Don’t get me wrong but….

As much as I like and respect Huey Lewis and the News, it seems my Sonos music system thinks they (and Elvis Costello) are the greatest thing since sliced bread! What do I mean by this, Well, let me explain. Years ago I discovered the Sonos Music group of wireless speakers and playback applications, that seemed like the perfect companion to my recently purchased Mac desktop computer, so I went ahead and bought the necessary components to get me up and running and be able to listen to my music in various rooms, the garage, and out on the deck of old Pulpland (Texas). The Sonos system essentially imports the music from your iTunes library in exactly the manner you have that set up, including any and all playlists that you’ve created and then lets you play pretty much whatever you want to. Sonos has a “queue” list that you simply add to with the songs or playlists you want to hear and then, in theory, you can hit the “shuffle” selection which should, again in theory, play those songs or playlists selected in a complete random matter leaving you all happy and glad and always wondering what that next song will be because you have placed a lot of music in the “queue”. In my case, I have two playlists that I tend to rely on heavily, “Classic Rock” and “Classic Soft Rock”, of which, Classic Soft Rock is pretty much all in Classic Rock as well, but is a smaller set of songs just by the nature of being a subset of the “big” picture playlist and by taking out all of the “heavy” tunes (you know, Metallica, AC/DC, Kiss, etc., etc.) That should also give you a some idea of my musical preferences (and if you listen to any of my John Pulp originals, you’ll get the same idea!) and at this point in time I’ve got about 3500 songs in the Classic Rock playlist, 1500 or so in the Classic Soft Rock playlist (as I do love me a good ballad)! What could go wrong?

And then…Power of love, is a curious thing….cause I can’t tell what’s going on, it’s hip to be square….Pump it up, until you can feel it….since the wings have got rusted, the Angels want to wear my red shoes…. The first two being Huey and the second two being Elvis. And all really good music that I happen to like, which is why I have it in my library in the first place. But everyday. Again and again (and yes, I am exaggerating slightly, it’s not just those four songs, but it is those two artists and music by them that continues to play over and over with no escape). And this is in the “shuffle” mode. Everyday I turn the music on, I go to the queue and I re-shuffle it (as it tends to put the same line up in day after day if you don't and will do it as well when it reaches the end of the queue, which it seems to do on a daily basis. Now that seems a little farfetched because even the 1500 Classic Soft Rock playlist should be loaded enough to last for a few days if you only have it on for, lets say, 5 hours a day. By my calculations and by using a song length average of 3 minutes, you should go through about 20 songs and hour and 100 every 5 hours. 1500 songs should last 15 days before you hear a repeat song. And that would surely be a treat!

But no. Everyday, the same songs repeat themselves. You do get ones that you haven’t heard in a while mixed in, but certain songs just come on again and again and again. And of course its not just Huey Lewis and Elvis Costello (the original Elvis tends to play everyday as well, especially “Return To Sender”) along with a lot of Bob Dylan (a short list of 3 of his songs even though I have about 20 in the library), Queen (mostly B-sides), Pink Floyd (mostly live extended versions of Dark Side of the Moon songs, plus Pigs) and a bunch of not the good versions of songs I have done with my old band, Low Mass Tone.

Apparently I am not alone. Just did a quick on-line search for anyone experiencing the same issues and seems this has been going on for years and not always in the same manner but with similar results. Big list of songs, Sonos only plays a certain amount of them and then repeats. As in, “shuffle” no work good. One suggested solution was to make queue list of no more than 1000 songs and then do another one and add that to the end of the queue, then repeat that till you get to 4000 total, then save it as a playlist, but somehow, I just don’t see that happening or working. So now I am loading up the existing queue on Sonos (I should mention that the queue goes away if you lose internet so that part about saving it would probably be a good idea if you get that far), and I am currently at 8800 songs, let’s see how it likes that! I am also making a new playlist which takes the best of the best and puts them all in one place, losing the fluff and filler takes that, let’s face it, bands used to do so they could put out more albums.

Time to hit play! And time to get busy (getting ready to start the new Pulp Porch project, very exciting and have a lot of planning to do but the floor tile is ordered and we’ll be underway shortly). Stay tuned and I’ll see you next week!