Links

Music Magazines and Sites:

Being one bloke with a dayjob, I can't review all the good albums. Luckily there's plenty of good publications out there that try. These are roughly in order of the frequency I read them. I'm linking to their end-of-year lists if I think they were interesting enough.

R.I.P.
Stylus
Playlouder
Splendide

Discussion Boards and Communities

I Love Music
I was just a lurker for a few years because I didn't like how a lot of participants were "2kool4skool." Meaning it seemed to be a bunch of pretentious 20 year-old twats more concerned with sarcastic one-liners than, god forbid, expressing genuine enthusiasm for anything. However, it also attracted a large number of music writers, many my age and older who are beyond pseudo-hipster posturing, so now it's the main place I post. In a blog world full of know-it-alls, I can usually find people who actually do know answers to obscure questions. It's a trade-off. Suffer the high quotiant of a-holes to access the equally high percentage of intelligent members.

Obner
Based on a drunken typo, this irreverent community branched off an old CMJ board. It was a fun group of people, generally warmer and less pretentious than your average group of music geeks. Some of the Chicago members would meet for lunch and organize show outings. Of course there's always a few people with personality disorders, alcoholics, depressives, people with no lives who like to ruin civil discussions with personal attacks. You know the types. I willingly suffer fools as long as there's some sort of payoff, but I lost interest when I found better venues elsewhere that I found more challenging (in exposing me to music I wasn't familiar with). Most of the community are great people though, and if you're looking for mostly laid-back banter with real rock fans, it's worth checking out.

AVS Forum, Audioholics, Ecoustics and Head-Fi.
In researching audio and video gear these forums have been valuable resources. Unlike most music forums, these people are perfectly willing to answer dumb questions from strangers and actually be nice about it! I've learned a lot as I've gradually updated my dying gear the past couple years, but still don't quite have a handle on DACs and headphone amps.

MOG
A unique blogging portal that offers cool gadgets that keep track of the music you play on your computer, reporting your most played tracks and albums, new additions, etc. I enjoyed its first several months of the beta version because everyone read everyone's posts and there was a lot of interaction. Now that there's more people, any potential discussions are instantly pigpiled with posts containing nothing but Youtube videos. Nevertheless, a great idea that continues to evolve.

Miscellaneous

The Trouser Press Record Guide is back online!!! This has been my bible to indie rock since the first edition was published in 1983. It includes all the content from all five editions, up to 1996. "While the good news is that the discographies have been updated, the reviews haven't — virtually nothing since 1996 has gotten our critical attention ... yet. But it will."

The Rough Guide To Rock also returns from a several year hiatus. Less snarky than Trouser, less complete than AMG, but better written and edited, this promises days wasted looking up stuff you already have, and occasionally finding something you need.

Famously crotchety Dean of Rock Critics, Robert Christgau finally has his consumer guides online, particularly good fun when you're in the mood to howl in outrage, as he's usually wrong. His reviews are often indecipherable riddles, but you gotta respect the sheer volume of music the man has listened to.

Think I'm obsessive? Go here and catch the list bug yourself, mwa ha ha haaaa. Contribute reviews and find people with similar tastes. Similar in concept to the long-gone Firefly. Album Vote UK is, you guessed it, the UK version.

If you're a sucker for lists like I am, check out Julian White's Rock List Site for year-end lists from Q, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, SPIN, The Wire and just about any magazine that's published a best-of list dating back to 1974 and even earlier.

"The Most Recommended Rock Albums and Singles of All Time." Swedish statistician Henrik Franzon takes nearly all the lists in Rock List Site and more, and compiles them into uberlists!

Tired of bad-taste apologists whining that taste is subjective? Ever been tempted to heckle the louts lined up for the Creed show but didn't have the guts? This avenging demon in a vader helmet does it better than you ever would.

"Rock Critics talking to, about and with each other." Sounds like a great way to clear out a party, but it's an amazing resource for historical essays and reviews from old rock zines by now legendary writers. Great for hours of reading. It includes links to home pages of the most happening music writers, and an entire Lester Bangs section.

"A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, and technology - updated continuously." Whereas I used to be an isolated freak, I now have a community.

Chris Butler is filming a documentary on Walt Mink. We all went to the same college, I wrote some of the earliest coverage on them, and was a huge fan from their early basement shows in 1989. Exhausted from constantly being screwed over by labels and suffering from the Spinal Tap exploding drummer syndrome (Joey Waronker left them for Beck, Bitch Magnet's Orestes Morfin fled back to the mountains, and Jack Danziger had back difficulties), they broke up in 1997, after releasing four albums on three labels. They definitely had an intense following that ensured nearly every mindblowing show was filled to capacity. Yet they didn't quite reach the level of national recognition as other less deserving bands. It'll be interesting to see how compelling this story might be to the majority of people who were unaware of the band. I think it could work brilliantly, even better than, say, The Band Who Would Be King (on Half Japanese).

Winter '04 Butler passed through town and interviewed me. I wasn't exactly a dynamo on camera, but hopefully a few seconds of footage will survive the cut. Click here and scroll down for a pic.

LiP Magazine, an excellent magazine of culture and politics that has provided "Media Dissidence and Uncivil Discourse Since 1996."

Like movies as much as you like music? Like myself, James Berardinelli is an unpaid independent critic with a separate day job. But he puts me to shame as far as obsessive listmaking goes. He's also a more prolific writer, with lengthy reviews that rival those of the best syndicated critics. Even Roger Ebert agrees! Check him out now so you can say you followed him before he was famous.

Other good movie resources: