Elliott Smith : Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands [live bootleg; more Elliott Smith here ] I wasn't going to post this one after a kerfluffle last week involving an Elliott Smith song I posted here. But the above cover is audience-recorded, perfectly legal, originally released on archive.org. I know, because I picked it up from a blog of the same name -- and when Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands posts a song, it's safe to assume that it's perfectly legit. More than [...]
Tennessee Ernie Ford: Cry Of The Wild Goose [ purchase ] Garnet Mimms: As Long As I Have You [ purchase ] If pressed to name the coolest music blog on the net, I think I'd say Spread The Good Word! The place just has a really great vibe (think Creature From The Black Lagoon and Wanda Jackson and exclamation points). Plus, the music is incredible. Featuring the very best in forgotten and semi-forgotten soul, rock, and country from the [...]
Townes Van Zandt: For The Sake Of The Song [ purchase ] One of my favorite music blogs, For The Sake Of The Song , has been on hiatus of late. Based on the last post before its departure, it should be back soon. A September return was promised, so I've got my fingers crossed. If it's not already on your radar, make sure you make FTSOTS a regular stop when it comes back. FTSOTS primarily highlights music from the last century. What makes it so great, [...]
Nick Drake: Time Has Told Me [ purchase ] Time has told me Youre a rare rare find A troubled cure For a troubled mind. Time Has Told Me is from the dark side of the blogging world; they post entire albums, a wonderful mix of semi-traditional Euro and British folk, more experimental folk from around the globe, and the occasional live recording from the early days of Ron Sexsmith and other folk rock [...]
Scott Miller: I Made A Mess Of This Town [ purchase ] As a folk blogger, I pay close attention to good blogs with a regional focus and a tendency towards any music remotely resembling folk. After all, by its very definition, folk music is rooted deeply in its community, and most of the better communities (such as the mid-New England valley region that I call home) have more than enough going on to keep any blogger busy. As such, it becomes nigh impossible for any [...]
The Black Crowes : Locust Street [ purchase ] For this writer, the main job of a music blogger is to contextualize the music. This can be accomplished by setting the stage with a theme, attaching personal experiences to a song or explaining its history. Very few bloggers do all three, Locust St does all that and more. In 2005, while making the transition from UseNet to the Blogosphere, I came across Locust St and was blown away. It wasn't the first music [...]
Thelonious Monster : Adios Lounge [ purchase ] Joining up with the Star Maker Machine brought more happy surprises than I could count. I was exposed to many bloggers I'd hadn't come across before, every one of them brought something unique to the table. Perhaps the biggest surprise was The Adios Lounge , which for reasons I can't explain hadn't shown up on my radar before. The Adios Lounge gets into the nuts and bolts of tunes, not only as a [...]
I'm proud to bring you a feature on the newest music blog on the scene – one that conveniently has 13 years of experience. No Depression Magazine ceased publication in April of this year and this week unveiled its re-vamped website – which by many standards can be considered a music blog. No Depression was the foremost authority on all things alternative country since 1994, bringing you stories on artists from Son Volt to Buddy Miller and everyone in between. Although the magazine's readership remained strong, the [...]
The B-52s: Planet Claire (live and goofy) The Foo Fighters: Planet Claire [ purchase ] Though it's not a music bog, per se... And though the title of the blog is only coincidental in being a fanTAStic B-52 number, there are myriad reasons for my submission of Planet Claire for your perusal... Our gang appreciates a nice turn of lyric, right? (A loaded question - I know we do!) Then y'all should oughta check out Claire's [...]
The Band: When You Awake Only discovered this site a month ago but I had been missing out. When You Awake blogs straight up city country, and they're damn proud of it. Jody consistently delivers with great mixtapes, my favorite in the "Goes Twang" variety ( Dylan Goes Twang , The Band Goes Twang ). Posts range from classic country youtube clips to indie rock updates to celebrations of country hipster style. One for your bookmarks.
The Beat Farmers: Big Rock Candy Mountain [ purchase ] Billy Bragg: Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards [ purchase ] Moe Bandy: Barstool Mountain [ purchase ] " If you've got a blacklist, I want to be on it. " That Billy Bragg lyric is the well-chosen subtitle to one of my favorite blogs: Big Rock Candy Mountain . What I love about [...]
Imogen Heap: Goodnight and Go [ purchase ] It may not be one of the bigger names in the music blog world, but Goodnight and Go is one of my must reads. It gives me two things I love best, discovering new artists, and lots of female-fronted rock. Proprietor Maggie keeps it simple. She only seems to blog about music she herself loves, and considering I respect her taste and find it to often overlap my own, this makes for lots of fantastic musical discoveries. Unfortunately, [...]
The Sads: She'll Grow Back [unpurchase-able] I found She'll Grow Back back in May when a serendipitous search for a post on Randy Newman covers unearthed a "Multiple Monday" feature on Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear , a coverlover's dream post which came sandwiched between a huge post on songs about insanity, a new Gnarls Barkley single, a nod to Nick Cave, and a few paragraphs about some band called Smog. Since then I've kept it in the feedreader; tonight, sifting [...]
Wilco: I Am Trying To Break Your Heart "I am an American aquarium drinker..." There's a reason you'll find Aquarium Drunkard at the top of pretty much any list of links in the mp3 blogosphere. Since 2005, "the blog's contents change as The Drunkard's interests do" and The Drunkard, aka Satisfied '75, has nary missed a beat with a proper swarm of hip readers. Keeping us informed daily with interviews, reviews, and news, AD is my favorite of the "big blogs." I tune in for the New [...]
Songs:Ohia - I've Been Riding With The Ghost [ purchase ] When I first started blogging Dodge from My Old Kentucky Blog and Craig from Songs:Illinois were the first two bloggers to really give me the time of day/post a link back to my site etc. I've always sort of felt that ninebullets and songs:illinois are kind of distant cousins in the blogger world. A lot of Craig's posts are obscure even to me but they are generally (unless he's off on a freak [...]
Wilco: The Late Greats [ purchase ] The Late Greats was one the first blogs that garnered a bookmark upon my discovery of this wing of the web. The Duke of Straw does the writing, and while his words are often brief, the qualities of the songs speak for themselves. As the Wilco song the blog is named for might suggest, The Late Greats often features tunes you won't hear on the radio - or anywhere else in [...]
The Clash: Armagideon Time [ purchase ] With giant respect given towards all the fine blog writers here at SMM, if I only had one blog to ever read again for the rest of my times, it'd be Armagideon Times . Named after a Clash dub tune, Bitter Andrew's blog is the best thing I've run across on the interwebs. Period. The guy writes intelligently. He is a saviour of felines. He has an accommodating partner. He is politically righteous. He is swept up in [...]
Slaid Cleaves: This Mornin' I Was Born Again [ purchase ] Like Paul and Brendan , Payton is one of us; in fact, he may be the youngest contributor to Star Maker Machine, having just completed college this past year. But you'd never know he was born years after the release of some of his favorite music if he didn't tell you right up front in the sidebar of This Mornin' I Am Born Again . The writing over at This [...]
The Byrds: Hickory Wind [ purchase ] Hickory Wind is probably the first music blog that I ever came across and started reading regularly. I was on a serious Son Volt kick at the time and stumbled across a couple of posts about The Glorious Church of Jay Farrar . The posts made me laugh so I bookmarked the site and kept going back. That was over three years ago, and I still check the site almost every day. Hickory Wind is a music blog... not an [...]
David Bowie: Art Decade [ purchase ] "Specializing in music of the 'Long Seventies'" Emmett, Mike, Big B, and Sheridan Dupre X hold it down at Art Decade . This page comes across like some kind of inside only/mystery and I like that. I try to spin their tunes once a week for something I'd never know about but always dripping seventies and hot. Oft times contributor, ib, eventually landed his poetic entries on his own page, SibLINGSHOT . Anyways, they keep it short and so will I.
Star Maker Machine
![Niki & The Dove - The Fox [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/l2f6UbMnlq4_130.jpg)
Download: Lissy Trullie - "It's Only You, Isn't It"
Ugandan Methods – Beneath The Black Arch
‘SNL’ Showcases Karmin, Honors Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston’s Last Performance (Video)
