Station Break: Six Degrees Of Separation

My musical taste is pretty eclectic. I like classic rock, alternative rock, and some Jazz. I listen to Boston and Pink, The Police and Jamiroquai. I love going to the symphony but do it far too rarely. I HATE rap but am pretty open to just about everything else.

One of my favorite things musically is discovering new artists. Fortunately, with so many talented people the world over, there is always something new. The best example comes from a single song in a single movie. That one song introduced me to an entirely new musical world that, over the last few years, has become my most-listened to style.

I was watching the movie Garden State. Great movie, great soundtrack. There was one track with which I was totally unfamiliar but after just the first few notes I knew I loved. I paused the DVD, got pen and paper and wrote down a few lines of lyrics. I figured when the movie was over I could quickly find out who the artist was thanks to Google. (This was before the days of the awesome iPhone app Midomi Mobile which locates and identifies your music based on a short clip.)

Turns out the artist was Zero 7 and the song was The Waiting Line. That song opened an entirely new musical vista for me. This genre is best known as “downtempo” or “trip-hop”. I just call it “great”.

Zero 7 was originally a group of studio musicians who used a rotating selection of vocalists. (In this way it is similar to one of my high school favorites- The Alan Parson’s Project.) That led me to the solo work of vocalists such as Sia, Tina Dico, Sophie Barker and Jose Gonzalez.

The section of iTunes known as-
“People who dropped cash here in Zero 7 also spent a boatload on…” led me to Morcheeba. Morcheeba, in turn, turned me on to their original vocalist turned solo artist Skye Edwards. That led me to Natalie Walker, Thievery Corporation, Portishead, Groove Armada and the list goes on and on and on. In this way one song led me to almost a dozen artists.

Recently, the addition of Pandora (please please don’t shut down) to my iPhone and iPod Touch has introduced me to even more artists. I created “Tina Dico Radio” and learned about five or six more excellent artists. “Zero 7 Radio” led to another six or seven. Every day it seems there is something new.

Thanks to a single song in a single movie and six degrees of musical separation (or is it actually 2?) my Station Break is a whole lot larger than before. Good thing my desktop has a huge hard drive!

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