Shane MacGowan is the face and name most often associated with The Pogues. Unraveling Shane's psyche would require a book-length study but the crux of his identity lies somewhere in that conflict between English experience and Irish heritage. The abbreviated story of his life starts with his birth in England, but he was raised in Ireland, and moved back to England some years later. He won a scholarship to the renowned Westminster School, where he was possibly enrolled alongside Thomas Dolby and other notable people. MacGowan was involved with drugs and publicized hooliganery before being in a band, the first of which was The Nipple Erectors in 1977. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Sep 13, 2009 - 87 comments

John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Hank Mobley. Lennie Tristano. Blue Note. Impulse. Riverside... In other words: jazz. Now three fans in Japan -- a country that has always appreciated America's gift to music even more than the US itself -- have created The Jazz Discography Project, a bare-bones, open-source, astonishingly exhaustive database of the hippest sounds on the planet. For aficionados, just reading an ASCII entry for long out-of-print stuff like A Message from Garcia, featuring a young and then-unknown musician named Bill Evans who would later reinvent his instrument, is thrilling.
posted by digaman on Mar 1, 2006 - 28 comments

The J.S. Bach Home Page.
posted by Gyan on Jun 26, 2004 - 9 comments

clarinet databases - what has 2691 composers under 2725 names, 6564 titles under 6684 names, comprised of 7669 publications and representing 8022 sets of instrumentation? the clarinet composition database. the site also features a searchable discography of important clarinet recordings.
posted by quonsar on Feb 19, 2004 - 3 comments