Tagged: miningtheaudiomotherlode

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere The universe of music-sharing blogs just keeps expanding. My latest obsession is Lola Vandaag , which began posting in October 2011. Describing itself as ongeregelde verzameling geluid ("unregulated collection of sound"), this wonderful blog leaves no continent unappreciated. Some of the delights you'll encounter: Enchanting radio broadcasts from the world over, street organ sounds, international religious oddities, smoldering dance bands, cantorial superstars, rantings of shamans and mushroom enthusiasts, sizzling accordionists, music that will make you cry—and [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Most excellent news! One of the preeminent music bloggers out there—Reza, who not long ago shuttered his site, El Reza, after nearly six years of stellar sharing—has resurfaced as a contributor to another blog! Earlier this year, it appeared that Reza had returned after taking some time off, but his return was agonizingly short-lived. Now, once again, it appears that our man with big ears is back in action, this time as a partner in sublime with [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere During these halcyon days for marriage equality, the notion of a flamboyantly gay singer capturing the heart of the nation would seem a rather ho-hum affair. But what about back in the 1950s—and in a largely Muslim country? Universally beloved across generations in Turkey, Zeki Müren, who died on stage in 1996 at the age of 64, was as adored an Anatolian performer as there ever was. Called the "Sun" of Turkish classical music, Müren's appearance became more effeminate as [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Keeping the Motherlode stocked with links to great free sounds requires keeping tabs on many hundreds of music-sharing blogs on a daily basis. To do this while maintaining some semblance of sanity/personal hygiene, I have relied mightily on Google Reader, an RSS-feed aggregator that pulls new posts from blogs of one's choosing to into a single location. But...gack! Google has just announced that it is discontinuing Reader on July 1. This is an outrage. It's a nightmare. It's an [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Today's Mining the Audio Motherlode is dedicated to reader Holly from NC , who donated generously to WFMU during its annual fundraiser and "adopted" your Motherlode's Miner—again! Holly has the biggest heart and the wide-openest ears of anyone in Blogville, and we here at the Motherlode are grateful. To the Miner's great delight, Holly's old friend Lunchbox (pictured, at left) will continue to accompany all subterranean vinyl expeditions for another year. (Man and beast have grown quite fond [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Hey, somehow in hustle and bustle of pumping out this weekly music missive, I forgot to celebrate my 200th Motherlode. A lot has gone on in the four years since I started this column. I got laid off, moved to Pittsburgh, cranked up the webstream Give the Drummer Radio for WFMU (read all about its "heroics" after Hurricane Sandy here ) and all the while, scoured and devoured the free-music omniverse for links to downloads of many hundreds of devastatingly [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Quite an epiphany kicks off today's haul. Ever hear of Indian sax legend Braz Gonsalves? Me neither until the excellent Indian and Pakistani Vinyl blog dropped the stunner that leads off today's Motherlode. Gonsalves turns 80 this year and just stopped playing jazz for good (though not because of age. He has renounced it due to his religious faith and now only performs gospel.) If you're a lover of Indian-jazz hybrid sounds like me—or even if you're [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere I received a comment during my latest radio show asking if I was going to play any music by Butch Morris. Morris, the legendary composer, cornetist and group-improvisation innovator had recently died and the listener was, understandably, asking if I was going to be paying tribute. The truth is I have mixed feelings about producing "remembrance" broadcasts. Doing so is a perfectly reasonable thing to do (no station produces better memorial programming than WKCR in New York), [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Like Zora Neale Hurston , Katherine Dunham won a Guggenheim to study culture of the African diaspora in Haiti and elsewhere. Like Maya Deren , who was once Dunham's secretary, the pioneering choreographer traveled to the field and produced an historic recording of music and ritual in the field. (Maya Deren's Voices of Haiti was shared right here in Motherlode #165 .) Our lead item today presents Dunham's miraculous 1956 recordings of Haitian, Cuban and Brazilian [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Beloved anarchist Emma Goldman famously chirped, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." No cause is worth denial of joy, she insisted. From the fife and drum troops of the Continental Army, to the populist warblings of Woody Guthrie, to the Boss rocking the presidential stump, music has contributed to social and political upheaval throughout history. Take the Civil Rights movement for example, which was so awash in song as to have its own virtual [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere The flipping of the calendar has brought flippin' great developments in Blogland with the rumbling back to life of some favorite sites that had been inactive for too long. Today's Motherlode welcomes back this quartet of music-sharing shrines with hopes for a robust 2013:  •  The rare and private-press avant offerings from El Reza  •  Likembe 's magnificent African explorations  •  Fifties and sixties hipness from jazz purveyor Sic Vos Non Vobis [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere The music-sharing scene took a beating in 2012, what with the demolition of Megaupload, the neutering of Rapidshare and Mediafire, and the immolation, self- and otherwise, of countless shrines to music adoration across the blogosphere. But through it all, the hits just kept coming and we here at Mining the Audio Motherlode were mighty chuffed to celebrate the best of the choicest postings in this space on a weekly basis. Before we turn our earlobes to the torrent of [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Ah, the sweet scourge of "Christmas music." As with gruesome highway mayhem, you just can't avert your ears! Whether it's so bad it's good, or just plain so good, sonic seasonal fare is here to stay, so we might as well wallow in it. And wallowing in it is Mining the Audio Motherlode's organizing principle. (To prove it, check out our Xmas music features from 2009 , 2010 and 2011 .) Of course, if the [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Continuing my crusade to lighten the end-times pall occluding the blogosphere, I use this space to remind sonic explorers to check the archives at your favorite sites, for there's golden sounds in them thar pages. Take for example the lead off item in today's Motherlode. A private press recording from '74 of black-positive musical theater from Chicago, this rarity has earned big bucks on the auction sites for years, but the LP has been posted, free for the taking [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Given the ever shorter shelf-lives of download links in free-music blogging,  it goes without saying that the recordings shared in this space might not be around too long. I suppose it could be considered a minor (miner?) miracle if the music referenced here remains accessible during the entire week of each Motherlode posting. My best advice: Lunge don't linger. But thinking about all the old links decomposing in the nearly four years' worth of Motherlode posts makes me sad. This column [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Once again, I feel like a lonely voice, cackling cheerfully into a chill wind regarding the free-music blog scene. Just this past August, in "The Rise & Fall of MP3 Blogs" posted in these pages by Casey Rae—and during a subsequent Radio Free Culture discussion that aired on WFMU —the death of online music sharing was stirringly eulogized. Now, the long faces have surfaced again in a widely circulated piece by Mark Allen in The Awl (note [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere I've never been much of a singles hoarder. For every little record with a big hole in my collection, I probably have hundred or more LPs and CDs. Not sure why that is, but there you go. My tastes in music-sharing blogs are similar as evidenced by the abundance of full-album sites on display here each week. But I would be derelict in my duties to not call attention to the many fantastic 7"-slinging blogs efforting to teach the Internet [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere gateway to a great getaway ! Back in the mid-'90s, the city of Wilmington, Delaware, used this laughable tag line in an ad campaign to bolster its tourist trade. I remember seeing it plastering the walls of the city's Amtrak station back then. The best thing we have to offer, city officials seemed to be saying, is an easy rail connection out of town . Not the brightest way to get the odd visitor to stay and [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere One of the great bloggers is calling it quits. Five years into a dazzling run of thoughtful earfuls, the chap behind Continuo's Weblog , the music-sharing site that originally described itself as "Reassessed aural delicacies," has decided to focus on other projects. Some blogs were more prolific. Others dropped rarer records, but no other site I've come across traveled as adventurous a path through the wonder of sound. Do yourself a favor and visit the site before the links [...]

Give the Drummer Some's Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere Free ride. Free love. Free Bird. Free Mumia! Free to be you and me. Radio Free Europe. Freestyle. Free Soil Party. Free speech. Free your mind and your ass will follow. The Free Design. Free jazz. Free credit report. The truth shall set you free. Free love. Free range chicken. Free verse. Free radicals. Free trade agreement. Free throw. Free association. Free spirit. Born Free. World B. Free. Butterflies Are Free. Duty Free. Scott free. Freddie the Freeloader. Detroit Free Press. Footloose [...]