This Side of Lost

So I've been listening to Yahoo's Launchcast Radio quite a bit recently. The fact that I pay the SBC-Yahoo conglomerate through the nose for DSL has a few added benefits, one of them being the "Plus" version of said service -- no ads, higher quality sound, etc. It's an interesting service -- once you log in with your Yahoo account, you can rate artists, albums and individual tracks on either a four-star or a 100-point scale, and the site starts building a profile on you. The algorithm has its issues (like any program of this type), but it mostly does the job -- mixing artists and tracks you've told it you like with stuff you haven't rated, but it thinks you'll like.

All this uncontrolled music assaulting my sensibilities is akin to a period in my life when I listened to radio program called Freedom Rock every week. The summer after my freshman year, I lived on campus and worked during the week and usually drove home for the weekend. Freedom Rock (self described as "an hour of imported, independent and underground music") played every Sunday night at 8 pm -- right when I was driving home. I discovered a few bands I really like thanks to that program.

During that time, I started a hotlist -- a text file sitting in the home directory of my Unix account that I could update with the name of an artist whenever I came across something that piqued my interest in them. It would be the list I'd go to whenever I was at a headphone station in Barnes & Noble and every once in a while spurred a CD purchase. But mostly it was just a list of people to "check out at some point."

Anyway, I think now's the time to start it again. But this time, I can force my music inklings on the world! Ha. So here we go. This is what I've got so far. This post will be edited many times, hopefully.

The Hotlist

Thea Gilmore
Eddie from Ohio
Matt Nathanson
Avion
Butterfly Boucher
Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers
Elliott Smith
Troubled Hubble
Greg Trooper
Aslyn