What's On My Pandora?

After I got my DroidX phone last June, I gave up renting my wife's iPod for my crazy workout music. Pandora Internet Radio solves the problem of having to update my music library with more and more music. This free app lets me listen to the artists I specify and without the expense of more downloads (though downloading is available). The only catch is that I have to listen to a 15-30 second ad a couple of times each hour. A few drawbacks of Pandora are that I can't rewind a song that has played and listen again, and I can only skip up to six songs per hour. Here now are my fave listens from my current Pandora setup:

1. Gentle Giant -- anything from "Octopus," "Freehand" or "The Power and the Glory"


2. Yes -- anything from "Going for the One" in particular


3. Jethro Tull


4. Dream Theater -- disgustingly brilliant guitar wizardry from John Petrucci


5. Liquid Tension Experiment -- featuring members of Dream Theater, King Crimson, and the Dixie Dregs


6. Frank Zappa


7. Genesis -- anything from the Peter Gabriel era, particularly "Nursery Cryme" and "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"


8. King Crimson


9. Emerson Lake and Palmer -- "Hoedown," "Fanfare for the Common Man," and "Tarkus"


10. Pink Floyd -- post Syd Barrett


11. The Who


12. Allan Holdsworth


13. Jeff Buckley


14. The Beatles -- for the kids (and for me too!)


15. Weather Report/Jaco Pastorius/Joe Zawinul/Wayne Shorter

The beauty of Pandora is that they play a lot of rare live cuts of the artists I like. Also, I get surprised by some choice cuts that seem to come out of nowhere: Al DiMeola, Jeff Beck, Chris Squire, and Roger Waters post-Floyd.

Back to our regularly scheduled madness.