Chris Salmon offers a guide to the best music you can find, for free, on the internet.
Best for covers
Cover Freak
www.coverfreak.com
United States blogger Steve McIntyre is, by his own admission, ‘obsessed” with cover versions. ‘I’ve been giving covers CDs to my friends as Christmas presents for years,” he says. Every Sunday since October 2006, McIntyre has posted five cover versions on a particular theme, be it war, ukuleles or Johnny Cash. One post a week may seem sparse, but for McIntyre it’s about quality, not quantity. ‘A good cover is different from the original, for better or worse,” he says. ‘The artist needs to put something of him/herself into the song and give new meaning to it.”
Download: Tricky — The Love Cats (posted 30/12/07)
Best for tomorrow’s big names
iTunes Store
www.apple.com/itunes
Apple’s iTunes Store is more famous for making millions from music than for giving it away. However, the site still offers its ‘single of the week” as a free download. In fact, because iTunes has such an enormous share of the global digital music market the slot has become a sought-after way for labels to break new acts. But insiders insist that iTunes still decides each week’s track purely on the music’s merit. If that’s the case, their taste appears to be improving; after providing valuable early exposure for dreary mainstreamers such as James Blunt, recent free downloads have tended towards the credible (Simian Mobile Disco, Battles, Yoav).
Download: Palladium — Happy Hour
Best for gramophone records
Turtle’s 78rpm Jukebox
www.turtleservices.com/jukebox.htm
As a rule, the older the music, the less well-represented it is online. Which is why Turtle’s 78rpm Jukebox is a rare treat. Although it isn’t updated often, the site now contains more than 120 MP3s, which have been lovingly converted from dusty old phonographs dating from 1909 to 1928. The scratches and hisses that remain on the recordings add to the evocative experience, as do the song’s excitable titles — Yes! We Have No Bananas and Oh, Gee! Say, Gee! You Ought to See My Gee Gee from the Fiji Isles being two particular highlights. The site also provides a telling lesson in US social history, with a handful of songs labelled as being potentially offensive because of their less than enlightened portrayal of black characters by white minstrel performers.
Download: Yerkes Novelty Five with Arthur Hall — Yes! We Have No Bananas
Best for discarded vinyl
Vinyl Orphanage
www.vinylorphanage.com
‘I’m a huge fan of things like self-produced recordings, school band albums and records by cruise ship and cocktail lounge performers,” says Pastor McPurvis, the Florida resident behind the terrifically off-kilter Our Lady of Perpetual Obsolescence Vinyl Rescue Mission and Orphanage blog.
Describing his site a ‘safe haven for forgotten and downtrodden record albums”, McPurvis shares the fruits of 20 years of scouring thrift shops by offering a full album for download each month.
Download: Bellport High School Jazz-Rock Ensemble — Long Train Runnin’
Best for Swedish music
Swedesplease
www.swedesplease.net
Blogger Craig Bonnell lives several thousand miles from Sweden, in Illinois, US. Which is why it’s so remarkable that he writes a blog that carries weight in the Swedish music scene. Swedesplease grew out of Bonnell’s ‘main blog” songsillinois.net. ‘I was continually finding great Swedish music to post about. So, eventually, I decided to set up a separate blog devoted to Swedish indiepop.”
That was in January 2005. Since then, Bonnell has proved his fine ear for the best new Swedish sounds by helping to break acts including José Gonzalez, the Shout Out Louds and, recently, Ida Maria. Amazingly, though, Bonnell has still not been to Sweden.
Download: Friday’s Bridge — Literature (Rubbah remix) (Posted 26/12/07)
Best for mash-ups
Get Your Bootleg On
www.getyourbootlegon.com
The mash-up scene isn’t as hot now as it was at the beginning of the decade, but with virtually anyone now able to mess about with music editing software on their home PC, there are more amateur mash-up artists than ever. Many of these bedroom bootleggers congregate on Get Your Bootleg On, a vibrant community site. Every day, budding producers post links to MP3s of their latest masterpiece in the Bootlegs forum.
Download: mARKYbOY — Deee-liteful Milkshakes (posted 29/12/07)
Best for B-sides
The ‘B” side
www.redkelly.blogspot.com
‘I don’t think B-sides are a dying art,” says blogger Red Kelly, ‘they’re already dead.” Perhaps so, but Kelly does a sterling job of keeping the memory of old flipsides alive. About once a week, the New Yorker thumbs through his extensive collection of classic soul and R&B 45s and picks a B-side to post on his blog. But Kelly’s work doesn’t stop there. Each MP3 is accompanied by a well-written and meticulously researched essay on that particular artist’s career.
Download: Kim Tolliver — I’ll Try To Do Better (posted 28/12/07)
Best for electro/techno
ill-ec-tro-nic
ill-ec-tro-nic.blogspot.com/
When London blogger Langer started ill-ec-tro-nic two years ago, there weren’t many MP3 blogs dedicated to writing about underground electronic music. These days there are plenty, but Langer’s still stands out as one of the best. The site has a Catholic remit, with experimental electronica, techno, remixes of indie tracks and the odd slab of psychedelic rock thrown into the mix.
Download: Thom Yorke — Harrowdown Hill (Ripperton Dub) (posted 30/12/07)
Best for unsigned acts
Amie Street
www.amiestreet.com
Any musician can sell their tunes through Amie Street, with 70% of the revenue going directly to the artist; perfect for the thousands of unsigned acts out there. The big twist is that each of the million-plus MP3s on the site were initially ‘sold” at zero US cents. As people download a particular track, its cost rises, to a maximum of 98c.
Because so many new songs are added every day, there are always plenty of free tunes to grab. They’re easy to find too; just click browse, then songs, then free and you’ll be offered hundreds from across the musical spectrum.
Download: Gnotes — Throw Your Nickels Up (posted 2/1/08)
Best for Sixties garage
Garage Hangover
www.garagehangover.com
Chris Bishop’s excellent blog is like an extended, internet version of the legendary Nuggets compilation, shining a light on garage rock made by long-forgotten teenage bands in the 1960s. Since founding the site four years ago, the Brooklyn resident has posted tracks by almost 400 acts. Most are American, but Bishop’s trawls through flea markets and online shops have somehow unearthed garage tunes from 26 countries, including Peru, Greece, Malaysia and Bermuda.
Download: The Dillons — Simple Way of Living (posted 28/12/07)
Best for new sounds
Pitchfork Media
www.pitchforkmedia.com
Some see Pitchfork as the world’s brightest beacon for new music. Plenty of others lambast the site for its florid writing and self-congratulatory tone. But nobody can deny Pitchfork’s influence. Thirteen years after it was established as an indie-rock webzine by Minnesotan high school graduate Ryan Schreiber, the site now receives more than 1,5-million unique visitors each month.
The Go Team!, M.I.A. and, recently, the Black Kids have all benefited from their support and the site is acknowledged to have kickstarted the Arcade Fire’s career with its glowing 9,7 out of 10 review for the band’s Funeral album.
Download: Cave — Hunt Like Devil (posted 14/12/07)
Best for remixes
Discobelle
www.discobelle.net
Since beginning life in January 2006 as the English-language offshoot of a Swedish site, the dance-centred Discobelle has established itself as a fine place to discover remixes and DJ mixtapes. ‘We try to have as much exclusive material as possible,” says Bjorn, one of four party-loving Swedish DJs who run the site.
They don’t just talk a good game either; shortly before Christmas, Discobelle was the first site to post Kanye West’s remix of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. Goodness knows how they got it, but it was the latest in a long line of exclusives that have ensured Discobelle now has a large readership.
Download: Turbo Weekend — My Name is Legion (Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid Mix) (posted 2/1/07)
Best for vintage soul
Get on Down with the Stepfather of Soul
www.stepfatherofsoul.blogspot.com
Jason Stone is a man with a passion for vintage soul music. Even as a teenager, the Atlanta, Georgia, resident had a collection of more than 1 000 45s and LPs. These days, Stone has an iPod crammed with 6 000 tracks and a mission to share them with the world via his blog. ‘I decided I needed to get this music out there for people to enjoy,” he says. ‘And there was so much good soul, funk, blues, jazz and gospel from that time that I have no worries about running out of material.”
Download: James Brown, Bobby Byrd and Hank Ballard — Funky Side of Town (posted 26/12/07)
Best for world music
Fat Planet
www.fatplanet.com.au/blog/category/mp3s
Stuart Buchanan is a Scotsman living in Australia with a radio show about contemporary world music. In 2003, he set up a blog to accompany his programme, ‘as an early experiment in fusing broadcasting with an online component, linking to free downloads of music heard on the show”. Bloggers across the globe soon discovered the site and began to write about it.
Before long, Buchanan’s readers outnumbered his radio listeners. Almost five years on, the blog still offers a fantastic melting point of cutting-edge international sounds; be it Danish rap-techno, Argentinean cumbia, Israeli dub or Chinese hip-hop.
Download: MC Gringo — Berimbal (posted 28/12/07)
Best for hip-hop
Cocaine Blunts
www.cocaineblunts.com
A surprisingly small proportion of MP3 blogs dedicate themselves to hip-hop. So, while unsigned indie-rock acts can expect blog exposure almost as soon as they’ve formed, upcoming MCs can struggle for attention. ‘There are a lot of local and niche scenes [in hip-hop] that are painfully under-represented on blogs,” says Nos, a Washington DC-based hip-hop writer. Since 2003, Nos has done his bit to redress the balance with the excellent Cocaine Blunts, writing expertly about both the latest hip-hop micro-scenes and big name releases, often with accompanying MP3s.
Download: Battles feat Joell Ortiz — Leyendecker (DJ Emz Remix) (posted 12/12/07)
Best for jazz
All About Jazz
www.allaboutjazz.com
Since 1995, the multi-award-winning All About Jazz has established itself as the definitive jazz website, with its team of volunteer editors and contributors having created more than 100 000 pages of content. As well as daily CD reviews, the Philadelphia-based site has a lively artist profiles area for jazz musicians. But perhaps the most popular feature is the site’s free MP3 area, where labels and artists can upload tracks to promote their album releases.
Download: The Vipers — Night & Day (posted 1/1/08)
Best for Latin music
La Onda Tropical
www.laondatropical.blogspot.com
‘In 2003 I spent a year in Guatemala, and fell in love with all forms of Latin music — traditional and contemporary,” says Dries Gevaert, one of two Belgian bloggers behind La Onda Tropical. ‘Back in Europe, I found that only the most horrible songs could get a European release. So I started the blog with the goal to introduce Europeans to quality contemporary Latin music.” Its writers clearly keep their fingers pressed firmly to the region’s musical pulse. Some of the acts they cover are familiar — Shakira and Manu Chao, for instance — but the site consistently throws up wonderfully vibrant music by acts you’d never stumble across elsewhere.
Download: Calle 13 — Pa’l Norte (posted 1/1/08)
Best for live gig bootlegs
Smuggled Sounds
www.live-bootleg.blogspot.com
Live concert bootlegs used to be badly recorded cassettes sold by furtive-looking geezers at record fairs. These days, thanks to Smuggled Sounds, any computer owner can relive gigs in impressive quality audio, for free. Its prolific London-based author, ZazafromJahor, has posted recordings of hundreds of concerts, all available to download as large MP3 files. Last month, the site offered a bootleg almost every day, including shows by Ike and Tina Turner from 1972, the Beatles from Hamburg in 1962, reggae legend Yellowman from 1983 and brand new recordings of reunion concerts by the Police and Led Zeppelin.
Download: Bjork — Hyperballad (posted 26/11/07)
Best for pre-war blues
Honey, Where You Been So long?
www.prewarblues.org
‘I love pre-war blues music because of the purity of expression,” says Peter Patnaik, whose excellent MP3 blog has offered that music to the world since May 2004. Patnaik believes that reviewers and compilation makers tend to undervalue these powerful early recordings. ‘A lot call this music ‘primitive’,” he says. ‘This just continues the marginalisation of a black artistic expression, which has been going on since this type of music was called ‘race records’.” There are no such issues with Honey, Where You Been So Long?, which treats pre-war blues with an infectious mix of reverence and enthusiasm.
Download: Blind Willie McTell — Dying Crapshooter’s Blues (posted 28/11/07)
Best for Eighties obscurities
Lost in the 80s
www.lostinthe80s.blogspot.com
‘The 1980s were the best decade for music,” insists John C Hughes, the Californian blogger behind Lost in the Eighties. ‘You had all these acts trying to walk a tightrope between being taken seriously critically and still wanting a huge pop hit. Sometimes it really worked and sometimes it flopped spectacularly. In any case, the music was always entertaining.” Hughes’ blog plays home to 1980s’ musical detritus, be it an obscure solo track by Ringo Starr, a hidden gem from a flop Adam and the Ants album or the one minor hit by a forgotten new-wave pop act.
Download: Ringo Starr — Wrack My Brain (posted 20/12/07) archived at popdose.com/category/music/lost-in-the-80s/ —