Station Story: Ecclectica

On January 12, 2006 I read a story about Pandora in the East Bay Express. When I went home that night I created my first station. As I look at the dates for all the thumbs up I gave to the station during its ten-month life, I am reminded that when I first encountered Pandora I had no good way to listen to it. My house is a loft, and my computer shares a space with the living where my seven-year old generally watches TV in the evening. Thus, my first experience of Pandora was on the tiny, poor speakers of my home computer.

I had to have my Pandora after that first night, and so I quickly researched the world of Head-Fi, the audiophile approach to headphones. I decided to get Beyerdynamic DT880's for headphones, and a great, inexpensive head-amp, the Go-Vibe v3. (I got the 2nd-to-last v3 produced, and later I got a v4 for work and, now, the commute. Looks like the v7 will be the last that James Delgarno will produce. If you have any desire for a head-amp, buy this amp when it becomes available.). And so it wasn't until Feb. 11 when all the equipment was gathered that I was able to start listening to Pandora on a daily basis.

I started Ecclectica with songs by Cake, Madness, Puffy AmiYumi, and Dar Williams. The next month I expanded the range of the station even further with tracks by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, and Loreena McKinnet. That first day introduced me to The Sounds which means they were the first band I discovered with Pandora and later bought a CD. As you can see I like a wide range of music, and Ecclectica was the beginning of a beautiful relationship to Pandora.

The station eventually strayed further into reggae than I wished, but the eclectic range of the songs kept me quite happy until the advent of the Quickmix feature in October. I then disassembled it into several other stations, and kept it around only for the sake of nostalgia.