like you can click the icon and select to buy it from iTunes or Amazon. (unfortunately Amazon.com and not Amazon.co.uk) So far, by discovering good songs on Pandora I've purchased two CDs from Amazon.