Here’s the last in our series of blog posts that showcase some of the musical works of our Music Analysts. As you know, every song you listen to on Pandora has been carefully analyzed by our trained staff, to figure out its building blocks so that it can be matched to other songs. But in addition to analyzing songs for Pandora, they play music. I’ve been posting a few of the Pandora stations on which you can hear some of our Music Analysts, which as you have probably noticed, represents quite a range of styles. Take a listen! (click here for the first , second , third, and fourth Analyst spotlights.)
Alan Lin can be found playing the violin on a variety of stations! You can find him playing with Pandora staff, such as Ariah Firefly and Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs. Here’s three more artists whose Pandora stations feature Alan’s work: Etienne de Rocher plays catchy-but-intelligent pop music from the swamps of Alabama, with a large helping of soul. David Hopkins, a school-mate of Damien Rice’s, writes beautiful, heart-wrenching love songs as well as catchy ditties. Noe Venable is a sonic poet that a music reviewer once declared to be the secret love-child of Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones.
The group made up of the most Pandorans is called Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs. In addition to non-Pandora musicians, this talented group consists of Steve Hogan (pictured below), Jeff Anthony, Kurt Kotheimer (who’s also in 24 Hr USA), Alan Lin, Yair Evnine, Josh Smith and obviously, Michael Zapruder. You should come to their CD release party on August 17th, at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Their CD features beautifully written moody songs with deeply interesting lyrics. Their mellow sound showcases lots of strings, sometimes horns, and reminds me at times of Elvis Costello or Rufus Wainwright.
This is Steve Hogan, our head Music Analyst and stellar human being. In this photo he’s in our music library, playing that Sesame Street song, “These are the people in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood……” He had sung it to his baby as a lullaby the night before (without the accordion!), and the tune just stuck in his head.
It’s been really fun for me to learn a bit more about the musical efforts of my co-workers, though you’d be surprised how hard it was to get many of them to offer up information about their bands. These are some talented cats, and you know what they say about herding cats…. I hope that you, dear listener, enjoyed getting to know the music of some of our Analysts as well; there’s so much music in our collection to try out! Get to it!
cheers, Lucia
The ears behind Pandora….last but not least!
by Pandora on July 25, 2006