I’m just going to take a moment to talk about today’s latest musical web addiction in my world. I have a new friend, and I can tell already that we’re going to be really good friends. I say “friend,” but actually it’s merely the website Imeem.

I’ve been aware of Imeem for quite some time, but haven’t been compelled to check it out, until now. I was working this past weekend on a project for work that had been hanging fire for quite a while, and I found myself in need of a random New Order track (1963, to be precise) for an audio demo that required 15 seconds of the song. A quick web search brought up Imeem in the search results, and I figured, what the heck. I got the 15 seconds of music that I needed, and then moved on.

Later that same day, I’m reading the latest issue of Rolling Stone featuring the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. A stray mention of Sleater-Kinney makes me once again curious about the band. My longtime musical friend and former co-worker Matt is a huge fan. I’ve heard his evangelism about Sleater-Kinney, yet never quite have had the proper time to focus in musically on them to check it out.

Imeem lets you make playlists of your favorite tracks/bands, and I headed to Imeem knowing that there would be at least one Sleater-Kinney fan that would have the proper playlist for me to check out. This particular Sleater-Kinney fan won’t present his 10 favorite tracks, or even 20 favorite tracks. This Sleater-Kinney fan is like me as a music fan, realizes that it is completely okay and necessary to tell the Sleater-Kinney story in 34 songs.

Listening to Sleater-Kinney, I got it, and registered a couple of thoughts – one, I get their longtime friendship with Pearl Jam. The two bands definitely share a musical kinship, and S/K even have a healthy female Pearl Jammy type sound in their tunes at times. In true musical chameleon style, S/K cover a lot of ground, and I even found myself thinking of an edgier Go-Go’s vibe at one point….and in Go-Go’s land, we’d be talking about the Jane Wiedlin stuff.

I dig, and I like the fact that a good number of the major labels are actually working to embrace what Imeem is doing, and not working to squash it. Allowing music fans to congregate and share their favorite playlists (among the MANY different things you can do on Imeem) actually inspires someone like me to visit, learn, and PURCHASE music that I hear and like.

While I was on Imeem, I made a random Journey playlist. I keep realizing that I don’t have any Journey on my Ipod, and while I was on Imeem, I decided to test out making a playlist, and made this Journey playlist. I threw in a couple of Steve Perry solo tracks that came up in search results, and beyond that, left the actual songs in a random order that I might resequence in some sort of planned order at some point. For now, they’re just randomly placed as I found them, but it’s a good mix. Check it out here.

Happy Tuesday, everybody!