Top 8 Music blogs

Bob Stewart
8" x 6"
oil on wood, 2012

Top 8 Music Blogs 2011

I’d like to forward some thanks and credits to my virtual friends whose musical tastes and finds I’ve been following through their daily, weekly or bi-weekly updates. Thanks to my co-bloggers I’ve found more new music to listen to in a year’s time than ever before. There are exactly ten blogs that I follow, whose new posts I automatically receive links to the moment they are published. Two deal with art, eight with music. Eagerly I await their every new post they publish. Of course I know there are so many more to explore, the (blog) universe is ever expanding in an ever increasing rate. I would get lost in that universe if I were to search all over the place. So I stick with the eight music blogs. Some of these form a kind of core group of music exploration. They all have a similar attitude to what’s cool, they refer to each other, and on occasion they overlap one another.
I saw a spoof on blogger awards by comedian Tracy Ullman that gave me the idea to to make this blogger’s top eight.

1. Toys and Techniques—A very recognizable aesthetic that totally epitomizes the shifts in my musical choices  compared to last year’s Top 100. Reet Hendrikson and Bob Stewart, among others came directly from his blog into my Top 100 this year.
2. Holy Warbles—Maybe an indication that the blog universe may not longer accelerate the way it did as Holy Marbles was taken off line by their host Blogspot.com. I wrote about it a few weeks back. Their very last post about Kroncong music is only one of many in my list Holy Warbles attended me to.
3. Awesome tapes from Africa—Last year’s #1 blog also provided multiple musicians for my list this year. Most importantly Francis Bebey.
4. Friends and Wieners—From my old city of Columbus, they tackle both local and (inter)national underground music. Many musicians they discuss I’ve seen live, some I’ve met.
5. Bodega Pop—A collector after my own heart. I’ve come to re-appreciate East-Asian pop through it’s many new updates. Through them I found Phương Dung, Guitar Vader, and many many more.
6. Ghost Capitol—Somewhat similar as Holy Warbles once was. Their picks are great, to me they’re going to be the ideal blog to take Warbles’ place.
7. Does Your House Have Lions?—A blog dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, my #1 musician this year.
8. Soft Film—Last year’s #2 blog about Chinese singers and actresses went into retirement. I’ll miss it.

And since I have his portrait up top, a little bit more about the Scot Bob Stewart. This is what Toy’s and Techniques had to say about a record named The Art of the Psaltry from which Top 100 2011 #51, Moorish Dance is taken.

"Fascinating. The modern and medieval joust across the centuries as one of the most ancient musical instruments known is paired with a synthesizer. Bob Stewart is a self-taught musician, composer and writer of over forty books on the olde magick. On this album he plays the psaltery, a 73-stringed instrument played on a table, an instrument so old even King David is supposed to have played one".