Pandora.com and Narcissus: Re-writing the myth

There are two qualities that many of us young Rock and Roll types seem to possess these days:
1) A slight to extreme tendency towards narcissism (I’d like to think that I reside somewhere in the middle on that one)
2) And an unyielding obsession with the Internet.

I am guilty as charged on both counts. As a narcissistic, Internet-loving, Rock musician, it is only natural that I would have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with my own presence in the folds of the html pages that make up the digital world in which so many of us dwell. Aside from the obvious Jump Back Jake google alerts, number of Facebook friends, view count on youtube videos, there is also the occasional self-indulgent (or self-loathing) search for the dreaded “perception” and “reception” of our music among those who have discovered it through one link or another. First off, to everyone who has posted a kind word about us, it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated, and to those of you who were seeking to shut us down, we heard you, but we are still making music. My personal favorite was: “I didn’t think it was possible for this band’s music to suck worse than their name, but I was wrong.”

That stuff really doesn’t upset or surprise me, and there are other Internet experiences that I find much more perplexing than the occasional jab from an armchair critic on a message board. Take for instance Pandora.com. I really like this website for a lot of reasons and was thrilled to see that there was the option of a “Jump back Jake” radio station, but I can tell you as a musician, this is as close as it comes to having a robot tell you what your music sounds like. For instance, when I clicked on the function that explains why they played a specific song in relation to our music it said: “We’re Playing this track because it features mixed acoustic and electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, major key tonality, a vocal –centric aesthetic.”
The song they were referencing was Kelley Stoltz’ “Birmingham Eccentric.” I like Kelley Stoltz and enjoyed seeing him open for the Dirtbombs, but I’m not sure his fans would necessarily like our music based on what seems to me to be a very generic criteria that could apply to a million different songs—though I’m not saying they wouldn’t. Either way there were a lot more songs they played that I did actually find offensive that for obvious reasons, I won’t name, all because of a scientific explanation of how my records sound.

What I find most fascinating is the that idea that as a result of my own narcissism—a word derived from a character in the Greek myths, who fell so deeply in love with his own reflection that he froze in time and became a flower— I can visit a site called Pandora where in keeping with the Greek myth, classification goes out the window, all hell breaks loose, and you can basically be compared to anything. Then through the pairing of these two concepts in Greek mythology, I like Narcissus, could stair at the Internet reflecting my musical identity back to me and essentially become paralyzed by the sight of my own reflection, but this time thanks to Ms. Pandora and her box, it would be because I was upset by what I saw rather than enamored. Does this mean that I will also turn into a cantankerous weed instead of a flower? If I do, it’s certainly not the fault of Pandora.com. Ultimately, I think Pandora provides a valuable service and is an excellent means of musical discovery for folks that don’t have hours to spend reading music books or blogs or digging through record crates, but I don’t think its wise for the likes of me to succumb to my own self obsession and try to make sense of the reasoning they apply to my recordings. I hope someone stumbles across one of our songs while listening to one of their personalized stations, and I hope they like what they hear despite why they may be hearing it. The Internet itself is Pandora’s Box for all of us, but for those of us striving vainly or in vein to have a public identity, it may be best left unopened.

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Read more | Comments (0) | December 1st, 2009