I’ve added this latest rendition of Blue Smoke to illustrate a point: The quantity and quality of non-video music is greater than that of video music. Okay. So it’s anecdotal. But this isn’t about science. It’s about sensation. In my world, the grooveshark player found every track but one: Helpless by Needle. But I’ll take Neil Young’s unplugged version. Not as good but does have a nice base coat of maudlin piano. And I prefer the Paul Weller’s Portishead remix of Wildwood.

One of the niftiest aspects of the grooveshark player is that it if you change (add, delete, modify) tracks in the playlist on grooveshark /after/ you embed the playlist, those changes propagate to the embedded player. That way, if I find Needle’s version, I can swap out the track. And like magic, my playlist just gets better.

One last thing. The garish colors are mine. In fact, when you create a widget, there are color wheels to adjust color on /everything/. I suggest you get a palette of coordinated colors before you start building the widget. I didn’t and in the end, my widget looks like a three year old colored it.

Yet another version of blue smoke using the embedr.com player. No one has the video of Needle’s cover of Neil Young’s Helpless. Shame. Needle has, in my opinion, the quintessential rendition. Anyway, Helpless didn’t make it it.

Another adaptation of blue smoke, this time using Yahoo Video as the source. Some of the videos were not found (Lenny, Helpless, Until the Morning).

Lenny and Fade Into You are the lynchpins of Blue Smoke and my substitutions make this something I call “an interpretive playlist”. However, I like the Paul Weller cover. Raw, courageous, authentic. Best of luck, Dylan.

An alternate view of the pensive playlist.

I’ve been pensive of late and frankly the weather is just too damn nice for that. Still, there is something gained by wrapping up from time to time in a blanket of introspection. I’m sharing here my pensive playlist.

I’ve started a new online radio station at laut.fm

It’s based in Germany. If you can speak or puzzle out a bit of German, you can navigate the site and find a station you like.

I created this based on my playlist Blue Smoke. However, before they will play a station, you must have more than one hour of total track time in the playlist.

Even at that, laut.fm must shuffle the tracks until the playlist is at least three hours long. I’m working on it.

[update 2008-05-26] I’ve extended the list to appx 3.5 hours. I’m not completely satisfied with the trackstream but what the heck? It’s a radio station. I’m working on a new list now. Should be ready real soon now.

http://www.laut.fm/blaudaemmerung