Here’s my New Year’s Resolution: I’ll try to try to publish a short piece every day recommending a song that I think is excellent, and apt to please at least some readers. Let’s see how far into 2018 I get; a quick run through the collection turned up around 240 candidates, so a whole year’s worth of songs would be a stretch goal. Read on for motivation, logistics, and mechanics. Or just read the song notes, starting tomorrow. Or don’t.

Why? · 2018 will be this blog’s fifteenth year, and the fragments don’t flow as fast as they used to; I have to reach back pretty far sometimes to achieve even three or four microessays a month. Which is weird, because ongoing centers on computing, and I’m intensely engaged at the white-hot core of Cloud, which as interesting a technology segment as there is. Especially if money is your measure.

But… there’s this term “insider” and I’m one of those, de jure and for real, and I could write any number of authoritative and amusing pieces on Hybrid Cloud or Serverless Economics or competing with Azure vs Google or, well, you get the idea, but I couldn’t convincingly claim they were uninfluenced by my work at AWS or didn’t reflect views held by at least some senior people. And that wouldn’t do at all. Might even be illegal.

I still find space to technologize here now and again when I think it can’t go wrong, but there’s writing energy curdling in the back of my brain. And I used to have fun here with the 5★♫ series, and music’s been a primary recreation for way more than 38 years. So welcome to “SotD”, a tiny song-discovery service.

Rules ·

  1. “Song” doesn’t strictly imply a singer. I should strictly say “track of the day” but “song” is a better word.

  2. It does imply some virtues of brevity and coherency; I won’t be recommending abrasive free-jazz jams or 70-minute minimalist drones or gamelan explosions.

  3. A lot of it is going to be kind of old, because I am, but let’s see if we can have regular visits to this century. And I’m determined to find something in 2018 to feature in 2018.

  4. I’ll work on diversity, but Canadians, males, and electric guitars are going to be over-represented.

  5. I’ll restrict myself to things you can actually get, which sadly means I’ll have to skip that dub compilation on a skeevy-looking CD I got in a skeevier-looking part of Sydney in 1991.

  6. You’re probably gonna hate some of the SotDs.

  7. I reserve the right to re-use some previous 5★♫ tunes.

  8. Other things being equal, I’ll lean to great songs from the lesser-known, and lesser-known songs from the great. Which means, expect a few one-hit wonders. But big hits get to be big hits for a reason, and anything that was a big hit before say 1990 comes from another planet anyhow.

Logistics · This is the World Wide Web, y’know? So I would very much like to link to every song. There are a lot of ways to access music these days and in principle they should have links. At a minimum, I think I ought to be providing iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Amazon links, and would gratefully consider suggestions for other channels.

Of those, Google Play is the only one I use (here’s why) but so far I haven’t figured out how to extract song URLs from its JavaScript maelstrom.

I believe firmly that Live Music Is Better, so wherever possible I’m going to link to live video. Things being what they are, this means a lot of YouTubes; oh well.



Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed

From: John Cowan (Jan 01 2018, at 14:23)

Not that I'm against this initiative at all, but (unless Amazon downright forbids it), I see no reason for you to worry about writing about things "influenced by your work". Work is pretty important in all our lives, and it would be surprising indeed if the things we think about weren't work-related to a considerable degree. And if Amazon's senior people (including yourself) didn't agree on a good many things, the company would hardly be able to sustain itself. If you want to write about serverless economics, well, write about it! You already have the disclaimer that the opinions expressed may not be those of Amazon; just add "On the other hand, they may be."

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From: don myatt (Jan 02 2018, at 09:36)

Tim

SOD,great idea I am looking forward to it!

good luck and cheers

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From: Jeremy Scrivener (Jan 02 2018, at 19:32)

Looking forward to it. You could perhaps use Songwhip to link to the largest number of online sources e.g. https://songwhip.com/song/daniel-lanois/shine

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From: Tim (but not THE Tim) (Jan 09 2018, at 13:06)

Perhaps links to YouTube even if not "live"?

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author · Dad
colophon · rights
picture of the day
December 31, 2017
· Song of the Day (172 more)
· Arts (11 fragments)
· · Music (112 fragments)
· · · 5 Stars (206 more)

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