I recently lost over a year's worth of digitizing old LP's and 7" singles. The loss of the music was mitigated by the fact I still have all of the vinyl and can still copy it, but I really wasn't looking forward to sitting down and retyping / retracking all the info, and so I broke down and checked out a file-sharing site to see if I could shortcut the process. I discovered two things. First, popular music is super-easy to find, and steal, and second, apparently the music I like tends not to be popular. So I had to dig deeper.
It was then that I stumbled across the wonderful world of music blogs. I was pretty overwhelmed at first and for a few days I was downloading stuff like crazy. But I noticed a few things weren’t sitting too well with me. With a few exceptions, the stuff I downloaded was rare, out-of-print, and expensive. The exceptions were a few James Brown LP’s I already own, and a couple of tracks off N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton. If Ice Cube wants to take it up with me I guess he can, but he doesn’t seem to be the same kind of asshole that Lars Ulrich is so I'm not all that worried.
Anyway, about the music blogs - I noticed that most of them concentrated on one or two styles of music and just posted album after album without saying a word about them. Well, what good is that? Why are you posting? Where is the quality control? Yeah, I found some great tracks, but I also felt kinda icked out since the fantastic Jimmy McGriff album I found (Electric Funk) was posted between tons of unbearable trip-hop compilations. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to know a little bit about the music when I listen to it. I want to know when and where an album was recorded, and maybe a little bio about the artist. At least the blogs I enjoyed wrote more and posted less. But then I felt a little guilty that I wasn’t contributing to this community of people who love music.
Well, you're either part of the problem or part of the solution and I intend to be a part of the problem dammit! I gotta learn how link files to the web, but this post is my first step in the process. I love all kindsa music. The last album I picked up was the Trans-Continental Hustle by Gogol Bordello, but you won't see it posted here because we should support bands that are active and touring (except Metallica. Fuck you Lars!)
I hope to share rare, out-of-print stuff once I figure out how. And I want to talk about music across a broad range of styles. The only constant is that the music has to be wylde, primitive, and far out!
Till I learn how to take the next step.
