Radio Paradise

What’s Up?

A few weeks ago, I went looking around on YouTube for some music to listen to in the background while sitting at the PC. Radio Paradise’s Mellow Mix is in constant rotation around here, but I wanted something a little different. Remembering my favorite satellite radio channel “The Coffee House” that played acoustic covers of songs, I searched for that sort of thing. Found a couple of interesting songs by interesting acts (Chase Eagleson, Gat Brothers, The Petersens, Music Travel Love), but when I found the song below, I was hooked these guys, The Running Mates, Spencer and Julie Broschard.

So I went to their music page and bought their Acoustic Covers EP (it is pay what you want, so $1 a songs about right.) So then I searched out a YouTube music downloader and started ripping some of their songs. So then I went to their YouTube page and found out they have been doing 1 to 1-1/2 hour long live living room #Quaranstream concerts since April. Today was their last one (maybe for a while) and once again I missed it live because I am on the west coast and they are on the east coast and I’m a dummy about this time zone thing still.

Track 03 – Rock Hard Times

We are back to just a static image while this Eel’s song plays this week. There were a couple of fan made animation videos for this tune, but there was a giant watermark in the lower lefthand corner for the demo version of the movie maker software. If I’ve peaked your interest for this version, here it is…

Track 02 – The Lullaby of Loneliness

Unlike last Saturday’s Ellis Paul video, I found two that had more than just a photo of the album cover as its image for this The Aaron English Band song. The first one came from the Live DVD that the band produced, but the song didn’t sound like the way I originally heard it. Not that it is a bad rendition or anything, but I picked this version by some random YouTube user that has a video of a car driving around at night with the song I”m familiar with playing in the background.

Track 01 – Maria’s Beautiful Mess

This is the start of Saturday posting of tunes that will be part of Quintessential Burn II, alternate title: Quintessential Early Radio Paradise Burn. It will be 20 songs that caught my attention and helped cement my love of Radio Paradise. About 3/4 of these were by people I was unfamiliar with and made me fans of their music also, the rest were familiar tunes or unique covers of familiar ones.

First up is Ellis Paul:

Happy Anniversary RP

I was listening to my favorite Internet radio station, Radio Paradise, the other day and when they finally got around to interrupting the music for a station promo, a somewhat rare occurrence, Bill mentioned that this is their 20th anniversary. Wow, I know I’ve been listening to the station for quite a while, but I didn’t think it had been a whole twenty years.

I used to rip the stream and then put the MP3s on a CD to play in the Miata. I had a CD changer in the trunk so I could load 10 discs, each holding around a 165 tracks (650 Meg limit), and listen for days before I had to burn more music. Sometimes it would be months, because, let’s be realistic, after listening to around 1,700 songs, would you realize when you were starting over?

I still have a little over 40 of these CDs, so I went and looked at the first couple and they are from April of 2003. So I wasn’t there at the very beginning, but I have been a listener for almost 17 years now. The station is listener supported and I been a supporter for around 15 of those years. At first it was sporadically, whenever I had some money left over in PayPal at the end of a month, but after a couple years I just signed up for a reoccurring donation and gave them a charge card number.

While the mix of songs is almost always perfect for my listening pleasure while driving around in a car, sometimes the harder edges rock, blues, world songs wouldn’t fit my mood on a quiet Sunday morning or later in evenings. Bill and Rebecca have even met those needs, there is now a dedicated Mellow Mix stream available. They have also added a Rock Mix and a World/Etc Mix to go along with the original Main Mix. Something for most anybody. You can also get smartphone apps and TV apps that play the main mix and add a slideshow of listener photos that are matched thematically with the music. Go check them out – Listening Options

Wrangler Wrap Up

Instead of just hosing the Rubicon off, I actually gave it a proper washing. I also cleaned off the the Weather Tech rubber mats along with vacuuming it out. Even though I am 6′ tall and have fairly long arms, I had to go inside the house to bring out the 2-Step Steel Folding Step Stool Ladder to get the roof clean. 🙂

If I have one complaint with my experience with Crazy Dave’s Rental Cars, it is, it would have been nice when renting to someone whose car had shut off inexplicably leaving him stranded on the side of the road twice in the last couple weeks that the vehicle he would now be driving had a stop/start system. The first time it happened was a heart fluttering moment. So, in spite of that little hiccup, I will be giving Crazy Dave’s a 5 star rating, because where else can you rent a new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon for 2 days with unlimited mileage for the cost of a half a tank of gas.

Stray observations in no particular order:

  1. It is a chore to drive on straight roads. There is a ton of play (compared to the Miata) in the steering wheel at top center making it a full time job. It does feel good in curves though with the wheel turned some, all the slack is gone.
  2. It is a half a foot wider and a foot longer than a Miata, but I quickly figured where my corners were and felt comfortable driving in traffic.
  3. It had the government mandated backup camera, but even with the hard top on the all around visibility was excellent.
  4. The way high seating position was really nice in certain spots, especially when leaving parking lots and entering streets. Other vehicles and street-side landscaping were much easier to see over.
  5. I don’t know specifically what our gas mileage was for the 100-125 miles we put on the Jeep, but the running average for it showed 19 MPG. This is only 2/3rds of the Miata’s 28 and only slightly over half of the Mini’s 36. The cost is somewhat offset by the fact that the Jeep uses regular grade gas compared the the Miata’s & Mini’s premium.
  6. The low beam headlights included in the LED Lighting Group Package nearly make the high beams redundant. In my few miles behind the wheel at night it didn’t seem like the highs gave you much more down the road visibility, the only thing it seemed to do was light up the trees.
  7. It was nice to have the satellite radio, so I could catch up with what was playing on The Coffee House channel compared to 8 years ago when we had it free for a year with the Purple Whale. While that channel is as close as I can get to Radio Paradise, it is definitely not worth the $15 a month they want for the service.

That’s enough for now, I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but our experience with our extended test drive hasn’t made us want to go right out and buy a Jeep, but neither has it totally dissuaded us from buying one either.

Well, I Missed Posting a Day

So as a bonus, today you will get two and because it is the Summer Solstice (AKA the longest day of the year) I will have plenty of daylight to accomplish them.

I’m blaming it on the ‘roids. My synapses are firing all over the place, trust me, the stream of consciousness that is going on it there is deafening and somewhat alarming.

My lovely bride has to except a little of the fault for the ‘no post’ too though. When I got home from work she was already a bit hungry, so we did the evening meal an hour early. Compound this with the fact the FRS are playing ball in the mid-west, so their games are starting an hour later, I now had 2 extra hours to kill until I had something to occupy my brain enough to tamp down the cacophony.

I tried reading a book I’m partway through on the Kindle and I couldn’t concentrate on the sentences because all I could think of was poor Jeff Bezos who is just missing out on being the richest man in the world with only Bill Gates left to catch. I wanted to help, but didn’t think running down to Whole Foods and buying a gallon of milk that the money would get back to him yet.

I tried watching a Season 6 Episode of VEEP, but it had already started to lose it luster before my head got this N20 shot. I’m just watching now out of morbid curiosity to see if body man Gary ever gets to hook up with Ex-President Selina. Sort of like I keep reading the Beetle Bailey cartoons hoping for Beetle and Miss Buxley to do something besides casually date.

With still another hour to go, I thought maybe plugin some headphone to Radio Paradise and just close my eyes. Well that worked. Only too well. I fell asleep. Donna went inside to accomplish some stuff, clean up after dinner, etc. and when she came back an hour later I was snoring peacefully. Thinking I needed more rest, she suggested taking a shower and going to bed early. This sounded like a great idea. So, about the time the Red Sox came to bat in the top of the first inning in Kansas City I was pulling the covers up to my chin and exhaling slowly. Perfect.

Until about 12:23 AM this morning when my eyes snapped open. Suffice to say there is another 10,000 words I can write here to tell you all about the machinations I tried to get back to sleep and all the random, tangential thoughts that developed in my head, but you’d be exhausted reading them. And frankly I think that they exhausted me enough that I did manage to fall back sleep about 3 hours lateranyway…