Wednesday, June 30, 2004
The difference between The Lake and listening to some I-Pod you might find is that with the I-Pod you could skip to the next song. They have started to run ads, but they will never have dj's-- they don't need them. The target audience can identify every song in three notes. I was never a big Elton John fan, but I surprised myself this morning when I was able to identify the crowd sounds that open "Bennie and the Jets". I mean, this stuff is so familiar, you don't even need to hear the music. It's like going through somebody's old vinyl, and saying, "Hey, I haven't heard this in a while". I'm pretty sure that it is completely random. This morning, for instance, I got two Jackson Browne tunes: on the way out to Batavia, "These Days" (he wrote it for Nico, you know); on the way back, "Rock Me On The Water". No human would progam like that, and, of course, the songs on either side of both were irrelevant to what came before or after. And I don't think I've heard anything recorded in the last ten years. Maybe 15.
