I scoff at you who love your iPods. I think you are living in a bubble. There is a monstrous world of music out there and you are trapped in your flourescent colored box. From a form-function perspective, you cannot beat the iPod, but from an experience perspective it comes up short...very short.
As the MP3/iPod craze swept the country, I decided to go in another direction. I went with XM Radio. I held back behind the first wave of available radios and was fortunate enough to catch the XM Inno and ride the big wave. The Inno has full XM functionality, portability, MP3 play-back, recording capability, auto tuning by artist, scheduling and much more. It is an awesome product.
What I love about the Inno is the experience. It gives me access to music I would never find on my own. I typically camp out on Alternative Rock, Jazz, the Starbucks channel, 80's, 90's, NPR, Yankees games, Big Band Jazz...lots of stuff I know and love to hear. Most of the time I know the artists and I even know the lyrics. I can hum the tune and it is all famliar...just like you folks trapped in the "walled garden" of your iPods. However, since I am listening to live radio, I also get to hear music in the same genre that I have never heard before. And that is where the Inno provides such a great experience. When I hear a song I like; I just hit "record" and it pulls the song off the internal buffer and it is on my Inno to be replayed forever.
So, I hear songs I would never hear otherwise...which brings me to the great "find" that motivated this post.
The other day I was listening to the Big Band station (channel 73) when this gem came on. The sum is so much stronger than the parts. I wasn't paying complete attention when it came on and then I realized what I was hearing. I could not believe that my Inno was going to give me the opportunity to bottle up this magic....it is gold, pure musical gold.
Enjoy the magic with me...I give you Paul Anka (of "Puppy Love" fame) singing the Nirvana classic, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
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5 comments:
Bryan, you've only solidified for me exactly WHY I own an iPod.
Jealous???
Angela...I am not at all jealous. I was listening to the 90's station today and caught some Vanilla Ice - "Rollin' in my 5-point-Oh..." I would never pay good money to buy that song, but I enjoy hearing it every once in awhile. XM lets me live on the edge.
B,
You make a compelling argument, and I think I can say without hyperbole that the Paul Anka piece is far and away the greatest video to come along since the invention of the "talkie."
Good stuff.
I'd actually heard that before. I will say I did enjoy a song I heard on Saturday on Ed's XM called Handlebars. I actually heard it again today used in a commercial. The video is here. I think you'll dig it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AuK2A1ZqoWs
Just realized you have a blog, where have I been. If you are sick in the head like me and like this music you will dig this, http://www.richardcheese.com/rchome.html although you will need an ipod for optimal playback, but this guys rules.
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