Category Archives: Kultcha

After that last post, we need something life-affirming. Meet The Zimmersband.

It might cheer you up.

If you can't be bothered to follow the link above (which has information about the band that made me smile), here's their first video:

I've been listening to Pandora a lot lately. I have a bunch of stations defined, in varying degrees of bakedness, plus a few stations defined by other people. But what I do most of all is use Pandora's “Quickmix” feature, which allows one to select some or all of one's defined stations; Pandora then cycles among them randomly, a song at a time. So I get an eclectic and unpredictable station when I want it, and a more targeted station when I want that.

If you have any interest in what I'm listening to, you too can ride along on Froomkin's Pandora 'Quickmix'.

As I understand it, the way this works is that what you get will be determined by the same algorithm as determines what I get, but it won't necessarily be the identical songs. Plus, I get to alter which of my stations are in the mix on a rolling basis (and I do!), and also to modify my stations, also on a rolling basis. When I do either of those things, that changes the algorithm which determines what you hear.

But, as I understand it, you don't get to change what I or others hear. All you can do is stop listening, mark a given song as something you don't want to hear again for a month, or (up to six times per hour), skip to the next song.

At this writing I have it set for a fairly broad mix, which includes a little folk, a little comedy, a little weirdness, some great solo singers (mostly female but including Leonard Cohen) and quite a lot of 80/90s pop and especially (then) alternate rock. I find I can't work to rap, so that's out of the mix, yes even Gil Scott-Heron, except sometimes on the weekend.

Please, please, tell me this is a photoshop job:

(Spotted here.)

There may be more to this OK Go phenom than I grasped (see Notes from the Cultural Treadmill). The video has spawned a bunch of spin-offs. In addition to the Lego version noted by Ann Bartow in the comments, there’s a pretty funny chipmunk style version.

Update: Just noticed that Prof. Grant McCracken has posted a followup on the OK Go video:

The Ok Go video I noted last week continues to tug at me. It is an arresting piece of work, but I can’t say why, exactly, it should exercise fascination. On its face, it’s dorky guys engaged in a dorky project. (Perhaps 90s in this way but still, surely, too dorky actually to fascinate.)

At first, I thought that the power of the video come from the juxtaposition of synchronized dance and a rock band. Rock bands are obliged never to exhibit anything so ordinary as coordination. Cool in our time has been consistently defined by a refusal of anything so individuality-killing as this. For instance, the Beatles were the last band to wear a uniform, and no band in recent times has worn anything coordinated except as a rather good joke.

But no. I think there is something else going, and if you will indulge me I am going to see if I can figure it out.

And then it gets weird. But always interesting.