Norah Jones has a lot of music from her live session at the House of Blues (Chicago) available for download. If you like her stuff, you may want to check this out before it goes away! (via Maria).

“For the entire year of 2003 (January 1st to December 31st) this page will feature one mp3 file (every day) to download. The content will be focused on musical pieces, but will also include spoken word.” The choice of music is, as Otis himself says, strange and obscure. But I am quite intrigued.
Talking about an entirely different kind of music, for the next few days, CD101.1 will stream 2003 of their most requested songs.
(links via mefi)

For those who live in the Bay area, Bayimproviser’s Calendar is a great resource for discovering independent live music acts. I got there via KZSU’s resource page which has all sorts of interesting links just waiting to be explored.

Talking of music: This application indexes mp3 samples from Philip Glass compositions. The interface takes some getting used to, but its cool enough to spend a little time learning it. (via Mefi)

I love good female singer-songwriters. Most of my friends tend to like edgier music or go for triphop, ambient, Jazz etc. I like that stuff too. But what moves me is strong vocalists, powerful lyrics and rock. I think I jive to the conviction in the voice, the sound of words rolling off rather than to the meaning per se. For the longest time, I was totally into Thick As A Brick before I checked out the lyrics. Felt a little foolish later.
Unfortunately, as singers get famous the edge seems to go off. For me, nothing that Tori Amos ever did afterwards beats the impact of ‘The Little Earthquakes’. I went to this Ani DiFranco concert in Veil last year and felt sad when she asked rather forlornly, ‘I haven’t been producing great stuff lately, have I’?
One musician whose voice, lyrics, quality of music actually got better with time is Marianne Faithful. Listening to ‘Vagabond Ways’ for the first time, I got goose pimples. You have to really really live and die and live again to be able to do a song like that.
The singer-songwriter that I have the most respect for is Sinead O’Connor (I am not talking about her politics). If she had done only ‘The Lion and the cobra’ and nothing else, I would still be in awe of her. Its a little uneven at places. But its a great album to drive to. I was browsing through the recently published ‘Q’s 100 best rock photographs’ (a small gallery from the collection is available here) and ran into Sinead O’Connor’s photograph there. It really captures her spirit. (I wish I could point to it somewhere on the net. But it doesnt appear to be available online). This was shot thankfully before the shaved head, but after she has caused such a huge uproar after tearing the pope’s photograph onstage. So, by then she knew all about the mortality of public adoration. It is a good photograph. Its a good book to browse through too – if you like rock photographs.
(By the way, I listen to Live365 for discovering new music. If you haven’t tried it before, you should check it out. The advertisements are annoying, but I don?t grudge them whatever little money they make through that)

I start feeling outdated whenever I start reading a music magazine or go to a music review site. I usually dont know many of the names. Anyway, I have been browsing through the net scouring for the ‘Best of 2001’ lists and ran into the Jumping Fences list of best music of 2001. While I dont know many of the names mentioned there either, they have apparently covered over 20 year end issues to music magazines to arrive at their list. Should have a fair crop of mainstream music. of course, they have their own list too …