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Cynicism as a weapon against stupidity

Music

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1.  

2. Universal disclaimer.

3. Jabberwocky ala Newton. This guy decided to write the famous poem on his Newton MessagePad using it's vocabulary recognizer only. Thus "Jabberwocky" became "tablespoons", "vorpal sword" - "Verbal sword", "galumphing" - "gambling" etc.

4. Musicians' jokes.

5. If you've never been to Renaissance Faire, then check out this link.

6. The Similarities Engine. It used to work like this: You tell it what kind of music do you like, and it sends you (over an e-mail) a list of some other recordings that you probably would like also. Now it's changed - it works on-line, and tells you the artists' (bands, musicians, composers etc.) names similar to the one you specified.

7. "Firefly" - On-Line Music Recommendation Service. The thing, similar to that at the previous link by what it is intended to do, but very different in implementation. It works online, not through e-mail. Also, it allows you not only to see the artists and albums that it can recommend to you, but also to read what other Firefly users wrote about them, to listen to excerpts from some albums etc. It also has many other interesting possibilities.

8. For any great city in the world, there are those who just cannot live without it, and those who just hate it, and those who do both.
   After visiting the site called "Snapshots of San Francisco" no one will doubt (if anybody ever did) that THAT city is one of those.

1. Is it odd that one of the most interesting personal pages around there is actually an anti-home page (made by one Tony Shepps)? His home pages' survey should be a required reading for those exposing themselves to the world through WWW (IMHO, of course).

2. A home page by certain Scott Christensen, whose style could force me to call him Kurt-Vonnegut-On-The-Web, had he not called himself differently here. Actually, if you liked Tony Shepps' page (see above), you'd certainly like the Christensen's one, too. And vice versa.

3. Lair and opinions of Jim Brennan, gentleman. Especially opinions.

4. Mark-the-New-Yorker has something to say about his painfully favourite city, and about a hundred other things as well.

5. Sunflower girl with hilarious command of language and quite labirynthine site which is capable of keeping browser's attention for a long time. Unfortunately, not everybody shares this opinion; or, maybe, fortunately, since otherwise she wouldn't give us this page. And don't forget to look at her disclaimer.

1. Classical Net Home Page. Excellent collection of information on composers, performers, available recordings etc. It's most interesting (for me) feature, however, is the mailing list that is maintained by it's author Dave Lampson. Everyday discussions on this list have become so much part of my life that I don't imagine

2. If you are into Mahler's music, you may find a lot on a 'The Music of Gustav Mahler on Record' Page, maintained by Deryk Barker, devoted Mahler devotee (heck, what a phrase... As an afterthought, I won't change it).

3. There are so little great music pages around here (I mean those both devoted (this word again) to great music and intelligently designed). I am happy to find any single one of those. And the next one on this list is Gentle Giant Home Page by Daniel Barrett.

4. The page titled "War and Romance", that is being run by two composers Peter deVocht and Stirling Newberry. Despite it's pretentious name, it's very much worth reading and listening to.
   They have a number of texts (or, maybe, I should rather say "discourses") on history of music, it's relation to literature, philosophy, along with Newberry's "flow-of-consiousness" essays inspired by some thoughts that once occured to him (or were overheard by).
   They "publish" their own musical works at their site in form of MIDI files. I liked S.N. music so much that I even recorded those MIDIs from my SoundBlaster onto a cassette, although it (MIDI) must be nothing compared to the human performance on a real ("live") instruments, which will, hopefully, appear some time.

   By the way

      Some people may find it strange to see Classical and Rock links sitting happily side by side on the same page. You know, they joke that the word combination "rock music" is an oxymoron. I tend to agree with this for most of the rock output today (and yesterday). Still, this field did produce some outstanding music by any standards.
      If you'll have a look at the total Classical output for the last 300 years, you'll see that probably only one music-making person in a hundred or two is remembered now.
      The same holds true for any kind of music.
      Actually, IMHO, the concept of a "kind of music" shouldn't correspond to a primitive classification like "Classical", "Jazz", "Rock" etc. There really are only two kinds: Great music, for those who are not too lazy to perceive it; and so called "Popular Music" for the rest of us. (The word "popular" is, unfortunately, spoiled by this word combination, but what can you do...)
      A hundred years ago the "popular" music borrowed the form of "classical", 60-80 years ago - the form of "jazz"; now it mostly looks like "rock". This situation is actually a blessing now for "classical" and "jazz" traditions - not being "in vogue" does good for an art.
      Although there are many cries about "death" of classical or jazz music, this is not true. The number of real music lovers is not less; it's just a fashion shift that moved "pop" listeners away - and let they go!
      (Some people may find similarity here with what Russian author Bulat Okudzhava told about poetry).

      In a word, it doesn't matter how it is called. The only thing that matters is whether it's that singularly spirited thing called art. And the most amazing fact about the art is that it can grow from (virtually) any dirt.

1. Simon Hawkin's page. Big collection of links to various places of interest.

2. Sergey Fomel's collection of Russian anecdotes. You may also want to have a look at his home page.

3. One more collection of anecdotes (updated daily) may be found on the great server of Kulichki. It is famous not only for this, though.

4. FizTech-abroad list with more than 400 names, maintained by Prof. Alexander Kaplan at Johns Hopkins University , USA.

5. "N.Zh.M.D." - one of the most fascinating among Russian (or any) sites, maintained by one Art. Lebedev. You might want to start directly with his Russian page, and then explore other parts. This enormously talented guy, as it happens, owns the Web design studio called simply "Web Design" (and he even copyrighted that name, so legally he is the only Web Designer in Russia :-) ). By the way, if you read HTML, try to "View Source" of some of his pages - it's witty writing, too! And he even has some comments exclusively for the benefit of such snoopers :-) .
     So you may be sure that I like him not only for the fact that he gave me this "bumper-sticker" award:
   
   

6. Inner Circle Records. The company that specializes in Russian "audio-books" (kind of) for children. The books are narrated by such people like Alisa Freindlich, Sergey Yurski, Korney Chukovsky (да, да, сам Чуковский) etc.

   Their site is not fully developed yet, but some information (on some CDs' programs, looks and ordering) is already available.

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