The Internet Can Be Useful If Used Properly

This post is here because I had not added one for two-and-a-half years. In the interim, the world has not suffered from the lack of my posting. (It has suffered for other reasons, but let's not get into that. The idea here is not to be depressing, no, far from it.)

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to put something here, if only to be able to say to myself, "Good job, Pete. You have done it. Let this be a start, and soon you will add many fabulous things to your blog. It will be part of a personal Renaissance. Let many flowers bloom." Or something along those lines. Something very positive and good.

Anyway, music continues to be really good. You only need to look for it. One of the best ways is via YouTube. Being a reasonably intelligent person, I find a visit to the front page of YouTube demoralizing. I really don't want to even know what is popular. Knowing about popular things is a great way for me to get really discouraged.

However, if you search for something good on YouTube, whether a band, director, author -- something that you already know or suspect is good  -- and then start digging from there, then oh boy will you find a lot of good and interesting stuff. (You probably already know this, but why not remind you of something really good.) This also holds very true for Wikipedia and IMDb. The thing is start digging and keep digging. Also, Internet Archive Texts is amazing. You want to read a first person account about someone traveling through the Middle East in 1905? Which one of several hundred would you prefer? That's just a semi-made up example that illustrates well what they have in that archive. Also, Google Translate does its job very well. Plus, your library lets you borrow stuff for free, and they will get stuff from all over your state and have it shipped to your local branch down the street. And if you use their services, then they won't go away, leaving another possible location for a new, hastily constructed T-Mobile store or something equally dispiriting.

Here's my latest example on profitably digging, from what was five minutes ago until I started typing and editing endlessly: I looked up the main guy from the band Nada Surf because he did some nice solo stuff on KEXP, then recognized the name of another guy in that band, found out that the reason I recognized his name is that he played in the band Guided by Voices, and in the process found out about yet another project that Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices did, with that guy, then looked up one of their albums on YouTube, because of course it was there, because (almost) everything is on YouTube, then listened to it and liked it a lot. Here is a link to a playlist that includes most of the tracks from the album. If you are the sort of person who likes rock and roll made with guitars, then you will like it.

I decided to buy it, so I looked on Amazon, where I check first to see if an album is available, hopefully used, not because it pleases me to help Amazon wipe out every single other business on the planet, but because I like the convenience. However, the album is like fifty bucks used on Amazon, so I remembered to check Discogs.com, which is amazing, and lists approximately five zillion albums and links them to people selling them. (Allmusic.com is also amazing, even though it has an uninspiring corporate design and front page that you'll want to ignore, because it is like the IMDb of music, in that the majority of the bands and albums on Earth are listed and everything is highly searchable and linked to everything else, allowing for endless exploration.) On Discogs it was only seven dollars -- four for the disc and three for shipping. So I highly recommend Discogs, both for researching recordings and for buying them.

To wrap up, the main guy from Nada Surf is named Matthew Caws. This song he performed solo on KEXP is tremendous. You might even want to listen to it all over again as soon as he gets to the end. For me, it's one of those tunes. Also, the album referenced above, Mist King Urth, by Lifeguards, is definitely good enough to listen to in its entirely at least twice in a row, even or especially at moderate to high volume. I just proved it.

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