I received a number of e-mails regarding my last editorial “update” post. Some of you inquired with various levels of concern for my health, sanity, and the state of my marriage. Thanks for your concerns but I assure you that all three are doing just fine. Well…My wife says my sanity is debatable but everything else is cool. I also want to assure everyone that there will be no discernible change in Free Albums Galore. I will continue to provide an album per day as promised when I took over this blog from Luke. If I ever get to the position of not being able to maintain this site, I will pass the baton to someone else as Luke did to me. Free Albums Galore is in for the long haul.

Some people have offered to help me out with the reviewing. I considered that at times but I like the idea of Free Albums Galore being a collection of one person’s opinion. It provides a consistency in criticism. So this site will for better or worse continue as a one man band.

Also thanks to all the bloggers who added me to their blogrolls and said nice things about me…Even the blogger that favorably reviewed my site then warned people that some of the music sounded opposite to how I described it. Hey! I call them as I hear them!

When I took over Free Albums Galore from Luke in 2006, I was recently retired. Since then I landed the proverbial offer-I-can’t-refuse and am now a full-time worker again. This delegates my blogging time to weekends when I search for albums and write up enough posts to fill the week. This of course dominates my weekends and is more than a little irritating to my wife who wonders why I can’t be like a regular guy and just go out and have an affair. Nonetheless I struggle on and continue to bring good quality free and legal albums to the music hungry world…Which is an overly verbal way of explaining why I was shocked when I looked at the album recommendations and found 220 albums I haven’t yet listened to! So if you see a post on an album and wonder “Didn’t I tell him about that a year ago?”, that’s why.

But keep them coming. Email me at freealbumsgalore@yahoo.com.

A caution. If your album is only posted on a share site like Rapidshare, I’m not likely to bother with it. Share sites are not really permanent hostings and usually means it is a “limited-time offer” which I don’t feature either. I have made exceptions like when the artists assures me it will be long-term and that it is actually their album to offer as free, but usually I pass them up.

Here’s a few extra treats for you. Composer Oleg Paiderdin offers quite a few of his compositions on his web site. They tend to be under 10 minutes and lean toward the use of woodwinds rather heavily. Some of the reviewers compare his composition to Arvo Part and Xenakis which is good company indeed.

I am looking forward to the day WFMU’s Free Music Archive kicks off their library and wows us with a vast collection of independent music and local or forgotten artists. Until then, you will still find a lot of interesting music including live studio recordings from the very strange radio station.

I haven’t kept up my music resource page so I urge you to check out these music blogs that review free albums: Phlow, Catching The Waves, and Musikrebell. These are three of the newest and best reviewers of free music on the internet.

I also have not ended with a music video for a while, so here’s one of my favorites. It’s a nice hair metal cover of a classic Del Shannon song with Del and Donny Osmond in cameos. The dinosaurs are pretty rad too! I think I used to jam with the bass player in a bar in Pacoima…

Violinist Lorenza Borrani and pianist Matteo Fossi play two great sonatas of the Romantic period. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata no.10 op.96 for violin and piano is a fairly gentle work for the often tumultuous composer although it is not totally without its deep and sorrowful moments. It is certainly full of melodic beauty and rich harmonies. Robert Schumann’s Sonata in D minor n. 2 op. 121 for violin and piano is a tour de force that revels in its minor key tension. Both works are exemplary examples of the violin and piano sonata and the two musicians give them a fine performance.

The two sonatas are available from Musikethos in 160kbps MP3.

Download

A few people asked why I do not feature free albums that require registration. This is because I do not really consider it a free album. You are essentially paying with your privacy. The information can be used, and is used, to create a mailing list, marketing purposes, or to allow the artists to estimate his customer base. There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, it is a perfectly acceptable method to increase your market, whether you are an artist, a record label or any type of business. But you are giving something of value for the product.

But, as I said, I have no problem with it. In fact, especially with so many artists and record companies looking for new market strategies, there is an increase in the amount of “free” online albums available for only an email address or some other form of identity. I thought I would mention some of the current ones and you can use your own judgment.

West coast punk stalwarts Pennywise are debuting their new album by offering it for free from their Myspace page. You must be a member of Myspace and add Textango as a friend. The specific instructions are available from the page. I haven’t tried it..probably won’t…but Pennywise is one of the better hardcore punk groups to come out of the California scene. So if you are into the scene, it might be worth it. Caveat emptor.

One “subscription needed” freebie I can highly recommend is from the Classical record label Chandos. By simply subscribing to their newsletter you can download a free full-length MP3 album each month. The album for March is An Introduction To Edward Elgar featuring fine performances of Elgar’s compositions including “Pomp and Circumstances”and the “Enigma Variations”. Next month’s album will feature works by Prokofiev. I consider this the music deal of the internet. I’m also looking forward to the newsletter although I’ve yet to receive it.

Aside from the thousands of independent music treasures they regularly offer, eMusic’s paid subscribers are often treated to free offerings ranging from record label samplers to full albums by unknown but talented artists. I’ve been told that non-subscribers can gain access to these albums but my attempt on another computer failed to verify this. Nonetheless, I’ve been a happy eMusic subscriber for six years so it might be worth the bucks to subscribe if you are a music fanatic like me.

Ex-Boo Radley songwriter Martin Carr has his sixth Bravecaptain album, Distractions available by subscribing to his newsletter. Haven’t tried it but a number of my readers have recommended it. So give it a go if you are so inclined.

A while back I was lucky enough to download the six track EP Stop Drop and Roll by Foxboro Hot Tubs which went on their site for three days then disappeared. It is a delicious throwback to the days of 60s garage bands. It appears that Foxboro Hot Tubs may actually be Green Day. Certainly if the vocalist isn’t Billy Joe Armstrong, he is doing a hell of an impersonation. You can still get one MP3 trackoff the album from the web site but you’ll have to wait for the full length (12 track) CD for the rest. My guess is that it will be well worth the wait.

And while I’m at it, thanks for all your recommendations. Feel free to email me about good free and legal albums, yours or someone else’s, but please understand that I can’t reply to every single e-mail (gotta work sometimes) and I can’t feature every single album. In fact, only about 10 to 20% of the albums I listen to make it to the blog. Nonetheless, I do find time to listen to every single recommendation (eventually!) and appreciate all comments and recs.

It’s time to clean up the links again. Those pesky webmasters keep changing the urls so I have to keep relinking. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it. All in an attempt to offer the most free and legal online albums I can. So now all the links to active albums are fresh and the albums that are no longer available are…duh!…marked No longer available. So here is the count as we edge on closer to one thousand featured albums…

996 featured albums

minus…

73 albums that are no longer available

leaving…

923 free and legal albums!

Now go fill up your hard drive. And remember to support the artists by buying their CDs or other merchandise, going to their concerts, sending them a donation, or, at the least, telling them how much your appreciate their music.

I have received several questions on whether I would be featuring Radiohead’s album In Rainbow. I decided not to for two reasons…

1) Everybody already knows about it. The album has been written up from The New York Times to Popular Mechanics (I’m joking about Popular Mechanics…I think). Radiohead certainly does not need a little blog like mine to promote their record. But I do appreciate their help in unintentionally promoting Free Albums Galore. Several papers have mentioned my site in the same article thus introducing many readers to not only my blog but to lots of quality musicians who are not in the enviable position of Radiohead but still deserving of an audience. The new visitors aren’t just browsing and leaving. They’re telling me that they are downloading class acts like Billie The Vision and The Dancers, Sun Zoo, and 3Sacchetti and loving it.

2) It isn’t really a free album. You are expected to pay something even though I guess you can get away with paying nothing. But basically it is an honor system. I actually love the idea. I understand that the average paid amount was four British pounds. With over 1 million downloads, that puts a hefty amount of change in Radiohead’s purse. Without taking anything away from Radiohead, I hope this monetary gratitude extends to the lesser known artists that are featured on this site and the listeners support the artists by buying their CDs, their T-shirts, or sending a donation as some politely ask…maybe even if they don’t ask. This is a way to ensure that good quality independent music flourishes. And frankly, they could use the bucks a lot more than Radiohead.

The reactions have been fascinating. Trent Reznor has all but stated he will be handling the next Nine Inch Nails album in a similar fashion. He has already placed Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggytardust!, of which he produced, for sale or non-sale in the same style. The Charlatans UK have announced their next album will be totally free when released in early 2008. You can get the first track here. But the cracks in the pavement have been noticeable for a while. Free remix collections sanctioned by the artists aren’t all that rare anymore (more about that in my next post) and other name artists like Smashing Pumpkins, The Crimea, Harvey Danger, and The Butthole Surfers have waded into the free and legal waters in the past.

All of this has encouraged the cries of the end of the RIAA and the major music moguls. I disagee. The corporate music scenario will still be viable for mass produced acts like Britney Spears and Beyonce, However it will no longer be the only model and it will no longer be “The only game in town”. Music marketing is entering a turbulent and exciting era. Radiohead has shown that they can go on their own with new styles of marketing and succeed. Other big name bands will and are following suit. All this opens the door to the independent artist who will no longer be corralled into courting the corporations to make a comfortable living. Corporate music and independent or internet music marketing will exist side by side giving creative artists a bigger choice in how they present their music. The suits won’t like being in total control any more but that’s the way it is.

Or am I just a dreamer? Wait and see.

I just completed my semi-annual link cleansing marathon. All links to featured albums were inspected, cleaned and given the Free Albums Galore seal of approval. Lots of albums links that were not working are now fine. If you previously couldn’t download an album you might want to check it again. It would be nice if the artists and labels would tell me when they change the URLs but I’m not complaining. It keeps my life interesting. I also marked the dead links as “No longer available”. The amount of dead links increased mainly due to the demise of Disfish.

Here is the tally…

825 featured albums…

minus 51 albums that are no longer available…

equals…

774 available albums!

Not bad, huh?

The Oct. 7th Sunday Times (UK) published an article titled “The day the music industry died”. It is an interesting look at why major artists are giving away their music and why the record industry is headed downhill.

But take a look an this excerpt…

The scale of this charitable epidemic can be measured by a quick browse of the Free Albums Galore blog that lists more than 800 albums by a range of artists – from the Beastie Boys to some unsigned metal bands – all of which are free to download.

Thanks, Times, for the mention. This explains why my visitation numbers, which are already in four digits, tripled today.

And thanks to Daleyblog for pointing the article out to me.

I was sad to discover that Disfish, the innovative non-DRM music distributor, has closed its web site. The given reason was because the donation model was not successful enough to keep the site going. Just another warning about how important it is to support the artists and their music. If you are one of the Disfish artists whose albums were featured on Free Albums Galore and you have moved to another site, please let me know so I can update it.

But there’s good news too. Netlabels and music blogs continue to increase. I revamped the resource page to show a bunch of new sites, all offering free and legal music. Check it out.

That’s it. August was a tough month.

It’s been a while since I did an update.

First, I should publicly answer the most common question I get in my email; “Is it ok to recommend my own album?”. The answer is yes but please remember that I only feature about 10 to 20 percent of what I listen to. So there is a good chance I will not write up your album. If I do write it up, it may not show for a while since I have a huge backlog of free and legal albums in the wings. Still, some of the best albums I received were recommendations from readers and some by the actual artists. So by all means, please send those links to my email

Second, I love comments but please remember they are moderated so they do not show up immediately. There should be a warning on this when you submit your comment but I’ve been told there isn’t. Another thing to fix if I ever go to my own web site instead of a blog.

Speaking of self-recommendations, Ross Mohn kindly informed me of his own internet project. The Digital Archive Streamer connects to a number of internet music archives and allows the listener to hear a stream of music based on the keywords he places in the search. The archives are primarily university based and mostly American traditional (Bluegrass, Appalachian, Native American, etc). He’s adding new archives regularly. It’s hard to find specific things but a search for “blues” brought out a stream of very interesting old field recordings and 78s. Check it out and have fun.

The Folkways Collection is my choice for best podcast on the internet. It consists of 24 one hour radio broadcasts on the history and music of the Smithsonian Folkways collection and traditional American music. It is well worth the listen.

Those who are not into folk music may find TGR’s Free Metal Albums more to their liking. These are all free and legal albums. Heavy Metal, Death Metal, Doom Metal, Avant Garde Metal… If it’s metal you’ll find it here. Definitely a site to bookmark for the metal freaks.

BlocSonic and its NetBloc series is still going strong. I featured the first volume of NetBloc but now there are six volumes of this excellent monthly overview of the independent music scene. You can pick up volume 6 and the previous albums. Anyone who is at all interested in internet music must give BlocSonic a regular visit

Finally, the video of the month. The Zimmers may be the oldest rock band in the world .Their lead singer is 90 years old and their oldest member is the amazing Buster Martins who gained some fame when the 100 year old man fought off three teenage muggers single-handed. They recently recorded an album and went on tour to educate people to the plight of senior citizens in Great Britain. You can catch their video of The Who’s “My Generation here.

Yes, I know I’m a little late for Spring Cleaning. It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it.

I have just gone through every album link on Free Albums Galore. I checked them, fixed them, updated information where necessary, re-checked them, and when all else failed, marked the dead links as not available. Many so-called dead links simply needed to be redirected so if you recently tried to download an album and failed, try again. It will probably work this time. I’m amazed at how many of these albums are still alive and kicking.

Here’s the count…

681 featured albums.
Minus 21 no longer available…equaling…

660 free and legal albums STILL AVAILABLE!!!

Go download them all and enjoy!

I am still getting lots of good recommendations from you readers. I am getting so many that it is hard to keep up . Site visitation has tripled since the first of the year and continues to increase! What that means to me is more people are getting turned on by online independent music and enjoying a world far away from the antiseptic sounds of commercial radio and corporate music. Feel free to e-mail me if you want to recommend an album or just say hi. And if you leave a comment, please remember that all comments are moderated so they won’t show up immediately.

Thanks goes out to Rachael Smithey of About.com for including Free Albums Galore in her list of Top 10 Free Music Downloads Sites. I must admit it feels a little weird to be mentioned along with Amazon, KCRW, and NPR but way cool!

The award for first newpaper to mention Free Albums Galore goes to The Independent for the article titled “Why is the music industry dishing out free downloads?”.

David Ace Dean has some nice tunes on his Myspace page. There is a neat 80s electropop thing going but with some modern indie rock sensibilities. Check it out.

Celtic music fans will enjoy record label Green Linnet’s web page and their offer of one free MP3 a week from their extensive catalog.

I just received news of the death of jazz legend Andrew Hill. He was one of the last really great pianists in modern jazz as he bridged a gap between post-bop and the jazz avant-garde. You can hear some fine excerpts of his artistry at his web site.

Lastly, test your ability to identity 10 classic metal bands in E.W’s “Name That Hair Metal Band” Photo Quiz. I got only four right but I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud!

I am reminded about a convenience store’s radio ad in which they boast “Too much good stuff”. That’s the way I feel this month. So let’s just get to the good stuff.

BlocSonic’s first compilation of exceptional netlabel music was favorably reviewed by me and has met with praise by practically every music blog and site that mentioned it. Volume Two of NetBloc is now available and continues to meet the high standards set by the first volume of this monthly series. You can download it here.

Likewise, Silent Ballet continues its own look at independence artists. While The first two collections surveyed post-rock music, Volume three looks at experimental sounds. Download it here.

Edie Brickell offers a generous amount of free tracks, all in her unique but casual voice.

Those who are into experimental music will enjoy these single file MP3s of live performances by Chinese sound artist and improviser Yan Jun.

One of my favorite independent labels for jazz is Palmetto Records. You can get several Sample MP3s from jazz artists Marty Ehrlich, Ben Allison, Javon Jackson and others.

I’ve mentioned Last.fm before but now the music networking web site is offering tons of full tracks for free legal downloading. That includes entire albums, many of them already featured on Free Albums Galore. I don’t think you need to register to download the music. (If it is otherwise, I would appreciate being corrected). While you have to hunt around a little to find them, there is a chart of the most popular free downloads. Especially check out the free tracks by the excellent Billie The Vision & The Dancers. I’ll have a lot more to say about them very soon.

Some day I might do a Free Videos Galore and this hour long documentary would definitely be on it. Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision is a fascinating look at author Hunter S. Thompson and his unique brand of journalism. It is a must -see.

Finally, the video of the month. Barry White is given the ultimate cover treatment by the fab duo, Gollum and Smeagol.

Here’s a special something from the people at Stone’s Throw. DJ and producer Peanut Butter Wolf made a mixtape for Valentine’s Day that was originally broadcasted on Tokyo’s J Wave radio station. It’s a sexy mix of romantic and soulful music from heavyweights like Marvin Gaye, Stereolab, Archie Bell & The Dells, and many others. It is only available through Valentine’s Day so grab it up quick. Here’s the link

Some of you may also like the Chrome Children Compilation Vol. 2 which is available for free downloading for a limited time. It’s not my cup of tea but I’m sure some of you may dig it.

The new year has so far been rather uneventful which is probably a good thing. I’m currently putting together a “Best of Free Albums Galore”. With five hundred plus free albums, I decided it might be nice to see a selection of what I consider to be the top 20 or 30 albums. Look for it some time in February. The selections will be based on my own subjective whims but I would love to hear from you readers on what you consider the best albums to be since the beginning of this humble blog. If I hear from enough of you I might put together a readers’ best list.

The biggest news this year in internet music may be the return of the 365 Days Project. WFMU with the help of the original curator Otis Fodder has revived this interesting project that originally debuted in 2003 with a rare and unique MP3 every day for the entire year. You can find the new 2007 version of The 365 Days Project here. If you’re interested, Ubuweb maintains an archive for the original 365 days project of 2003.

From the new project, and just in time for my yearly (and already doomed) resolution to exercise more, comes this 90 day wonder of an album, Armed Forces Workout. Forget that wimpy Richard Simmons and over-the-hill Jack LaLanne. Master Gunnery Sergeant Bill Dower yells at you throughout this fun workout guaranteed to get you ready to storm the barricades. Good choice of tunes too! I couldn’t quite bring myself to make this goodie a featured album so I offer it as a bonus.

It’s been a while since I’ve offered a video bonus. I missed it last month so here are two awesome videos of AC/DC with Bon Scott from Colchester, England , October 28th, 1979 doing “Bad Boy Boogie” and “Rocker”. It’s only Rock ‘N Roll but I like It!

Well, I have one more album to post for the year of 2006. This makes an entire year that I have been running Free Albums Galore. I hope you enjoyed the albums and discovered a lot of great music. I worried about finding enough good quality free and legal music to last a year and here I am, sitting with a backlog of enough album posts to cover the next two months! If you want to recommend an album or just want to say hi, send me an e-mail.

Have a Happy New Years.

The punk Christmas compilation must have scared you! All of a sudden I received a few good recommendations for online christmas albums. I still have a room for a few more. If you know any, leave a comment. But hurry! Only a few more shopping days before Christmas.

As much as I hate to say anything nice about AOL, their listening party is a great way to check out some of the more commercial CDs. Up to 10 full albums are available for streaming each week. Most of it is too commercial for my taste, but I must admit the new Gwen Stefani album is smokin’!

Neil Young’s Living With War was a breath of fresh air in these politically restrictive times. Looks like he’s not quite done yet. His web site links to 1005 protest songs from the internet. If that’s not enough, you can also watch 130 protest videos.

The readers of this blog came through when I complained about the lack of free and legal hip-hop, so here’s your chance to wow me again. The holiday season is around the bend but I can’t find any decent free, legal, and online Christmas albums. If you know any, leave a comment or e-mail me. Hannukah or Kwanza albums gets extra credit!

In the meantime check out the blues hound’s CD picks, part one and part two for the hippest Christmas albums of all time. It was written in 2005 but is still timely. Good Christmas music never goes out of date. All of them are worth the bucks. As for me. I’m saving my pennies for A John Water’s Christmas.

The Avant Garde Project does an admirable job finding out of print 20th century avant garde recordings. Unfortunately they are only available in FLAC format so the downloads are huge. You’ll find some exceptional works by important composers including Harry Partch, Morton Subotnick, Luciano Berio, and John Cage.

Video bonus: Comedian Rick Miller impersonates “25 of the most annoying voices in the music industry” singing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Some of them don’t quite work but others are awesome. I especially like his versions of Mick Jagger, Neil Diamond, Beck, and Barney the Dinosaur.

I just finished cleaning up all the links to albums on Free Albums Galore from day one to the present. As of now, all album links are either working or marked as “No longer available”. Most of the non-working links, which there were few, simply needed to be redirected so if you previously couldn’t connect to a web site to download an album you might want to check it again. What I found amazing is that out of 475 albums only about a dozen are no longer available! If you do find an album with a non-working link please let me know and I will fix it. I still appreciate album recommendations, so e-mail me.

I’ve noticed a lot of duplicate comments lately. Please be aware that I moderate all comments. Your comments are very welcomed but they will not be visible immediately. Unfortunately there’s enough spam and basic wierdness to make this necessary. Usually all comments are visible a few hours of receipt.

After a bit of a hiatus, it appears that Oddio Overplay may be coming back to life. Take a look at Bloggio Oddio to see what Katya Oddio and her co-horts are up to. Katya has also has put together a very nice search engine for free online music. It searches 25 excellent music blogs. Yes, I’m one of them! Glad to see you back, Katya!

I can never find enough reggae, ska and hip-hop. It’s kind of sad how little legally free music of these genres is available. So credit goes to Bagheera in unearthing two record labels with plenty of MP3s to listen to. Moon Ska has lots of Ska MP3 while Sphere of Hip Hop does the same in its chosen genre. I haven’t listen to much at either site but what I’ve heard sounds pretty good.

Britney. is the new kid on the block. The readers recommend and vote on all types of free music on the web. It’s brand new so there isn’t much yet but I predict that will change. Anyone can browse the offerings and vote on them but if you want to submit sites you will need to register.

Finally. the video of the month. Forget Reich, Riley, and Glass. For the ultimate in minimalist music, I bring you…Kitten Composer! As you can see for yourself, KC’s precocious talents may develop into a career in motion picture soundtracks.

And as a bonus, Krystian Dell clued me in on this rather astounding video of Roy Smeck playing “Tiger Rag” on the ukuele.

That should keep you busy!

Lots of new links and pages to peruse and legally leech from…

The Piano Society recently completed a make-over of their site. I am in the process of correcting the links on works that have previously been featured on this blog. You can be sure I’ll be featuring a lot more. The new site is a little tricky to navigate but once you figure it out you will find plenty of great classical piano music from Scarlatti to Rzewski (and a few new guys like Bach, Beethoven and Mozart).

Juliana Hatfield is a known entity in the world of country music and alt-country. In an attempt to come to terms with the world of online music and P2Ps, she is trying an interesting experiment. She has made available a truckload of tracks on an “honor system”. Download what you like but send her a payment of your choice for the tunes. She suggests $.99 per track but grudgingly admits some will pay less. Other artists from other medias have tried this with little success. Stephen King comes to mind. But Ms. Hatfield should be given credit for having the courage to try new ways to promote her music and I wish her well. Check it out but remember, this isn’t free music. If you like the music, support the artist as I always say.

Taylor Brook’s music is free. He (She?) offers several original compositions . Click on “Recordings”. These are well crafted contemporary chamber works. I especially like the pieces for solo guitar.

Some of the older readers might remember Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. They play an entertaining hybrid of blues/rock and, along with Bruce Springsteen, constitute a part of the Jersey Shore sound. Check out their generous offerings of free music.

For classical music, it doesn’t get any better than the offerings at the web site for Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The museum offers both podcasts and individual tracks from their chamber concert series. I’ll be featuring some of the longer individual works eventually but the 45 minute podcasts are exquisite!

Finally, the official music video of the month! I bet you never heard Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor played like this!

Does anyone out there bother with Myspace for music? It seems anyone that can carry a tune pushes their music on Myspace. Unfortunately it hardly ever pans out to entire albums which is my interest. Even worse, most of the time the download option doesn’t work and streaming is unreliable. More and more artists, both amateur and professional, are relying on Myspace rather than bothering with an actual web site or even a decent blog. I find that to be unfortunate. But maybe some of you have a different spin on it.

I received an e-mail from Stumble Upon the other day and this blog is now on the SU list. Thanks to whoever notified them. I never heard of the site before and must say it is pretty cool. All you internet addicts go check it out.

Speaking of cool sites, if you haven’t hear of Last.fm and you are even halfway the music freak I am, you need to check it out too. Last.fm is a great music community site. It will track and chart the music you listen to and allow you to find people with simlar tastes. It’s a little hard to explain in this small column so why don’t you read Blues Hound’s more detailed article on Last.fm. Or you can take a look at my…er..Blues Hound’s Last.fm page and see what he’s (I’m?) listening to right now.

OK, now for some video alerts.

I’m not that big a J-Pop fan although I do find the terminally cute Ayumi Hamasaki quite alluring . However this collection of six Japanese music videos from Stylus range from laughingly silly to entertainingly scary. The best of the bunch is “Hebi Ichigo” by Kana. it is musically and visually a creepy but outstanding bit of pop-art. Edit: None of these J-pop videos are available now. One of the first casualties of the Youtube / Google merger was the removal of over 30,000 Japanese music videos. Welcome to the real world, GooTube!

Lastly, make sure you download Weird Al Yankovic’s ironically titled Don’t Download This Song. Gotta love a song that mentions both Lars Ulrich and Tommy Chong. You can see the video at the official site.

Yes, I’m in a silly mood tonight.

Are you all surviving the heat? Here in the Southwest U.S, we’re breaking our already sweltering records. Last week the temperature hit 122F! At 122F, you don’t bother to cook on a stove. You just throw the steak on the sidewalk and turn it over after 5 minutes for medium rare. Hope everybody is managing and make sure you go out and see An Inconvenient Truth.

Here’s a couple of new additions to the resource page worth an extra mention. Public Domain 4U has an impressive collection of downloadable tracks, all from old 78s and, as the title suggests, in the public domain. The music is pre-1940s and includes some classic blues, jazz, and big band.

Don Robertson, the person behind Dovesong Foundation, has some fairly controversial ideas regarding music. He divides all music in “positive” and “negative” camps. Positive means music that has emotional and spiritual benefits to the listeners. His ideas can be read in his online book, Music Through The Centuries. Whatever you think of his theories, his site has an excellent collection of classical, gospel, world, and even some early jazz and pop music. Most of it is from early recordings and in the public domain. You can find this music treasury here.

As promised, I just added the Other Music Sources page. It will be a “catch-all” page for music links and sources not covered on the Free Albums Galore main page. I hope you will find it helpful.

I have always considered the web sites and blogs that offer links to free and legal online music to be a community. Sites like EC Brown, Oddio Overplay, and, of course, Free Albums Galore have a main purpose in educating about online, independent artists that may be overlooked otherwise. I am currently in the process of writing a new page to my site that will list the best of these sites. Hopefully, it will be up soon.

Reloda will certainly be on it. Reloda is a relatively new web site that is similar to Free Albums Galore in featuring full online albums but tends to be primarily rock and electronic. However, he did beat me to those great Charlie Hunter links and there are some nice Jeremy Pelt jazz albums of which I also will be featuring soon. Amazingly, he manages to link an average of 3-4 albums a day! There is some overlap in our links but as I said, we’re a community not competitors. The more exposure for these artists, the better. Check it out.

My Old Kentucky Blog shared a number of covers by Elliott Smith mainly from live tapes. I’m an Elliott Smith fan but I find most of these tracks to be misses rather than hits. If you are an Elliott Smith fan you should check them out anyways.