A&M Tunes on Pandora

Steve Sidoruk

Founder, A&M Fan Net
Staff member
Moderator
Have been amusing myself listening to Pandora while working on a painting project. I previously set up my stations for Herb, TJB, Sergio and Baja. I am constantly surprised by the tracks that pop up. The biggest surprise thus far, was TJB's BRASILIA with trombone opening. They do show the album cover graphics, as I'm listening on my smart phone. The similar artists are mostly pretty good. It is a good A&M mix of TJB, Herb solo, Sergio, BMB, Walter Wanderley, Jobim, etc. Non A&M artists include The Ventures, Kaempfert, Mancini and more. I often hit the thumbs up & thumbs down buttons to make sure some tunes were again and some not. This is the freebie version, with occasional ads - I'll think about whether I want to chip in for ad-free.
 
I've had the Premium membership for years, but grandfathered in at the old $3.99/month price. I use Pandora at least two hours daily, and more in the summer (several hours at a time) when I'm working on car projects in or near the garage. So for what I pay, it is well worth it.

The issue many have with Pandora is that they don't understand it. It's not a streaming service where we pick an artist, and then hear only that artist. Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, where each song is given attributes about the music's style, regardless of artist, genre or other common labels. The "channel" we create will find music with similar attributes to the artist we picked and the results are also suprising. Fine tuning the station by 1) giving a thumbs up or thumbs down and/or 2) adding a second artist/band to the station are key in creating our own custom station. My oldest channels on Pandora date back prior to 2010, and having been "trained" for so long, I have them dialed in to where they play what I want to hear, and newly added tracks are usually always welcome.

It's been one of the best services I have used to discover music I haven't yet heard, both new and old. 👍
 
The biggest surprise thus far, was TJB's BRASILIA with trombone opening.

Odd, I just logged into Pandora and tried it, and I got the boneless "Brasilia." And I get the striptease version of "Plucky" too.

Maybe you have to have the paid account to get the trombone.
 
I went to Pandora after seeing this yesterday. I hadn't used it in years, but my login was still there along with the couple of "stations" I'd set up. And the second song it played was "Brasilia" - WITH the trombone. It claimed to be from something called HERB ALPERT INSTRUMENTAL JAZZ. I looked that up on Amazon and it showed a bootleg or playlist where "Brasilia" was the next to last track. There was one review of the album from old friend Captain Bacardi warning folks to stay away from the bootleg.
 
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