Always on the lookout for the serendipitous DJ: One that can provide a nexus of knowns and unknowns, unobtrusive enough to cater to productive spans of writing, with a welcome earworm-stimulant every hour on the hour. In the case of which, I can source the provenance without having to maneuver ulterior motive speculation. Last FM was on-bat for the job. Upon registration, my entire computer-listening history swept onto a profile page in a swift display of unsolicited analytics. Once I swallow the initial unease of seeing my own band in the number one spot - most played, with various (hilarious) television programs rearing up into the top ten, I decide the service has a fighting chance: This was social media transparency I could get behind. It is not enough to merely claim you like listening to, say...Steel Pole Bathtub, or Whitehouse, or the Chicago Transit Authority, you have to clock in for it. And in case you're interested, I qualified the upper-rankings of my own band and the Sarah Silverman Show rather efficiently thankyouverymuch.
Scrobble? Yeah, I Scrobble: I dive right in. For the uninitiated, this is a program for the real-time broadcast of whatever you are listening to on your computer. It features a sidebar with a couple of dropdowns where the other people go. I don’t have any “friends” but the first “neighbor” that shows up on the list is Gerard Cosloy. Serious question: Is he everyone’s #1 “neighbor”? Did he receive an endorsement; or, to be more precise in the hypothetical, an achievement award distributed by Last FM for the listening history that most accurately mirrors what he has publicly endorsed? Huh.
I sign up for his library and move to the task at hand: Find the serendipitous DJ, which I will reiterate as the unattainable playlist. LastFM reminds me of this by taking me to the “end of the internet” on my first go at the place. An N64-esque landscape sprouting genre tags like “arizona”, “reading 2006”, “seen”, “west Yorkshire” and “a campfire and a tent and my glasses and a spaceship and some matches and a tree…” (and I never reached the end of this one) recommends that I try something like “nerdcore” or “new romantic”. I guess that it what I get for searching for, “one-man melodic black metal” - Last FM gets all cute and basically calls me a hipster.
But I am in this for the transparency! Phantom coders have incorrectly profiled me.
Shrugging off the vestigial pretense, I relinquish what I really want to know to the search field. I genre in which I could identify maybe only one.... err, movement? It's played at weddings a lot… and it is exactly what I get.
Pachelbel Canon in Deez nuts!
