Song Of The Day
Fever Ray "When I Grow Up"
I heard this flipping the channels on Sirius. More specifically, I heard it on XMU.
You know how you hear something good and keep waiting for the bad part, to let you down, to disqualify it? Well that didn’t happen here.
I whipped out my pen and wrote down the title.
This morning I ripped off the back page of the "L.A. Weekly" where I’d inscribed the words and shoved it in my pocket. And I just remembered and pulled it out and fired up the track in Spotify.
And it sounded just as good as it did yesterday.
A bit of research will tell you, as it did me, that I am not the first one on this track. I’ll get a clutch of e-mails denigrating me for being an old man and being behind the times, but those people are playing an ancient game, of being holier than thou, like we all live in one little fishbowl, a virtual high school, and we’re all in it together. But we’re not. Despite all the social networking, we’re off on a zillion tangents, and when we discover something new, it’s new to us! Even if it’s a forty year old blues track.
The YouTube video linked below is a slightly shorter take than the one on Spotify, by about thirty seconds, a little bit is lost in translation.
Also, there are seven alternative mixes on Spotify. Happy listening for me!
Meanwhile, Napster shows seven alternative mixes too! As does Rhapsody. So, Americans are not left out!
I’m not sure what Sirius XM’s plan is here. They need to move the service to the XM satellites, which have larger buffers and fewer dropouts. They need to get rid of the ridiculous bumpers and repeats. Who are they programming for? A lowest common denominator that doesn’t exist? But on those outlets that are not constrained, you can hear shit like this.
Your iPod will never play a track you don’t know.
And we want to hear new stuff. It’s human nature. We want to grow.
How does Sirius XM compete with Pandora and especially Slacker on the iPhone platform?
Its only hope is to have the best programming.
"When I Grow Up" resembles the Beach Boys cut with that title not at all. The act has been at it for over a decade. It’s not Top Forty music. But it stimulates your brain and body, takes you on an aural trip every bit as exciting as the San Francisco sound did decades ago.
