Wish I was in Tijuana eating barbecued iguana

I've been having some fun with Pandora, thanks to Hugh. Pandora is a website where you can enter a couple of songs or recording artists you like, and it will create a "radio station" of songs which are similar, according to the Music Genome Project.

So far, I'd say it's been amusing. The thing it does really well is provide music I've never heard before. For my lists, at least, it almost never plays big radio hits I already know. It does tend to play tracks by artists I've suggested, along with a large stream of completely new (to me) material. It's not perfect - there are some real clunkers in that catalog - but I feel like I've gotten a great song for every bad one, which is a hell of a lot better than commercial radio does. And it's not like it's hard to use the Fast Forward or "Never Play This Again" buttons.

But enough of my yakkin'. Let's boogie.

I'm going through the Hip Deep in Pie archives, and feeding Pandora the songs I've titled these posts after. (I'm about through last October.) And so, I proudly present Radio Free Hip Deep. It's a large, heterogeneous data set, so I can't really say what you'll get. (It's a very good bet you'll get an '80s song with a male vocalist, but you might hit the country or reggae patch. Or, for that matter, the Christmas music.)

Give it a listen; let me know if you like what you hear. And remember, if you do, it's because I have great taste. If you don't, the computer must not really understand me.