One of the greatest paradigm shifts to credit to the Internet is turning the tables on who provides the content. Way back when, there were only three network television stations, four if you could wiggle your rabbit ears the right way, and they would push out whatever they were pushing at the time. If you wanted some alternative, you were left to look at your cat or watch your family doing psychologically confusing things. Whatever the limits of imagination or corporate profit motives were, the gatekeepers defined what you discovered. Without jumping to the Wikipedia article or making up facts, let’s skip ahead to raw, unfiltered blogs and streaming audio, with the brilliant possibilities of no gatekeepers. This author appreciates the irony of discussing blogs that lack in fine editorial craft.

In the early zips (around 2001), when I settled into the lifestyle of working at a computer with a dedicated internet connection and, wearing headphones all day, I utilized Napster and live365 a lot. Apart from wrestling with my ethics about “free” music, I dialed into a huge amount of new sounds that were beyond comprehension, like before Galileo using optical technology highly prohibited by the Catholic church to scrutinize the Heavens. When I stumbled onto live365.com, with the possibility for dialing through targeted, amateur playlists, I was intrigued and liberated. I could explore any styles I wondered about and discover concepts that were beyond my imagination. You could dial into thousands of diverse, self-indulgent playlists and, by good fortune, roll into a groove that fit well. Even after more than ten years I remember I got to know a lot more about shoegazer from groovyjim.

I just checked and, to my delighted amazement, live365.com is still online, and so is groovyjim’s Vertigo station. I should send some cash to Jim just for being dedicated to keeping that station online all this time. After listening to hundreds of hours of his perspective I got a lot of ideas planted in my mind. Years later, the diverse tracks on that low bit-rate, repeating playlist, resonated and drove me to a few X-Files incidents of musical epiphanies. For example, I found a documentary on Netflix about Creation Records, showcasing about 20 bands I loved and didn’t realize they all intersected at the same place. One of the prominent bands in the menagerie was Primal Scream, coincidentally, the last regular release on that label was XTRMNTR, an oddly acoustic industrial departure. I had that record on my Amazon wishlist for a few years, unaware of the Creation Records connection, or that one of my favorites tracks on the Vertigo station, “Shoot Speed/Kill Light,” was a permanent fixture in my latent cerebral wiring. Of course I smack myself on the head now, and I wish I made the connection long ago, but the seed takes time to grow.