quilt
Jesus, how gay is my artist quilt (It’s the nice moving picture thingy at the bottom of the sidebar)?
I got it from Last.fm, and if you haven’t registered there yet, I strongly suggest you go, take a look and get registered. The site keeps track of the music you’re playing on your pc (and, supposedly, on your iPod too; although the collection of my iPod data - supposedly automatic on synching - has been sketchy of late. But we’re working on it), and generates a profile based on your most frequently played artists, tracks, genres etc.
The idea is that you can then be introduced to other users whose musical tastes match yours. We’ll come back to that. Oh, f— it, we’ll deal with it here and now.
Other people who share my musical tastes to the degree that I do, frighten me. Actually, quite frankly, they terrify me. I tend to be drawn to certain artists who acquire what can only be termed stalky fans (Not necessarily the same thing as cult artists. I mean, Emma Bunton? If she was a cult, she’d be the Salvation Army).
I love Pet Shop Boys, for example. Always have. Collect almost everything they do.But, at record fairs and PSB meetings (like Alcoholics Anonymous, only to a disco beat, and with decent Sauvignon Blanc), I have previously met young men who would discourse, at length, over several bottles of decent sauvignon Blanc (and, once, a vile Pouilly Fume; but that’s another story) on the harmonic modulations of the ‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’ noise in the background of the rarely played original Bobby ‘O’ version of ‘A man could get arrested.’
Now, even for someone like me, who loves The Boys, it’s often a case of ’shove the track on, sing along (making up own lyrics where necessary), dance a bit, and then, spotting an old Chesney Hawkes in the same pile, switch allegiances.
So, to be faced with such obsessive fandom can be a little disconcerting. It’s a boy thing, of course: It goes back to the collection of marbles and cigarette cards (or, if you’re a boy like Jimmy Dean, cigarette burns), and it is “I know / own / have more obsessively detailed knowledge of the chosen subject than you; I, therefore, am better than you.” At least it’s not “Who’s got the biggest Dick,” but with Pet Shop Boy Fans, Sauvignon Blanc and a disco beat, you can never be too sure that that one isn’t gonna come up.
No, people whose musical tastes are an almost perfectly 100% match for mine are very likely, I fear, to be too weird for words. Well, if pressed for words, here’s a few: Fan slash fiction. Sexual stories. Erotica. About Pet Shop Boys. Oh yes, seen it with my own eyes. And you know what? It made perfect sense of the harmonic modulations of the ‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’ noise in the background of the rarely played original Bobby ‘O’ version of ‘A man could get arrested.’ But it still made me run away so fast I beat the night bus home.
Yes, of far more itnerest to me on the LastFM site is the fact that the site allows you to generate charts (fave artists / tracks etc.), all of which you can probably do using the ‘Last played’ and ‘Play count’ tabs on your iTunes (or similar generic player) anyways, but your iTunes (or similar generic player) won’t make pretty pictures, artist quilts that flip random pics of your fave artists, and make you go ‘Ooh, I’m a Liza short of being Prince Edward on my Lastfm’.
Right now, my pretty pictures are including TheArk, Emma Bunton, Kylie, Madonna, Pet Shop Boys (of whom I appear to be far less obsessive than I had first thought. See? Interestingzzz), Bosson, Kirsty Mac Coll, Kiki & Herb, the Kinsey Sicks, a-ha, Human League, John Barrowman (twice - maybe one is Liza in drag), Army of Lovers, Pat Benatar, William Shatner (fabulous second album. The aural equivalent of a death in the family), Linda Eder, Darren Hayes and Jay-Jay Johanson … Jesus, I need to lie down and listen to some screaming guitars. Or perhaps I just need to embrace my taste, accept my inner (ha! by the looks of it, she’s taken over) Nelly, turn the volume up, and work out how to make the smell of poppers waft out of the speakers every time you access this site.
