Minkin's Music: Genius and playlist

By Jay Minkin

Music streaming is popular with many readers and if I’m late to the party on this one, please forgive me.

I recently stumbled across “Genius,” a very cool phone app that shows you the lyrics, album playlist, artist discography and, at times, liner notes about a particular song. After downloading the Genius app one afternoon, I was streaming SXM on my phone and several songs popped up as the DJ was spinning the hits.

There is also a microphone that will attempt to capture the songs played on my stereo system. Unfortunately, the database was not familiar with the Flying Burrito Bros. catalog.

Their creative team spotlights the stories behind the music that matter most and works with artists and the community to offer a variety of music knowledge content from over 25 million songs, albums and annotations. Listeners also can rate the side notes so that if you disagree with the author, all you’ll have to do is say so.

The latest songs catching my attention include Tyler Childers’ “Whitehouse Road,” Brent Cobb’s “Ain’t A Road Too Long,” Cody Jinks’ “No Guarantees,” Delbert McClinton’s “Don’t Do It,” Sherman Holmes (w/ Joan Osborne) covering “Dark End of the Street,” Don Bryant’s “Something About You,” and several old Waylon Jennings songs to the point that I’m constantly searching the vinyl bins for his 1973-77 LP records. Plug these into your Pandora, Spotify, or favorite music app and see what Watson spits out.

So that leads me to the trending topic of a song or playlist you’d like at your funeral. Music is the soundtrack to the lives of my generation, along with those before and after. Please forward your picks to me and we’ll pick up the discussion in next month’s issue.

Contact Jay at Blues4Bird@aol.com or post on his Minkin’s Music Facebook page.