The Green Bag

This entry has been brewing since last fall, when Luanne emailed her report of Vicki and Allen's visit during their train trip, and Luanne had mentioned the band that was playing "the jazz that Vicki and I both love."

I think it's safe to say that I've been primarily a classic rock kinda guy since moving here to the Motor City back in 8th grade. But I have always liked good music of just about any genre, and having played some jazz in my high school days, have a fondness for certain types of jazz as well.

Of course, most of the music I listen to nowadays would be properly labeled Contemporary Christian. Granted, my tendencies there still lie more towards rock sounds like Third Day and Petra (with former Head East singer John Schlitt), while Marissa would prefer the edgier sounds of Stellar Kart or eleventyseven.

Unfortunately for me, I have just enough adult-onset ADD (or more likely ADT that I'm easily distracted when trying to listen to talk or music with lyrics when I'm trying to work. This is especially true when I'm typing, and even more so when I'm programming.

Fortunately for me, aTTeNTioN sPaN raDiO plays, that jazz I like. I found this station through iTunes Radio while checking out the features in iTunes. They play a pretty cool variety of jazz, rock, funk and fusion, mostly instrumental, and I was listening to it quite a bit during some all-night testing sessions last fall.

Believe it or not, for programming, I tend to favor techno or trance. Nothing too zoned out, but it tends to keep me pretty focused without wanting to fall asleep. Again through iTunes I found Dream Factory (the aliens' choice) on hbr1.com and Drone Zone on SomaFM. SomaFM's Groove Salad is kinda okay, too, but not quite to my tastes.

So that was alright for listening through iTunes, but sometimes that gets a bit processor intensive, and now we've got my old laptop hooked up to the surround sound system downstairs, but that laptop won't even run iTunes. So I got curious about whether or not I could listen to any of those stations with my trusty but ancient WinAmp 2.x. While checking out SomaFM, I discovered that they're a San Francisco based, listener supported Internet radio broadcaster with eleven different feeds. When I saw the Secret Agent channel, I just had to click, and now I'm hooked.

SomaFM's Secret Agent stream (The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spies and PIs too!) is a pretty eclectic mix of what you could rightly call "Spy Music." From Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" to Isaac Hayes' "Theme From Shaft", from jazz to bossanova to techno, interspersed with audio clips from Bond and other movies, it's the grooviest station on the net, baby!

Anna thinks it's old-people music, but Marissa was dancing along earlier, so it's either the eclectic nature of the playlist, or not. All I can say is give it a try sometime when you're in the mood for some light and fun background music for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life.