Way back in 2003 after a night in a great club in Newcastle, I caught what seemed like an ordinary taxi. From the markings on the outside of the van, there was no mistaking it from a UK taxi. So we jumped in and the driver greeted us with a big smile. I told him that we were heading to Durham, and once he noticed my accent I think he instantly became in interested in having a conversation.

The Indian kid driving couldn’t have been much older than me. I was around 20 at the time. Whether you are on the streets of NYC, Tokyo, or even a small town in the northeastern part of the UK, seems loud speakers in your car are the general rule. So he informed me that this seemingly ordinary taxi was actually equipped with what I think were two 12″ woofers in the back. How he fit luggage back there, I have no idea. Luckily we didn’t have any luggage that night. I could tell this was more than just his business taxi. This was his daily driving car too.

He then asked me if I had ever heard of Bhangra. I didn’t have a clue. So he told me he was going to put in a CD to let us hear. I have no idea who he put in, but that night was the start of an appreciation I still have to this day for Bhangra.

You may have not realized, but chances are good you have heard Bhangra before. When you think of traditional Indian music, you are more than likely thinking of Bhangra. What he played for me that night wasn’t traditional Bhangra though. It was faster, mixed and mashed with hiphop, house, and pop dance. Much of the Bhangra popular with Indian youths today is a very new-school rendition of the traditional music. Bhangra has even had a bit of mainstream exposure here in the states. Jay Z did a song with Panjabi MC, a legend in Bhangra scene. The song sparked waves across the air and brought Bhangra even more fans across the world.

Fast forward 6 years. I still listen to Bhangra almost every week. BBC’s Asian network has a weekly 2 hour segment called the Bhangra Mixtape hosted by Sonny Ji that mixes Bhangra, hip hop, dance, and house seemelessly into an amazing mix. Listen to the latest show here. If you are looking for a place to start listening to the new age Bhangra, his show is a great start.

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What starts out as an innocent family walking along a make-believe street, when the child tells his parents that he has to go potty. I guess potty was Pee-wee’s Secret Word (see what I did there?). Out pops a Carl Cox look-a-like MC, who proceeds to show the kid the correct way to signal a potty emergency. Then we see Mr. Herbert from Family Guy stake his claim to the dance.

As if this dance was common knowledge growing up, the parents begin to expertly perform the moves. If you look at the kid closely, you can see it in his eyes that he desperately wishes he didn’t know these adults. But he’s stuck with them. So like many, he succumbs to peer pressure because all the kids these days are doing it.

Then there’s part two. Yes, part two. One thing that you will notice is that the Potty Dance knows no cultural boundaries. Pull-Ups does an expert job at showing all sorts of families from all over the world. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Potty Dance in other languages in the not so distant future.

So what do you get if your child proves that he or she can master the cool, yet crazy Potty Dance moves? Pull-Ups is offering a $5,000 Big Kid room makeover. But the real prize is your child being known for the rest of his or her life as the Potty Dance kid. Who wouldn’t want to be among the likes of the Star Wars kid?

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You know, sometimes you hear a song that not only brings back memories of the past, but also is very relevant to your future. I was listening to Pandora and this song by Kate Nash came on. I stopped what I was doing, and just listened to the lyrics. I was left smiling.

Lyrics

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Recently, I have become a fan of Pandora Radio, the Internet radio station that discovers music for you. It has replaced, but not elimiated, my previous addiction to Winamp’s shoutcast radio. I still listen to a lot of JRock and dance stations such as French Kiss FM in Winamp, but the majority of my time is spent letting Pandora discover what I should be listening to.

There are many services out there that claim to recommend similar artist that you will love. What sets Pandora apart is that they are powered by an amazing project called the Music Genome Project. The MGE categorizes music based on about 400 attributes to describe songs and a super complex mathmetical algorithm to organize them.

Last year, I became fixated on a girl called Uffie. She’s a Paris based, electropop/hip-hop/dance artist with such a unique sound, and has a strange resemblance to an ex-girlfriend of mine. I quickly scoured the Internet to find everything she has ever created. Once I became saturated by everything that is Uffie, I wanted to find other artists with that similar electropop / hip-hop sound. Pandora came to my rescue.

Once you sign up for Pandora, you create radio stations based on artists you currently like. So naturally, for the first artist, I put in “Uffie” and it played a song by her. Then, it started to link to other artists such as Fannypack and Peaches with that same sort of sound that I was yearning for. I fell in love with Pandora, and it is one love affair that I don’t see ending anytime soon.

Another popular service for music recommendation and tracking is Last.FM. I have been on Last.FM since 2005, but lost interest in it due to the fact that I began listening to most of my music streaming online. Winamp couldn’t send track information to Last.FM about the songs I was listening to through Shoutcast. 

Fast forward 4 years. Last night, I stumbled across an open source app for Pandora called OpenPandora. It allows you to listen to Pandora without a browser open, as well as a lot of other cool features. There was one feature that made me happier than all the rest, Last.FM integration. So now, if you visit my Last.FM profile, you will see all the songs I am currently listening to on Pandora. It’s a great mashup.

FYI, in my sidebar, you will now see a “listening to” section that’s a feed from last.fm. It’s a Wordpress plugin called Last.FM Recent Album Artwork, and the best plugin I have tried so far with Last.FM integration. I definitely recommend it.

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I don’t know what it is about her. Maybe its because she’s from the UK, and has those English eyes that leave you in a trance. Maybe it’s because she is absolutely gorgeous. Whatever it is, I like her sound.

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