Given the vast array of sites, from the slick, professional graphics to the college kids who are, in the truest sense of the word, "amateur"-- Web publishing for the love of it--I could turn in a column consisting of nothing but URLs and names of sites for years and never touch on all there is. Already. As early in the day as it is. As time goes on, and the number of Web sites increases, there is no way that anyone will ever be able to look at them all. So I will concentrate on one or two in each issue of WWWiz, and provide a list of URLs for other sites I have visited, briefly commenting on each site.
For my first foray, I decided to look at the sites listed in the Hot List provided with CompuServe's Spry Mosaic Web browser. Why reinvent the wheel, thought I, when someone had obviously already researched the topic at hand? Little did I know. But onward!
Where else to start in the world of pop music but with the Grand Old Dinosaurs, those Grand Masters of the '60s "revolution," the Rolling Stones? The Stones' WWW pages are professionally maintained for them with constant updates and a wealth of material designed to interest any visitor from the accidental tourist to the dedicated fan.
Something I find revealing about Web page authors is the off-topic jump links--those links to pages that might at first seem skewed in purpose to that of the current site. On the Stones' home page, the first outside hotlink that appears is that for Hot Java, apparently maintained by personnel at Sun Computer Systems, which is a site dedicated to news of happenings in the digital world. The significance of this, if any, is beyond me. If a jump for the Great White Info Hunters of the Web was wanted, why not Yahoo? Overdone? Who knows? Perhaps the author just liked the site. You can do that kind of thing on the Web if you're moved to.
As is to be expected from such consummate professionals as Mick and the boys, the core content of the site is slick and well organized, but with a carefully crafted funky look and feel to it. There is the page called Surfin' with the Stones, for example, which presents the lyrics to Stones songs. At the time of my visit, "Sympathy for the Devil" was the only song set up, although other songs listed (and promised for the future thereby), included "Undercover," "Faraway Eyes," and "Get off My Cloud." The presentation of the lyrics includes hot links from single words in the lyrics to other entities on the Net. For example, "Please allow me to introduce myself..." provides a jump to a page of GIFs of Mick Jagger. A click on "taste" in "I'm a man of wealth and taste" drives a jump to a site called Find the Spam. "Kennedy's" jumps to the alt.conspiracy.jfk newsgroup. And so forth. I'd like to see where this concept goes once the generally available bandwidth reaches a reasonable level. Right now, as it can take a minute or more at 14.4 to load a 50k GIF, the whole works is far too slow to, for instance, make your own real-time video by selecting hot links to the accompaniment of an actual recording of the song. But who knows where it could lead?
Other features which could be interesting given bandwidth, are the gallery of Woody's photos and a collection of video streamers, which can be downloaded as Quick Time movies or, for the video-ly challenged among us (such as your humble author), as video boxes, each of which contained a few selected frames from a video which can be printed, cut out, and folded into video boxes.
For the sake of contrast, I decided to try another of the "comes with it" URLs...the one pointing to U2's WWW page, or so it says. The link, the way it's set up in Spry Mosaic, is a disappointment. It appears to be solely a listing of the lyrics to the songs on The Unforgettable Fire. This is not, however, the case. It is a back door into a U2 site maintained by Steve Thompkins, nicknamed "The Edge," a student at Butte College in Northern California. This site provides hotlinks to picture archives (there is a shot of the band from the "Boy" days--they look painfully young), discographies, biographies, and other fan info. You can, however, check out the U2 Web site in Europe.
In the process of messing around (a lot of what you find on the Web will come to you serendipitously), I discovered a site called The Mammoth Music Meta-List. This site, created by John Greiner and maintained by Vibe Magazine as part of VIBEonline, is a treasure trove for the music fan. It is a meta-list of links to all sorts of music-oriented sites, from local music info to Webzine sites. A couple of links deep, there is even an alphabetical listing of musicians with sites on the Web. From this listing, I jumped to a couple of other sites devoted to U2. While what I found promised hours of potential exploration and many gems, tiny and large, to be found, I could not find an official U2 site. All of the sites I found seemed to be created and maintained by devoted fans. Hint to their management: is there an opportunity here?
Some other promising sites:
The Kate Bush Musical Extravaganza
Rocktropolis
Rockument
Specs (per Mark):
41. Husband. Grandfather. Designer. Musician (sort of). Writer. Politically radical (libertarian). Presently employed as graphics supervisor at Otto Printing & Entertainment Graphics in Cincinnati, Ohio (well...Dayton, Kentucky). Has nine cats. [Nine cats?!! Egads! :) ]