This is my Pandora Grace Internet radio. It's connected wirelessly to my modem and can play any of my Pandora stations. I used to go to sleep listening to it; I still do when Cliff stays up later than I. I go to bed, fiddle with the "sleep" button, which is now set for thirty minutes, and drift off to dreamland listening to a variety of folk artists. I have other stations, but I almost always choose the folk.
If Cliff somes into the bedroom, you can bet Bob Dylan will start singing, or somebody else who sounds a lot like Bob Dylan. Weird.
Cliff hates Bob Dylan.
Evidently, in fiddling with the buttons and knobs on the radio, I must sometimes set the wake alarm accidentally. Because we'll be going about the usual routines of the morning and suddenly folk music wafts from the bedroom. I go turn it off; in five or ten minutes, it turns on again... snooze alarm, maybe? And this scenario will repeat itself two or three times. Weird.
Whatever it is, I don't deliberately set any sort of alarm to wake me. We're retired, and anyhow I'm doing well to sleep past five A.M.
If Cliff goes into the bedroom when the radio is freakishly playing, chances are Bob Dylan will be singing. Once in awhile it's John Prine; Cliff isn't fond of him, either. It's all "caterwauling" to him. This morning Bob was singing "Oxford Town", which tells the true story of a college that wouldn't admit black people. That's what I love about folk music: the stories.
Now, out of this very clear (to my mind) set of words Bob was singing, all Cliff picked up was, "What do you think about that, my friend?"
And Cliff assumed Bob was asking him how he felt about his singing, and laughed uproariously. I went in and quoted the whole verse to him and explained what it was about. I think he was surprised that Bob Dylan was actually singing some words that made sense, because I'm the first to admit that not all of his songs do.
Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev'rybody's got their hats bowed down
The sun don't shine above the ground
Ain't a-goin' down to Oxford Town.
He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town.
Oxford Town around the bend
He comes to the door, he couldn't get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien' ?
Me and my gal, my gal's son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don't even know why we come
Goin' back where we come from.
Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev'rybody singin' a sorrowful tune
Two men died 'neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon.
Maybe if these folks had been singing the song Bob wrote, Cliff would have enjoyed it more.
It's so great, I'm wondering if they'll eventually require a monthly subscription like XM and Sirius do. I've created a classic country station that Cliff loves and has decided he likes it even better than "Willie's Place" on XM, because there's no talking: just one song after another. Internet radio might not work in his shop, though... I don't know if our Internet signal would reach that far.For myself, I've fashioned and fine-tuned a folk station that seems to finally be 100% acoustic. They kept wanting to add Johnny Cash to the lineup. When I'm in the mood for folk, I don't want to hear Johnny. I had to thumbs-down several of his songs before I got rid of him. Sorry about that, John. You know I love you! I'll catch you on my country Pandora station. The radio has a setting that would let me use it for an alarm if I ever needed one (fat chance), and a sleep timer, which I'll be using every night to go to sleep by, instead of the television. Pandora, even on my Grace radio, always starts at the beginning of a song. It's interesting to me that I can turn on the same self-made station on the computer and it will be playing an entirely different grouping of my songs than the radio in the kitchen. Beats me how it all works! If I thumbs-up a song on the kitchen radio, I can look at my song list on the Internet and there it is! It doesn't take much to amaze me, I guess.One of my favorite songs of all time is "Mr. Bojangles". In the kitchen the other day I heard someone new to me singing the song on the radio; in the middle of it, he started talking about how the song had come to be written: the man's name was David Bromberg, and he used play in Jerry Jeff Walker's band when that song was popular. (The Grace radio tells the name of the song and who is singing, much like Cliff's XM radio does.)If anyone is interested, you can hear the entire seven-minute song HERE (on the right, at the top). It just fascinated me, but then you folks know how I love stories.
There are over 6,000 regular stations I can sift through, if I want to listen to regular radio in any given language. So far, I've chosen one to put on preset. I just can't get away from Pandora. Besides, it's a daunting task to sift through that many stations trying to find one I like.
If you like Pandora, you'd LOVE having a Grace Internet Radio, so you can listen to your stations in any room of the house without turning on a computer. I got mine on Ebay, considerably cheaper than what they cost on the Grace website. If you subscribe to Sirius, Grace will play that too; unfortunately, Cliff subscribes to XM. Sirius owns XM, but I can't get it on my radio.
No, I'm not being paid to write a review for Grace Radio. I'm simply so enthusiastic about this that I can't keep it to myself. But I do believe I'll go write them a review now.
