It’s a Saturday night and I am catching up on the web…I am virus laden, sore throated and sniffly…haven’t really left the house except for a doctor’s appointment Friday morning. I’ve been watching tv and reading and today I have been thinking about music. It’s Bob Lefsets’s fault. His blog post today hit me in just the right way. He talked about two albums, Gorilla and Blood on the Tracks and I couldn’t call up either of them by name. So I hit Spotify for one and iTunes for the other and started listening.
First I started writing a letter to my ex-husband. (email…I haven’t written a real letter in ages). We had been talking about the George Harrison special on HBO
…the topic of music continues…
…why the hell didn’t we have music.? I don’t even think we had “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”…(sorry) I mean, we had the Beatles, and Todd…and you introduced me to Zappa…but when I met you my idea of cool music was John Denver, Tapestry, WLS….it has taken me YEARS to get beyond “white girl with guitar music” (like Joni Mitchell singing “Diamonds and Rust: on the juke box at (what was the name of the bar that I waitressed at for a short while?)
I read a blog called Letters from Lefsetz http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ who is a well known? music figure from LA…Today he talked about the summer of 1975, Gorilla by James Taylor and Blood on the Tracks….I know that music, but I don’t “know” those albums if you know what I mean. So I got Gorilla on Spotify* and bought “Blood on the Tracks” from iTunes and I’m listening to them now.
I think the summer of 1975 was my theater summer, because that was the summer I lived with Mrs. Gates and you lived with Paul Sheehan and the Chinese guys across the street.
*don’t know if I can still recommend spotify because it requires Facebook now, but I got my Premium account before that happened. I love the share my playlist aspect that connects me to new and old music that I love, and I go ahead and buy anything that I can use on Womyn Making Waves because artists deserve to be paid….but that is a whole nother story….
I hit Google+ and an old friend said he got rid of his Spotify account. This is a guy I respect and who I have known for decades. He said:
Whilst I could certainly listen to most of the music I like on there, I have been put off by the fact that any of my friends who wanted to share music with me through Spotify, or listen to what I was listening to, had to have a Facebook account. I wasn’t directly affected myself, as I’d joined Spotify prior to the Facebook hook-up, but I’m uncomfortable with the idea of being a recruiting sergeant for Mark Zuckerberg.
He also linked to this Wired post by Steven Levy on Spotify, Facebook and the Future of Music. I love Spotify…it took me maybe 5 minutes to get a Premium account after I first hit spotify.com. Granted, when the facebook connection came up, I had my doubts. I’m not crazy about facebook in the first place, although it’s a good place to find old friends and family. Of course, as soon as Spotify made sharing on facebook the default for music, a bunch of hacks appeared to give users a way to avoid doing it.
I’m rambling.
One of the reasons I like Spotify is for the way it helps people share music. To go back to the beginning of this post, I picked up a James Taylor album and a Bob Dylan album because of Bob Lefsetz. Then I picked up a YouTube video from Emily Lloyd featuring Nina Simone.
Went to Spotify for some Nina Simone and iTunes for a 3part FREE podcast from Legacy. Stayed in iTunes to play The Best of Minnie Riperton. (Maya Rudolph is Minnie Riperton’s daughter.
I should be doing Womyn Making Waves tomorrow but Weyrdbird aka Abby (the other half of the kitteh and birdie show) is covering. She is my music connection and has been for years and he taste in music is most excellent. Listen to her tomorrow on http://weft.org starting at 1pm. Womyn’s music and music by women.
