Get your from GristThere are few bands with which I have a longer ongoing relationship than jazz-funk-improv trio. I think I’m one of the few people that started listening to them when their first album came out —, way back in 1991, when I was gulp a sophomore in college.
That record was straight-up acoustic jazz, complete with horns and just enough hints of funk to attract a faux-hippie like yours truly. It only hinted at what was to come.Medeski Martin & WoodMMW’s second album, is in my top five of all time. I’ve probably heard it as many times, and in as many different phases of my life, as any piece of music ever. It’s like an old friend that knows embarrassing stories about me. In it, the band moved a little toward the modern — more organ and electric piano, more funk, more lean, hooky barn burners. For me, at least, it was the perfect balance. It’s never been topped.The third, is another gem, in my top ten.
They stripped down even further to a tight, funky trio, no guests, just thick organ, guttural base, and cosmically funky drums. This is the one I’d give somebody to introduce them to the band. It’s great soundtrack music; one track in particular, “Chubb Sub,” has shown up in at least three or four movies I can think of.Then there was, the last of the greats and probably the most accessible and dance-y. I did a great deal of hacky-sacking to this one, among other recreational activities.was a sharp departure, a completely shapeless, beatless 50 unbroken minutes of formless free jazz improvisation, recorded on a lark (officially released only many years later).
It obviously showed an increased appetite for improv, because their albums for the next few years included fewer and fewer structured, composed songs and more and more of what were clearly scraps of improvisation caught on tape. They added a DJ (DJ Logic) for a while and flirted with more electronic noise, and the following run of albums —, and — were crowded, hookless, and somewhat cold. (During this time there were also two live albums, the acoustic and the fanclub-only Electric Tonic, both of which were similarly challenging and not much fun.)MMW hit their stride again in 2004 with the Dust Brothers-produced, which tightened the songs up a bit and put the funky groove back in. The title track is one of their best ever, a perfect marriage of head-nodding bop and dystopic postmodern atmospherics. (In 2006 they did with guitarist John Scofield, but I never did get a chance to listen to it much.)So there’s a historical tour for you, of interest to, um, probably no one. But I enjoyed it.Anyway!
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this year MMW would be putting out, of all things, an album of children’s music. Wackier yet, turns out to be awesome, no matter how old you are.
There’s no condescending or simplifying for the kids, just a little more fun and whimsy. If you’re a parent like me and desperate to find kids’ music that doesn’t suck — it’s harder than you think — this is a gold mine.Kind of cool to think that this band I started listening to when I was a kid is now making music for my kids. The circle of life, I tell you.The song’s called “Where’s the Music?”.
Money Mustache loves his music.I need a constant soundtrack of it at all times – different types of music for breakfast-eating, house-building, furniture-making, driving, blog-writing, exercising, dancing, house cleaning, patio beer-drinking-and-campfire-having, and more. And it has to be different music all the time – no repeating the same song within a week (preferably a month), different genres throughout each day, and of course absolutely no talking or commercials interrupting the mix, ever.With a habit like this, you can imagine that I have to spend a lot of time collecting and organizing the music, and making mixes that meet my stringent requirements. And in the past, I have spent a lot of money on the hobby as well.
Let’s talk about those olden days to explain how things were, and how they have changed.Ever since that golden day when my dad brought home a little battery-powered radio from an advertising industry trade show, I have been hooked. I used to slip the flat radio under my pillow before going to sleep each night as a 9-year-old, and one of my parents would quietly reach under my sleeping head and turn it off on their own way to bed later that night. At the time, I listened to an AM rock station called CKOC that played the cutting edge early ’80s rock and pop music that thrilled youngsters of my generation. Toto’s Africa and much of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album blew little Pre-teen MMM’s mind.As the years went on, my interest grew. I bought my first double-cassette deck portable stereo (“ghetto blaster”, as we called them back then, despite the fact that we lived in a crime-free town, population 4,000, and thus there were no ghettos available to blast). I started buying tapes, meticulously recording songs from the weekly American Top 40 broadcast with Casey Kasem, and swapping recordings of records and tapes with friends. I discovered the concept of High Quality Sound, and commandeered the stereo system from the family living room for my own bedroom.
After scoring my first minimum-wage job, I went crazy and bought an $1100 stereo system of my own, and some of my budding little audiophile friends followed suit. CDs were invented and we bought some of the first CD players and started accumulating CDs at a brisk pace, despite their punishing $20-per-disc price ($36.38 in today’s dollars if you ). I joined, and quit, the Columbia House music club repeatedly as a way of getting more CDs for less.That was a funny time in our lives, since our spending on music as a percentage of income was ridiculous.
By the age of 17, I had amassed about 300 CDs, representing well over $4000 of casual spending collected onto one heavy bookshelf. This is comparable to me buying and maintaining a multi-bedroom luxury motor yacht today, something which I obviously would not even consider. But kids will be kids, and Mr. Money Mustache wasn’t around to admonish me at the time for the careless spending.But thankfully, both the Internet and the globalization of manufacturing have come along, and completely wiped out the old model. It’s much more difficult for Leather-clad Hair Metal bands like Kiss, Winger, Slaughter, and Quiet Riot to pack stadiums while simultaneously making millions for themselves and their managers and merchandisers and owners. But it’s much easier for independent musicians like my brother to spread the word and gain a moderate but dedicated fan base that spans a few countries and lets them travel and rock out upon many ‘a’ fine stage. And music consumers like myself have enjoyed the effects of Napster, Usenet newsgroups, eMule, Bit Torrent, and many other technologies that have fleshed out music collections worldwide at minimal expense, even while we enjoy buying the music of local musicians directly after a barroom concert, with cash, over a compliment and a handshake.The thing about music for music enthusiasts is that we need a LOT of it.
If I listen to music for an average of 4 hours a day, 30 days a month, with no repeats, I’d need a rotation of 1440 songs, or $1440 dollars worth of music at iTunes prices just to get me through the first month.In the bad old days, a listener was trapped in a triangle between the options of Incredible Expense, Time-Consuming and Possibly-Illegal Piracy, or Awful Commercial-laden FM radio.Then Internet Radio came along.Suddenly there were thousands of streaming radio stations playing nice DJ-arranged mixes of music, supported only by small visual ads but no intrusive audio ads. It was a huge step forward, especially for office workers who want to groove along with headphones all day while they work on their computers. But each DJ’s taste still seemed to differ from my own, such that an annoying tuneless grating noise song or a schlocky Celine Dion-style ballad would pop incongruously into the mix and snap me out of my concentration. Because of this risk, I often had to resort back to my own digital music collection and the attendant time expenditures.But one year ago, I discovered a nice hybrid of the two systems: Pandora Internet Radio.
You type in the name of a musician, like my favorite Jazz piano player Ahmad Jamal. Pandora automatically creates a “Station” that plays only Ahmad Jamal and similar musicians. 24 hours a day, advertising free, as long as you pony up the $36 per year fee for the premium Pandora One service.If a station ever plays a song you don’t like, you run over to your computer and click the “thumbs down” button. This feeds back into Pandora’s algorithm to further figure out your tastes and make the station even better.I have been a paying Pandora subscriber for one year, and it has been a constant companion for me, streaming out of my laptop into the main stereo at home, and out of my iPhone into the Construction Radio when I am out in the yard or at a party or job site.I’ve created and customized about 30 stations, each of which draw upon thousands of songs, and I get to sit back and mix and match them for the event at hand.
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Ahmad Jamal, Alana Davis, Action Figure Party, AC/DC, The Biscuit Burners, Celia Cruz, The Dining Rooms, DJ Shadow, Don Ross, Fila Brazillia, India Arie, Jurassic 5 (best hip-hop group ever), Manu Chao, Me’Shell NdegeOcello, Medeski Martin and Wood, Mountain Brothers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Strunz & Farah, Turntablism & Beat Science, and the classic early hip-hoppers Young MC/Digital Underground are just some of my stations that form the broad foundation of this crazy new world of infinite music listening.Pandora satisfies my desire for high quality audio as well. With the premium service, I get streaming at a bitrate of 192kb/sec using a compression method that is more advanced than MP3 (aacPlus). I run this sound stream out of the digital output on the back of my laptop, into my beefy Yamaha receiver, where the digital-to-analog conversion is done in a nice low-noise environment. It is amplified with a fantastic amount of clean power, and pumped out to the gorgeous row of woofers and tweeters depicted in the headline photo of this article. The end result is rich, detailed concerts in my living room, where the fine hairs of brushes hitting the drums strike out into the kitchen, and where the Bass tickles your buttocks at strategic moments. (I will admit that in the area of music reproduction, my frugality has broken down in earlier years.
Someday when I lead a more minimalist life, this equipment will have to go. But for now, the MMM Household rocks on.)All at a monthly cost of only 3 songs from iTunes, or 3 Justin Bieber ringtones that a teen might purchase for her phone while walking around in the shopping mall. If I can get all this legally for $3 per month, it is hard to imagine spending more in any situation. So I am actually enjoying the most decadent and expensive music collection that can possibly be justified.It makes me wonder who these people are that are pumping hundreds of their hard-earned employees into Apple’s iTunes store each year, when I already have the largest music collection imaginable at $3 per month!Sometimes it is great to be a big spender. “(I will admit that in the area of music reproduction, my frugality has broken down in earlier years.
Someday when I lead a more minimalist life, this equipment will have to go. But for now, the MMM Household rocks on.)”A problem with minimalism getting rid of things you genuinely enjoy. I got a receiver and a nice 5.1 system a little while ago, and I expect it to last nearly forever. Sure, I could use the speakers on my TV and still get enjoyment, but not as much.
Is it mustachian to get rid of something that obviously brings you such (buttock tickling) enjoyment?.Dancedancekj September 23, 2011, 4:09 pm. I guess it’s all about priorities, right? As long as you’re not consuming excessively or spending excessively, there are no fast and hard rules. Especially if something like that brings you so much butt tickling enjoyment. Spend your money on a few select items that will bring you much joy and are worth it (MMM’s bread machine was a good example on here) as opposed to cheap plastic crap that won’t give you any fulfillment.I believe that being a Mustachian doesn’t mean a vow of poverty – just of priorities:).MMM September 23, 2011, 5:12 pm. That’s the Joy of being an MMM reader.
It’s not Minimalism. It’s not Hedonism. We get most of our music for free – legally – from Internet Archive (archive.org). We’re pretty much Deadheads when it comes to music, and there are thousands of live audience recordings of our favorite bands (Grateful Dead, Ratdog, The Dead, The Other Ones, Phil Lesh & Friends, Furthur, Rhythm Devils) available on the Archive. And there are other great Bands such as Stringcheese and Carolina Chocolate Drops, so it’s not just for Deadheads.
It;s great to be able to get a concert off the Archive the day after you’ve been to a show.Not all bands will allow their stuff to go on the Archive though, and unfortunately, none of MMM’s favorites seem to be listed:(There’s also video and literature and such.April 28, 2013, 5:30 pm. Yup, you guessed it. I can’t STAND audio advertising. Even one ad shatters my nice concentration zone while working and leaves me frazzled – because radio ads are so loud and fast-fake-talking and non-musical. If pandora played up to a maximum of one ad per week, I could survive.
But they seem to play many per day in free mode. The $3/mo also gets you higher-quality streaming and longer timeout before auto-stop, which is essential if you are not next to a computer all day and want the music to continue.omgrun August 29, 2013, 9:30 pm.
I have Adblock Plus for chrome, which is a free browser plugin. It completely prevents the ads from playing, even in the free version of Pandora. It also does a handful of other nifty stuff, like blocking the ads on Youtube, and blocking the grand majority of browser ads that pop up in the sidebars, as well as blocking popups.Occasionally an audio ad will still manage to squeeze by on pandora if you change the station, but this happens to me very rarely.So there, a completely free AND ad-free solution!Still, the money might be worth the good quality audio itself, depending on how passionate you are about your music:).cgc007 January 28, 2014, 11:40 pm.
I’ve confused pandora. It keeps playing ads in languages I don’t understand fluently so it’s a wash for me.
My issue with pandora is that I’d rather listen to my playlist of 10 songs while working out than pandora(also bc I don’t want to waste my data while out and about.)I only buy singles these days and I’ll go awhile without buying anything and then I’ll buy a few songs that I really want. Keeps me motivated while working out and it’s better than dropper $10-15 a pop like I did in college on a cd that I may only like 2 songs on.I’m more careful when I buy songs now that I’ve gone on my financial diet.Matt Faus September 23, 2011, 5:55 pm. I am in Canada too & LOVE Spotify ($9.99/month now, a few years later than this article).
I used to buy individual songs on iTunes, but with Spotify I now consume music differently, due to the sheer unlimited abundance of Spotify. I listen to a lot more albums, I hear a lot more NEW music (and put my favorites onto playlists of all kinds) and I seek out ambient music like mellow jazz or instrumentals when I’m reading or puttering around the house. LOVE Spotify!.Smurph September 23, 2011, 8:43 pm. The shift in music delivery medium is for the better in terms of cost.
But how has it affected the way we listen to music as a whole? We used to purchase albums with an expectation for the entire piece of work. Now we seek individual tracks. Our selection of music towards a particular mood or feeling could be pinpointed to a specific disc we purchased, but now we hope that a streaming service satisfies that need when we no longer own the tracks or have ability to select them. Does this change the way we collect, develop taste, and appreciate music as a whole?
Comments?.MMM September 25, 2011, 3:50 pm. Yeah, that’s a nice point. I love the Full Album Experience too, and when I’m REALLY listening to music, like just sitting in a comfy chair centered between the speakers and soaking into it with no other activities, that’s how I do it – from track 1 up to track 16 with no breaks.But sometimes during a construction work day, when I’m walking around and climbing ladders and using noisy saws, having a mix is nice as well. Also, the randomness of Pandora is what allows me to discover new bands that I wouldn’t have otherwise heard of. When an amazing new track comes on, I run down to the radio and bookmark the song for easy future reference when finding more music from that person.Gerard September 25, 2011, 8:26 am. THE BEST NAME EVER!?
Man, thanks a lot, that is quite a compliment. But I must admit that it throws my whole life for a bit of a loop. Making up silly yet amusing new terms for things is pretty much my main reason for living, and indeed, for writing this blog.If I’ve made the best possible word in human history just like that, by accident, right here in this comment stream, I might have to quit and just cruise aimlessly for the rest of my adult life!!
Shit!!!.September 25, 2011, 9:53 am. Good article! I resisted streaming subscriptions until Spotify. They won me over. I’ve usually spent a little over $10/month on music, so it’s easy for me to justify the premium Spotify package (and I loving having all those tunes available on my Android).
Pandora is quite good, and I respect their music genome project, though I’ve seen some really QuIrKy things coming outta that. So much so, I kept thinking someone was just trying to see if I was paying attention!
Still, I wanted the control, which I get with Spotify.Steve September 26, 2011, 8:54 am. Pandora is FREE without commercials if you use the ROKU set-top box. Roku allows you to add channels, mostly it’s clam-to-fame is that it was developed to stream netflix content. But there are tons of other channels.Pandora is on there, once you add it and connect up your regular non-paid account it plays through the set top box. Which costs as little as $60 bucks. No subscriptions or fees.
You just need a high-speed internet connection.But pandord on roku gives you streaming without commercials, just like you had a paid account. I listen to it all the time at home, piped through our audio surround system which is connected to my TV.It’s easy, free (after you buy the box), simple and easy to use. Oh and you get a remote control too.In my mind the best way to stream pandora content!.The Schmett November 8, 2011, 2:50 pm.
I know you like Jurrasic 5. My favorite group is Deepspace5, an underground super hip hop group, with a similar feel. I haven’t used Pandora so not sure if they are on there or not. One of the members, Sintax the Terrific (My favorite), set up a sweet blogsite about a year or so ago where he raps current news events once or twice a week.
You might like it, check it outFresh Raps every week is nice. I think a few of favorite’s were on, and his book review of (most recent biography of Bobby Fischer). Also in his day job he is a lawyer which is pretty rad.I’d be interested to see what you think.Gus January 12, 2012, 8:16 am. 1) Pandora IS available to Canadians such as myself. By using a Proxy service located in the USA, one can gain access to the free version of Pandora. I believe the paid for version is also accessible but would require you to have a friend with an US address.2) MMM, you mentioned that you do not want any songs to be repeated within a month.
How do you handle that with Pandora? In my experience, using the free version, it often happened that the same song played almost back to back. This is especially true if there are several versions of a song (remixes) or if the pool of similar songs is limited (i.e., if you pick an obscure group to create a station).MMM January 12, 2012, 9:36 am. Awesome – Proxy servers are a sweet invention and a nice way to get around the douchey big media companies who like to pretend they can control the flow of information. Do you have a recommendation for one in particular?
Some of the more reliable ones (which cost a couple of bucks a month) might even allow you to stream Netflix movies to other countries, correct?Regarding the repeating songs – I just use a very large rotation of stations on “Quickmix”, and then if a song still repeats too often, I click “I’m tired of this song” whenever convenient. It would be nice if Pandora would offer more control, like options such as “never repeat songs within days.From what I can tell, they have a very minimal software development team. There isn’t even an iphone app that lets you control another instance of Pandora running on your main media server computer, for example. And there is no “I’m tired of this song” option on the mobile version. But I look at this as an exercise in Mustachian training for myself – learn to appreciate something that is already awesome, rather than focusing on what it is missing.January 18, 2012, 4:12 am. @johonn, which speakers do you mean? I have a nexus 7 tablet and am looking for good, less expensive speakers for it.
Any suggestions anyone2 quick pandora-specific questions: approximately what kind of data usage do people see with it on their phones. I’ve been using pandora on the phone direct wired into my aux port on my ca stereo, and absolutely loving it! Just curious how much dat its using because i’ll be scaling down my cell plan at the end of the year and want to pan accordingly for the data partalso, i’m still not sure why the paid subscription is worth it?
Medeski Martin And Wood Wiki
I’m very new to pandora, and yes, the script is only $3, but i don’t pay anything and get a ton of enjoyment what am i missing? Thanks guys!.Three Wolf Moon December 5, 2013, 4:23 pm.
I can certainly appreciate the thinking behind this article, and while I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it per se, I do want to point out that services like Pandora and Spotify have come under pretty intense criticism over the past couple years for not compensating artists enough. If an artist’s song gets played tens of thousands of times on one of these services, the royalties still don’t add up to more than a couple bucksI don’t think that makes internet streaming services wrong, and they can be extremely helpful for helping artists get connected with new listeners. But I thought it was worth emphasizing that when you do stumble across artists whose music you deeply enjoy and relate to, it’s worth the extra time and money to actually purchase their albums, support them, let them know you care. I’m a big fan of DI.fm (Digitally Imported) for electronic music and TheBlast.fm for aggressive Christian Alt-Rock.DI has lots of channels for different sub-genres of electronic music. My favorite is the PsyChill channel. Especially when working, biking or (perish the thought) driving. It’s got this awesome vibe that makes you feel like you are in some kind of super spy movie.The Chillout channel is also great for relaxing tunes.Bitrate options for the free service are 40k or 64k HE-AAC or 96k MP3; for the paid service it gives you the additional options of 128k AAC or 256k MP3 plus no audio or banner ads.I haven’t brought myself to subscribe to DI.fm’s premium service just yet.
There are ads with the free service but I don’t find them annoying enough Yet Once I get closer to my goal of retirement I will probably break down and subscribe. Until then I’ll just keep flexing my money muscle.DI has its own app for the iPhone and you can run it on your ipad too.And when I feel.