 
Welcome to Musical Taste’s new links section. There are currently 151 links.
This page is being continually expanded. Please send me a note if you know of any other good music-related sites that you don’t see listed here.
The links are organized into five sections:
• Information
• Artists and Groups
• Cover Art
• Audio
• Record/CD purchasing |
Information:
• 8-track heaven
A site that really got me fascinated with 8-track tapes when I discovered it four or five years ago. I'm happy to see that it's still going strong. The site contains everything you're likely to want to know about 8-track collecting and repair, as well as a classifieds board and some interesting rare audio, including short clips of Playboy bunnies commending 8-tracks!
• All Brazilian Music
A thorough site in Portuguese and English, with biographies and discographies of pretty much every Brazilian artist I've heard of.
• All Music Guide
A deservedly well-known and respected site. While they have numerous 'weak' areas (for example, the bulk of non-English language pop), and although I don't agree with everything they say, the site's coverage is still large, and they have some innovative tools (like 'music maps') that can be quite interesting and enlightening to use. Also, those looking for song-specific information can search by song title, and those looking for song recommendations can check out the 'SONG HIGHLIGHTS' section, which appears for certain artists. There are even some song-specific reviews, such as this interesting one about Johnny Cash's 'Folsom Prison Blues'.
• Archive of Contemporary Music
Although many parts do not seem to have been updated in several years, this site has some very informative resources, such as 'today in music history', and a Paris record-buying guide.
• ASCAP
Ascap (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) has a vast, searchable database of all tracks for which they handle the publishing royalties. See also BMI.
• Blaxploitation
A great site for those interested in funky soundtracks from the 60s and 70s (and occasionally 80s). Features a long list of soundtrack reviews, all with ratings, cover art, and full track listings. Some short mp3 samples are also available.
• BMI
BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) holds a huge database of publishing information for every track for which they handle the publishing royalties. This can be invaluable for checking who really wrote a song, or even for finding out about obscure compositions you never knew existed.
• Bossa Mania Meeting
A wonderful site in Japanese by some people with excellent taste in music. With some great pictures.
• Bossa Nova Online
Insanely interesting and helpful discography site about Bossa Nova, neatly organized by label. The site is in Japanese but it's mostly about tracklistings, titles and cover art, so it's useful for non-Japanese speakers as well.
• Both Sides Now Publications
A remarkable site, with full discographies and catalogue numbers for most US record labels. The site also includes short histories and illustrative scans of many of the labels. There is an unbelievable amount of useful free content here. In particular, I've found the Cadet label discography very illuminating.
• Cool and Strange Music
The online home of the weird, eclectic and quite brilliant Cool and Strange Music magazine. Features some archive articles and a great links page.
• Disco Museum
A really cool site with personal reminiscences and biographies of the disco era.
• Discogs
An interesting site with a similar user-driven content model to that of musical taste. The focus here is electronic music, and the site currently has shedloads users, who contribute to an ever-growing database of electronic music releases, which is searchable by artist or title.
• Doug Payne
Doug Payne's site contains a wealth of meticulously researched information on many Jazz artists, including Lalo Schifrin, Gary MacFarland, Roy Budd and Shirley Scott, as well as cover art and a history of the A&M/CTI labels. An incredible resource.
• Exotica List
The exotica list, a mailing list of which I've been a member since 1996, is an incredible resource - a fluid yet consistently nice group of people with a huge volume of knowledge and enthusiasm for music that is often ignored by society at large. The list just changed to a new system, so while archives are at the address above, if you want to join the list, you should go here.
• Film Score Monthly
Online version of the popular Film Score magazine.
• Future of Music Coalition
An interesting source of information about the implications that digital technology has for music.
• Gordon Stone's Soul Survey
This site features fascinating vintage online 'reprints' of 70s articles on soul from 'Blues and Soul' magazine. The articles, reproduced with full permission, contain several record reviews and some interesting song recommendations. The rest of the site is also very interesting.
• Gullbuy
Contrary to its title, this is not an online store, but an interesting and long-running music review site.
• Hyp Records
An extremely informative and far-reaching site about 'hip, strange, exotic records', giving detailed release information and short histories of dozens of genres and sub-genres, including Latin Soul, Brasilian pop, and crime jazz, to name but a few.
• I love Music messageboard
An interesting and very dense messageboard where music (mostly indie/alternative new releases) are discussed.
• Irma Records
Nice website for the Italian label that, alongside 'Right Tempo', has been at the forefront of interesting Italian reissues, as well as new Italian artists.
• Jazz Discography Project
An impressive and growing site listing jazz discographies, arranged by both performer and label. Labels covered in great detail include Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Savoy, Verve, Mercury, Atlantic, Argo/Cadet, and Bethlehem.
• Jazz Record Label Listings
Jazz discographies; a nice complement to the bsnpubs site.
• Johan Dada Vis's Exotiquarium
A great, searchable site with a multitude of information and reviews on music Johan is interested in, loosely termed 'exotica'. Most incredible is the 'eXotica Releases Overview', which lists, with catalog numbers where possible, every release and reissue of interest.
• Meeksville
Nice gathering of information, pictures and discographies about Joe Meek, the legendary British 60s pop producer.
• Mercury Records Collection
An astonishing site on the venerable Mercury record label, featuring hundreds of high quality cover scans and discographies.
• Mr Lucky
A really nicely designed site, with a musical focus that is slightly more in the 40s and 50s than many of the other sites I'm recommending. The publication has been going for a few years now, and there is a great archive of old reviews and articles, including some of my favorites, like Keely Smith and Mina.
• Music from the Movies
A nice site with news, reference material, and over 1000 CD reviews of soundtrack music. This is the online component of a print magazine.
• Nigel's Golden Days
This site is strangely compelling. It's a mixture of annotated UK chart listings from 1973-1984, and stories from what was going on in its author's life at the time. Although my musical taste is very different, I feel a strange kinship with Nigel.
• Psyrchlez: Sixties Obscure Pop & Psychedelic Singles
A great site in Japanese and English with interesting reviews of 45s and compilations.
• Rudy's Corner
A good collection of sites, with detailed coverage of the A&M Label, including Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66, Chris Montez and Claudine Longet. As well as information and cover galleries, there are message boards and classifieds columns. There are also sites on Henry Mancini and Laurindo Almeida.
• Sambaphones
A fascinating article on the origins of the samba in Brazil.
• Score Baby
A very cool online magazine, featuring reviews, interviews and CD cover scans. The focus is mainly on soundtracks and easy listening (old and new).
• Setlists
This site is run by a French guy who collects set lists, scans them in, and puts them up. The entire site is 'handwritten' - ie made up of scanned pieces of writing as opposed to text. The 'bientôt' section lists shows that the site owner will be attending in the near future. Very interesting and cool. There are also photos and reviews (handwritten, and in French).
• ShibuyaLink
A very nicely put together site full of links and discographies related to Shibuya-kei.
• Soulstrut.com
An attitude-filled site for 'crate diggers,' people who collect records principally for beats. There's a lot of interesting info on jazz, soul, library music etc., including reviews and sound samples.
• Soundtrack Collector
This site isn't pretty, but it looks to be an extremely interesting resource for soundtrack collectors. It's something of a community site like this one, except that the unit for discussion is soundtrack albums. Like the 'Discogs' site, users are encouraged to list all the items in their collection. This data is used for customized recommendations. There's also a classifieds section (with astronomically priced LPs!) and some news items. Currently, there are over 30,000 soundtracks listed, and over 4000 members. A very promising site.
• Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (archive version)
I mourn the fact that I don't seem to be able to locate the Gallery of SABPM album covers, a superb, seminal site that I remember looking at with wonder many years ago. Alas, this does not seem to have been archived, but the rest of the SABPM site is accessible, and contains a lot of useful information, particularly on Esquivel. It's also an interesting look at what the Web used to look like.
• Space Age Pop
Brad Bigelow's site has grown and grown since its inception in 1997. It is now the principal and authoritative source of information for many of the obscure and forgotten artists it profiles. As well as single artists profiles, Brad provides a great listening guide for those looking to get into the coolest music of the 1950s/60s/70s, focusing in on such niches as accordianists, bongo players, and big bands playing 'Now' sounds. A superb site in which you could get lost for days.
• Spy Bop Royale
A very cool site about secret agent/spy soundtracks, with tons of cover art and background information.
• The Covers Project
An interesting, semi-automated website project:
"We're building a database of cover songs (songs performed by an artist other than the original performer) with the intention of creating cover "chains." A cover chain is a set of songs in which each song is a cover of a song by the band who covered the preceding song."
• The Music of the Beach Party Movies
A tasty site about beach party movies and their music. The site includes discographies, cover art, and album reviews.
• The Sound Library
Nice site with information on library music, including several label discographies (including track listings) and dozens of rare cover scans. In fact, these cover scans are one of the real highlights of the site: the minimalist 60s and 70s designs that adorned the sleeves of these records are very cool. I would love some audio, or some reviews of the records, but maybe that's coming!
• Thrift Store Adventures
A guy called John Book gives an account of all his thrift store/record fair finds, location by location. Very cool.
• Tiger Sushi
This visually stunning site also holds a lot of offbeat musical information and research, as well as a record store. Very cool.
• Top 50 Most Common Used CDs
Amusing reading.
• Tricatel
Increasingly groovy label, with reissues and original releases by April March, among others.
• Trouser Press
This newly relaunched site contains archives of Trouser Press, a New York-based rock music magazine. There's a great deal of interesting music criticism here, in the form of artist-based summaries (ie search for 'meat is murder', and you will see a page listing and critiquing each of The Smiths' albums). Although the critiquing stops in 1996, the content is starting up again.
• Tweenet
The website of the indiepop mailing list, this is an incredible source of information on the obscure world of indie/twee/jangly/whatever you want to call it pop music of the 80s and early 90s to present. Full of obscure label discographies, band histories, and archived list postings.
• Verve records
Verve's new site is quite nice. This page lists their new releases in reverse chronological order, so you can see which nice reissues are coming up (as I look now, Lalo Schifrin's 'Piano, Strings and Bossa Nova'). Message to Verve: please digitize ALL the master tapes you have and make them available at a price on a track-by-track basis. Thanks, Jonny.
• Vinyl Vulture
A very interesting site for those interested in UK-issue easy listening and soundtrack music. There was a real dearth of information available on UK-issue easy listening and “Lords of Lounge” until these guys came along. I particularly commend them for covering the murky topic of UK budget labels. The site also has useful message boards for trades and information.
• Waxidermy
This is kind of a cool site where people post about interesting old records they've found. It's set up as a 'blog', so you have to be a contributor to get involved. They have 30 or so as I write this. It seems like a very nice site - it looks cool and there is a lot of information on there. They also have some fun features like this.
• Zoomrang
Respect to this French site owner, who has presented links and discographies and a huge amount of general info about his favorite musicians. Most (although not all) are French. I found the site while researching France Gall.
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Artists and Groups:
• Abilio Manoel
A useful discography of this Brazilian singer and composer, including track titles, catalog numbers, and some cover art.
• Air
Fun official site, featuring a discography, photos, audio, games, and links to some other cool sites.
• Bertrand Burgalat
Nicely designed French site with audio clips available.
• Blossom Dearie
A fantastic site on a great, often neglected singer. The site features a pretty comprehensive discography, with cover scans, track listings, and enthusiastic descriptions.
• Bob Thompson
A nice looking site about the Space Age Pop arranger, including mp3 sound samples, cover art, and some cool animated 50s images.
• Bobby Womack
A tasty and stylish flash site.
• Burt Bacharach
'A House Is Not A Homepage' is a great, long standing Bacharach site. It has an active discussion board, rare audio (it was here that I first heard Keely Smith's astounding version of 'one less bell to answer'), and some unusual images.
• Cal Tjader
A reasonably new site put together by the people behind Rudy's corner for Cal Tjader enthusiasts. All that's there right now is a short discography and a user forum, but the forum is quite active, making the site very useful.
• Charles Stepney
A memorial to the legendary producer Charles Stepney, created by his daughter Charlene.
• Claude Nougaro
This is Claude's official site. It's rather flashy, with a lot of information (all in French).
• Claudine Longet
'Cuddle up with Claudine' is the first site I came across devoted to the wonderful Claudine, and it still seems to be the best. Features an exhaustive, beautifully presented discography, a filmography, buying guide, and lots of great images, as well as biographical information.
• Cocteau Twins
The official site. They may have split up, but I still love them.
• David Axelrod
A nice site, with a good discography and some sound samples.
• Dion McGregor
I have yet to hear this amazing-sounding sleeptalking record from the 60s, but I hope I do soon, because the story behind it, told on this site, is amazing.
• Ennio Morricone
Canto Morricone: the lost liner notes is a fascinating commentary on the track listings of the four fabulous Bear Family records compilations from the late 1990s.
• Ennio Morricone
Huge online Morricone community.
• Frank Valdor
This biography and discography of the German easy listening bandleader is fun for everyone, because it includes nice high resolution scans of Frank's amazing LP covers.
• Horst Jankowski
One of the grooviest piano players ever.
• Janko Nilovic
An official site on Janko Nilovic, brought to us by the Cosmic Sounds label, who have been re-releasing some of his work. Besides a short biography and details on how the Janko Nilovic band can be booked to play live (that would be cool!), the site consists mainly of a detailed discography (including some beautiful and rare cover art) that outlines just how prolific he was in the 1960s and 70s.
• Jobriath
This site contains about as much information as seems to exist about the androgynous 70s rocker.
• Jobriath
The Jobriath Fan Collective. A great site with a message board, discography, and nicely pieced together biography.
• Joe Meek
I haven't actually been to this site in a few years (I lost track of it - I think they sold their old domain name, joemeek.com, to the amplifier manufacturer), but I remember it being an eccentric and obsessive collection of information on this eccentric and obsessive English record producer. UPDATE: The site is currently awol. Google still has a cache of it, so I have hopes that it may reappear.
• John Schroeder
This is actually a page by Chris Spedding, a session guitarist who played on some of his records. However, it's fascinating to me for its rare cover scans and details from Schroeder's obscure but often brilliant 'Vibrations' series, released on Polydor in the UK in the early 70s.
• Julian Cope
Julian Cope's amazing website contains a wealth of reviews of other interesting music, as well as information on his own. One day, Julian will be more widely known and appreciated than he is now. Of that, there is no doubt.
• Julie London
Julie is eternally a goddess, and if you don't yet know this, I must insist that you visit this superb site and study it.
• Koop
Tasty flash site for this great band, who produce jazzy electronic pop songs with a nice retro edge.
• Lee Hazlewood
Still the best and most authoritative Lee Hazlewood site, even now, after the rest of the world has 'discovered' Lee's unique brand of genius. The site provides hitherto unavailable information on the story of Lee's life, and a great archive of links, discographies and album art.
• Lee Hazlewood
Lee now has his own official site. Very cool; has sound clips, and reveals details of Lee's forthcoming new album ('For Every Solution there's a problem') and book ('The Pope�s Daughter'). Lee even provides music recommendations!
• Les Baxter
A stunningly beautiful official site for Les, this includes an innovatively designed set of cover scans for all of Les's Capitol releases, and a selection of track downloads in asf format. A glance at the licensing section revealed that 'Puff Daddy And Family sampled Xtabay (Lure Of The Unknown
Love) in I love You Baby'. This was news to me. Do I want to hear it? One thing that this site lacks is any coverage of Les's sleazy soundtrack work of the 60s and 70s. Still, this is an astoundingly nice and useful site.
• Les Baxter
An unofficial but excellent site, with a good discography (including track listings), a fascinating interview, and collected liner notes.
• Lou Reed
A great page featuring a full pre-Velvet Underground discography for Lou Reed, including cover art, and various label variations. Find out about such classics as 'Sneaky Pete' and 'The Ostrich', composed and recorded by Reed while he was working as a staff writer for Design records...
• Luiz Bonfa
A superb cover art-based discography for the great Brazilian guitarist and composer, Luiz Bonf�. Included are albums that Luiz recorded with other singers as well as those he did on his own.
• Momus
Momus's site is always worth a visit. He updates it alarmingly regularly, and almost always has some interesting things to say.
• Mr Quintron
Cool site on the New Orleans-based experimentalist.
• Nancy Sinatra
The official site, with some great audio and an entertaining flash introduction.
• Ned Towns
This is the site of the blues label run by this singer (recommended on this site), who had a hit in the 1960s with the ballad 'How can you baby-sit a man'.
• New Order
I don't yet own 'Get Ready', but I'm a huge New Order fan, and their influence on me is still going strong. This is the official site, and is therefore a little flash-heavy, but has a great discography nevertheless.
• Pale Saints
A simple, short site about one of my favorite bands. Pale Saints were an unusual-sounding UK-based independent band (on the 4AD label), who I saw live probably a dozen times when I was in my late teens.
• Perez Prado
This site features a revealing biography of the Cuban maestro, as well as a nice illustrated discography. The biography is fascinating, detailing Prado's early career, and revealing that he made a brief appearance in the fifties film 'Underwater'. Finally, the site's author provides a long list of interesting references for further reading. Great site.
• Pet Shop Boys
A very flashy site with not especially intuitive navigation. There is however a lot of content, and some interesting links to fan sites and remixes. Every now and again, I remember how good this band are.
• Pizzicato Five
An interesting song-by-song account of Pizzicato Five, with commentaries and release info.
• Raymond Scott
An official site, this is nicely put together, with photos, audio clips, a detailed discography, a list of cartoons, TV shows and films in which Scott's music has been used, and several fascinating articles, one of which dates back to 1939.
• Saint Etienne
A superb site in homage to this great indie/synth band. I don't think the site is official, but it seems to have links/news as if it was. UPDATE: the site is being reconstructed, but the old version is still accessible.
• Sara Montiel
I first heard of the Spanish singer and actress Sara Montiel via an extremely sleazy 70s single called 'Touch me', which sounds exactly like music from a porno movie. I had never heard of her before, but recently found this huge site devoted to her, which includes pictures, a discography, a filmography, and an extensive biography. The single I bought does not seem to be representative of her work.
• Shirley Bassey
The Songs of Shirley Bassey is an enormous site that includes a detailed discography with cover art and liner notes, as well as articles, tour information, and other resources.
• Stu Phillips
Phillips's official site seems to exist to promote his book about the music industry, Stu Who. It looks interesting, and includes a filmography and discography.
• The Three Suns
Genius site on the Three Suns, who recorded an incredible volume of material, including some very tasty dawn-of-stereo albums on RCA. The site features a carefully researched history, an illustrated discography (some of the old record covers are wild, such as this one for 'Three Suns in Japan'), clips from 40s 'soundies' (an ancestor of the pop video) in Quicktime format, and to top it off, some album recommendations.
• Tipsy
Tipsy's official site is a very cool Flash-only fun festival, including a very tasty 'Sound Machine,' which allows visitors to play around with samples and colored shapes.
• Wing
Wing is a singer from New Zealand who performs popular songs in a rather compelling way.
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Cover Art:
• 317X
A really beautiful site, containing a vast number of great cover scans and liner notes from cool records from the 60s and 70s.
• 4AD cover scans
An enormous selection of 4AD cover art. Beautiful stuff. I can't help thinking this page would be very useful for a bootlegger. Still, it makes you realize what an enormous number of incredibly great releases there were on the label - Cocteau Twins, Pixies, Pale Saints, etc...
• A bachelor's music guide by Pearmania
A nice set of album recommendations with album cover art, split into genres like 'crime and spy jazz', 'it came from outer space', and 'exotica'.
• Album Cover Art
An interesting article that discusses cover art from the jazz age to the present day. There's a gallery as well.
• All Sales are Vinyl
An interesting site full of interesting record cover scans, culled from the site owner's collection of thrift store records. A new scan is added every week.
• Burt Goldblatt cover art
A small selection of covers by Burg Goldblatt, who did a lot of work on jazz album covers in the 50s and 60s.
• Cover Heaven
A very nice UK-based site featuring record cover art of the 50s, 60s and 70s.
• Dragstravaganza
This site contains a large index of drag performers, including some great cover scans (like this one).
• Elenco
A beautiful illustrated discography and cover gallery for this classic Brazilian label.
• Frank's vinyl museum
A really great site for obscure vinyl cover art. The scans are high quality, and each one has a mini-comment board attached to it.
• Jack Diamond's House of Games
Another seminal internet presence in the world of exotica, Jack's gallery of album covers is quite wonderful. He also has an online store.
• Music from Outer Space
Great article on 'Outer space exotica' - records made in the 40s, 50s and 60s, in advance of—and looking ahead to—space travel. Includes some great cover art.
• Pop Cult Album Cover Art
A nice annotated gallery of 50s and 60s cover art.
• Rare Bollywood LP Covers
Now at a new, popup-free location, this is a great gallery of cover art from Bollywood soundtrack albums.
• Rita Chao Covers
A great cover gallery of 60s LPs and 45s from south-east asia. The rest of the site is cool too.
• Show and Tell Music
An amazing cover art site. Utter genius!
• Space Age Pop a go-go
A superb cover art site for Exotica and Easy Listening records.
• The Jim Flora Gallery
It's great to see that this beautiful site collecting cover art by the late Jim Flora is still around. As well as some breathtaking cover art, the site includes interviews and scans of advertisements.
• The Record Sleeve: Bizarre Records
Very cool site for 'weird' LP covers. The letters page is a highlight!
• Thunderball covers
Part of an interesting site devoted entirely to the James Bond Thunderball movie. As well as this amazing gallery of record and magazine covers from around the world, there are soundclips, fonts, film stills and interviews.
• Under the Hat
Tasty LP cover art gallery. Some of the Dutch porno covers are beyond belief. To visit the gallery, click 'Cover Art Archive' on the right.
• When LPs roamed the earth
Another great cover art gallery, with irreverent annotations. UPDATE: they seem to have allowed the domain to expire; hopefully the site will be back before long...
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Audio:
• 8tracks
What a wonderful site! Searchable, streamed mixtapes. Possibly the best mixtape site yet. Really nice to use with some wonderful stuff on there. Here's the one I found that got me there: scat.
• American Song-Poem Music Archives
The goal of the American Song-Poem Music Archives is "to document and celebrate the rich history of the "set your poems to music" industry." There is an enormous amount of audio, and I must say, I find the whole thing utterly compelling. I first read about this industry a few years ago in the REsearch Pranks book, and was happy to see that the site includes the story and audio of the legendary 'Peace & Love (Blind Man's Penis).'
• April Winchell Multimedia
This page has grown since I last saw it, to the extent that it is a huge and frightening collection of incredible audio.
• Basic Hip
A superb site that offers information about whistling records, as well as frequently changing mp3 album downloads, streaming audio and video.
• Bjork remix web
An interesting site where all of the icelandic singer Bjork's albums and songs are listed, and remixes are available for download and discussion. I like the concept, mainly because it encourages people to remix less common songs. UPDATE: this seems to have gone offline for a while, but I hope it will be back.
• Cocteau Twins: video
If you have never submitted to the joys of this band, I highly recommend a visit to this page. Quicktime videos for many of their best songs can be found here.
• Dictionaroke
An amusing site where well known songs are re-recorded using dictionary sample voices instead of vocals.
• Exploitika Radio
Awesome soundtrack radio site.
• First Class Music for the Jet Set
There's not much here yet, but this looks to be a promising repository for mp3-compiliations, most of which are available for download. There is also some interesting music discussion.
• Friendly Persuasion
The Interstellar Cafe has now closed, but its jewels live on. The superb 'friendly persuasion' radio show by Otis Fodder is one of the best. There's even a mailing list with playlists for those who want to explore things further.
• LuxuriaMusic
Genius Internet radio station playing "Outr� lounge and Latin jazz, breezy swinging instrumentals and vocals, groovy 60's go-go and 70�s Bollywood soundtracks, psychedelia, quirky oddities, retro pop, surf music and whatever we think is cool."
• Oddio Overplay
The site is basically a celebration of music, and in particular, music transmitted over the internet. There's a huge volume of links to sites hosting mp3 audio, presented in a variety of interesting ways, such as annotated lists, mp3 playlists featuring audio from all over the web, and collections of radio stations. There's also artwork, an accompanying blog, and information about audio players.
• People Like Us complete recordings
Hugely chaotic and enjoyable sound collages, all downloadable without cost.
• Popmeter
This is a streaming jukebox site, focusing on some offbeat 1960s sounds, including garage, psyche, soul, R&B, and French pop. There are also low bitrate mp3 playlist streams available. It looks very cool.
• The Lo-Fi Mixtape Network
Stylish flash site dedicated to mixtapes. The audio is deliberately set at a reasonably low (AM radio) quality.
• The Oddball Auditorium
As it sounds, this is a collection of obscure mp3 files of forgotten, homemade, and other “oddball” music.
• The Retro Cocktail Hour
A superb weekly radio show (live and archive streams are available on the site) playing exotica, soundtracks and various other delights from the 50s and 60s
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Record/CD purchasing:
• Blue Moon
Although can't personally vouch for them, this looks to be a great way to get hold of Spanish releases. For example, this label, which put out some great Plas Johnson releases, seems also to distribute Ubatuqui (which released 60s material by Eumir Deodato and Lalo late 60s work by Lalo Schifrin) and all the RCA Spanish reissues (such as Mancini's 'The Party' and some recent Stereo Action reissues). The prices seem cheap (under 9 euros each), so unless the shipping is outrageous, this looks like a good site.
• Darla records
Darla is a record label and distributor of many fine new indie-pop releases. Their site has some info about the label, but is mostly an online store. The site is updated frequently, and they have mp3 sound samples, so it's a good way to hear new stuff as well.
• Dusty Groove
If you are wondering why this Chicago-based online music store receives so much hype, it's because it sells superb, hand-picked records and CDs on a simple, informative website, and has excellent customer service. Oh, and the prices aren't bad either, particularly on Japanese imports, where they are a full $10 to $15 less than Amazon or Barnes and Noble. The store's particular strengths are Brasilian music, funk, sixties pop, French and European pop, and easy listening.
• Ebay - Records
Yes, everybody knows about ebay. However, this doesn't mean you can't still get a bargain. Over 130,000 records are listed as I write this, and you often find that in that crowd of records, some great items slip buy that you can pick up for the minimum bid price. The section for CDs is also bursting, with over 170,000 listed as I write this.
• Gemm
A vast super-index of record dealers around the world. Although the design isn't so great, and the search capability is not so advanced, and although the database is clogged by a few crappy retailers who promise everything, but have nothing in stock...in spite of all these things, gemm is an amazing site, that can still turn up really rare records very cheaply.
• Jack Diamond Music
Now with an improved and rather swanky site, Jack Diamond sells new and used records and CDs, (mainly exotica/space age pop/library beat/soundtracks/moog/incredibly strange).
• Jet Set Records
Japanese online store that ships overseas. I haven't used them myself, but their site looks nice, their prices don't look bad, and they seem a good choice for those looking for Japanese releases, particularly those of modern Japanese acts such as Fantastic Plastic Machine, Cornelius, and Pizzicato 5.They didn't seem to have a huge volume of stock for the music I'm interested in, but perhaps this will change; their recommendations seem promising.
• Movie Grooves
A UK-based online store specializing in 60s and 70s soundtracks, library music, spoken word, and other interesting stuff. They stock both CDs and vinyl, and each item has an enthusastic description and (usually) some mp3 sound samples.
• Tokyo Recohan
An online CD shop based in Tokyo, specializing in used Japanese CDs.
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