So about a week ago I discovered that Amazon now sometimes lets you hear 
clips of the music you're thinking about buying. (Which, obviously, is 
pretty damned useful.) I can't make use of that at work, but now that 
I'm home, I decided to do some browsing.

Now I love rock & roll dancing. But to do it requires rock music. And 
I'm not talking about Meatloaf or The Darkness. I'm talking about Buddy 
Holly or Elvis Presley. THAT kind of rock.

Obviously by the time Elvis died I had only reached the age of -12 or 
so. Consequently, I don't have much of a clue about this stuff.

(In fact, I can still remember the look of shock and disgust on my dance 
partner's face when I uttered the syllables "who's Bill Haley?")

So at about 7PM I started browsing. I can't even remember where I 
started from. Amazon shows you "related" artists, but they're only 
related in the statistical sense that purchases of one artist correlate 
with purchases of another. So the relationships aren't based strictly on 
time period, style or cast members. Indeed, some of the relationships 
are frankly... odd.

Anyway, in true Wikipedia style [ http://xkcd.com/214/ ], starting from 
one point I ended up hearing some bizare and highly unrelated stuff over 
the course of the evening. I made a few interesting observations:

- EVERY artist is "the best" in their particular field, despite the 
apparent logical impossibility of this fact. (Then again, if "my field" 
is "being Invisible" then I can pretty categorically say that, by 
definition, nobody does it better than me...)

- There are many, many artists and groups who's names I've never ever 
heard of. And yet I instantly recognise their music. Hey, it's not like 
they tell you what they're playing on the radio!

- I tried to find rock & roll, yet ended up hearing blues, country, 
jazz, gospel, soul, metal, and even rap. I have no idea how I got to 
Frank Sinatra. (!)

- Many, many tunes that I like have been recorded by several people. 
(And, obviously, I have no friggin' clue who did the version I liked!)

- Many tunes didn't sound nearly as good as I remember this. This is 
possibly related to the insane levels of MP3 compression in the preview 
clips.

I didn't like most of what I heard tonight, but there was some good 
stuff in amoungst. And then, every now and then, I heard something which 
was good enough to tap my feet to. One or two tracks actually 
*compelled* me to jiggle around in my chair with their jaunty rhythm.

There was just one tune, however, which forced me to actually get out of 
my chair, put some slack in the cable to my headphones, and actually 
dance around the room in sheer uncontrollable glee. It was somebody 
called - wait, let me go look up the spelling again - Connie Francis, 
singing "Lipstick on your collar". Damn, that's bitchin'!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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