This item is just for collecting URLs for sites with interesting journalism about music. The site I found today was http://www.rootnode.org , "a music-magazine site made by some students from Georgia Tech." They are encouraging everyone to send them stuff. On a quick look, it looks like fun. (Please remember to send a copy of all your best contributions to Grex, though!) From here I found a new Richard Thompson site: http://people.zeelandnet.nl/flipfeij/index.html11 responses total.
(you can kinda keep up on obscure hip-hop by visiting www.hiphopsite.com.)
I recommend the All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com , as a decent and fairly comprehensive encyclopedia of popular music.
I second that recommendation! Just don't try to hit it at the end of the East Coast work day; they have a throttle limiting the number of users which seems to kick in around then...
I've been browsing it mostly since I moved out to the west coast, and the significance of the "too many users" timing hadn't occurred to me, but that makes sense now.. What I like about the All Music Guide is that (with a few exceptions) it's very well designed as an on-line resource. The site makes quite widespread and sensible use of hypertext links.. When you're reading an article on the Clash, for instance, and it mentions in passing Lee "Scratch" Perry's influence on the band, you can click on Perry's name and jump to an article about him, which in turn links to other artists with whom he was connected, etc.. I find it quite fascinating to browse these kind of links and see where I wind up.. Supplementing the links in the articles, the site also produces "music maps" which describe the connections between related performers in various genres. I've found those quite helpful in finding similar music to try when I accidentally discover a performer I don't know much about..
Two sites for reading too much about folk/world/roots music:
http://www.globalvillageidiot.net
Possibly not a site to be read if you are trying to spend less on CDs.
http://www.netrhythms.co.uk
May contents include a SXSW trip report from a British visitor.
I love that first URL...
globalvillageidiot is FUN!
Here's someone running a mail order shoppe for classical music: Music in the Mail, http://home.sprynet.com/~musicin/index.html Low low prices on small classical labels. The catches are: no credit cards, and the dealer makes bulk orders from his suppliers once every two months. So if I place an order today, it makes his July 1 deadline and the order gets shipped back to me on August 1. As the opening page says, "Time is money!" So if you're not in a hurry, you might be able to save some money here.
I've recently been on a quest to find an online source for music from the countries of the Iberian peninsula. I'm not sure that my quest has been fulfilled, but I have some URLs: http://www.discoweb.com/intl/en/ (prices are high, and shipping to the Americas is bordering on exorbitant, but a nice selection) http://www.discosbits.com (This site is a pleasure to browse and packed with all types of Galician music. Prices are more reasonable, but credit card orders are not encrypted.) http://www.asturshop.com (I can't recommend these folks enough, for everything from the music of Asturias, to books, food, handcrafts, and even gaitas, the bagpipe of the region. Their music selection is strictly limited to Asturian, with selections from genres such as tonadas, choral, classical, folk/celta, and popular.)
Let me know if, during your exploration of various Iberian musical forms, you discover any particularly good collections of Portuguese fado. I've been interested in hearing some so I could compare to the Cabo Verdean morna, which is said to resemble fado.
Originally I had intended this item to be to collect music journalism, but today I'm going to stuff in some information about music shopping and downloading. Leslie is now in Poland, and so I was browsing for information and samples of Polish folk music. I'd asked on Usenet for some recommendations and got some promising leads. I found two stores with online samples of several Polish folk music bands. One site, in Poland, is at http://www.folk.pl Go into the Katalog; most of the listed artists have samples which download in 20K Real Audio. Connection quality is spotty. My favorite band, one of the Usenet-recommended ones, seems to be Orkiestra Pw. Sw. Milolaja. They are considered a pretty traditional outfit, but I loved every one of the five or six samples I downloaded. Note that the Internet link from Poland can be really s l o w ... CDs at www.folk.pl list at 33 zlotys, which is about $8.25 US. In Ottawa, with good North American internet service, is the CD store Skok, at http://www.trytel.com/~skok/polishim.html In their folk catalog, give a listen to Brathanki, who are a folk band w ith a fair bit of pop influence. Another band recommended to me was the Golec uOrkiestra. They have a brass section which sounds really appealing; but I'm not sure I like their singing style. They have an official web page at http://www.golec.pl My last recommendation is for a band called Dikanda. Dikanda seem to be a band branching out into "world music," in that they don't limit themselves to Polish folk but play music from all across Eastern Europe. From their album "Music of Four Directions of the East," they offer three full-length, high quality MP3 songs on their website: http://strony.poland.com/dikanda The Dikanda songs take 30-45 minutes to download -- do it late in the afternoon or evening US time, after most of Poland has gone to bed. (The bottleneck is Poland, not your slow connection.) I think if you like Eastern European music you'll find these songs worth the time.
You have several choices: