November 9–16, 2000

cover story

Web-a-delphia: Music/Concerts

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C: Content
U: User friendliness
T: Timeliness
V: Visual Appeal

Philadelphia’s big concert promoters aren’t the most technically proficient lot. Electric Factory’s website is clunky, the Troc’s is spare and smaller clubs like The Khyber and The Upstage don’t even have web presences. It’s this void that makes unaffiliated events sites like Philly2Nite feasible. But there is a new breed of young, techno-savvy promoters who are making the most of the net. The people behind R5 Productions, Local 13 and even the folkies at the Tin Angel are making it easier than ever to get hooked up. And sites like Phillymusic.com, simpletone.com and Phillyjazz.org are run by devoted chroniclers, making volumes of information available for a click.

PhillyMusic.com

www.phillymusic.com

The 800-pound gorilla of local music websites. It’s got perhaps the most comprehensive listing of Philadelphia music in all genres out there, with links to bands, labels, studios and the like (though it’s stronger in instrumental categories than electronic). They’ve even got the beginnings of some editorial content. The site is fairly simple, especially since they’ve gotten rid of the infuriating frame architecture which, in the past, opened up each artist’s site.

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Philly2Nite

www.philly2nite.com

The 800-pound gorilla of events websites. The site is wayyyy over-busy, packed to the scroll-bar with lots of zine-style content and designed with an eye-sucking black background. The real values of this site are the events2nite button bar at the top and the guestlist/giveaway portion of the site. Click on a day and you can find out pretty much anything that’s going on musically in the city, which can actually be a bit overwhelming. The guestlist page is like a quick electronic fix: You enter your name and voila, you get into a philly2nite-sponsored event for free.

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Gig-a-Byte

www.gig-a-byte.com

Gig-A-Byte is a spare site featuring a searchable database of over 800 local venues and 900 bands (most local, a few national). One feature is the Review section, which is mostly anonymous flames of bad bands — even the Khyber gets insulted. Take comfort that the latest review was in August of 2000 — and that Gig-a-byte isn’t used often enough to be a real force.

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Electric Factory Concerts

www.electricfactory.com

Way too busy and loaded with graphics; whatever info you need you could probably find just as easily in your City Paper. The archive of concert photos is kinda nice, though.

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The Trocadero/Balcony

www.trocaderotheatre.com

Good no-frills site for a no-frills rock theater. The designers clearly don’t like fancy stuff, but they make sure you can find what you’re looking for sans headaches. (Take note, though: the Movie Monday page doesn’t give a schedule for what movies are playing. That’s on Shows & Events.)

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The Philadelphia Ambient Consortium (Music and Noise)

www.simpletone.com

The unwieldy organization name shrinks down acronymically to PAC (MAN), which is the place to go for information on Philadelphia’s quite large ambient, experimental and just plain out-there music scenes. The site’s sci-fi/video game graphics surely appeal to its post-ironic target audience. Links to performances (past and future), artists’ sites, broadcasts and countless other goodies you just have to poke around long enough to find make this site as wonderful and confounding as the music it’s dedicated to.

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The Blind TM Organization

www.tbtmo.com

The name of this label/collective is weird, but not as weird as its web presence, which is an electronic clubhouse for electronic freaks and geeks. A somewhat self-consciously complicated site, it’s home to abstract and minimal electronicats like Mall, Pacifica, Collette Carter and Tleilaxu. The site also keeps you posted on monthly Hologram events at La Tazza and features artist MP3s and links to their MP3.com pages.

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Groovelingo

Groovelingo.com

Ambitious, optimistic, simple but swank little magazine/ headquarters for the local indie music scene. Bands and listeners can dig the MP3s, articles and live show information found here, though the site sometimes goes a little while between updates (like everyone else, Webmaster Trishy has a day job).

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R5 Productions

www.r5productions.com

It’s not the most flashy, nor the most rigorously updated (although it’s relatively current), but DIY punk rockers R5 Productions’ site is one of the best Philly music websites because it almost single-handedly keeps the area’s all-ages punk/emo/hardcore scene abreast of what’s going on. With little more than an e-mailing list and web calendar, and without an abundance of advertising, R5’s shows at 4040 and the First Unitarian Church are consistently packed. An intro sound file — a sort of jet take-off followed by a robot-voiced "R5" — lets you, and everyone around you, know you’re checking out the latest punk rock action.

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PhillyJazz.org

www.phillyjazz.org

C voluminous non-profit site devoted to the city’s abundant jazz heritage and its ongoing legacy. Jan Klincewicz packs the pages full of links, including a fairly comprehensive local calendar. The main drawback is that it’s a pretty slow-loading, unwieldy site — the kind that’ll make an iMac whimper like a IIe on the edge of a nervous breakdown; otherwise, the info is worth the wait.

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OkayPlayer

www.okayplayer.com

The home of Philly hip-hop. What started as The Roots’ homepage has adopted national stars including Talib Kweli, D’Angelo and Common. You can check tour dates, buy merch and chat with fellow okayplayers. If you’re not sure whether you are an okayplayer, check the wtf (as in "what the f?") link to learn what the site is all about. The best reason to check in frequently is that the latest installment of Aaron McGruder’s wicked satiric comic The Boondocks is added every morning. Most artist links have Flash intros, streaming music or both (though you always have the option to skip).

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Sweetnighter Productions

home.att.net/~lankina/sweetnighter

This super-basic page exists for the sole purpose of listing the shows booked by the most adventurous jazz bookers in the city and is part of the mysteriously anonymous jazzmatazz site. When Sweetnighter is busy, the site’s packed with info. When Sweetnighter’s not, well, neither is the site.

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Fortissimo Folk Music

www.fortissimo.org

The link to most everything folk musical. Granted, it’s run by volunteers so there is often a great time lag on updates (Lionfish Coffeehouse is still up there), but there are working links to almost any concert series you can think of. For example, the link to the Upper Merion Concerts under the Stars (www.umconcerts.org) gets as much of next summer’s series as David Broida has penciled in to date. Fortissimo also hosts pages for a number of artists who might not otherwise be able to afford them.

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Philadelphia Folksong Society

www.pfs.org

Simple but elegant graphics and current information on concerts. With links to the annual festival (www.folkfest.org) and all the information on grants and how to get artists to play in your classroom (see the Odyssey link), it works very well.

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Serrano/Tin Angel

www.tinangel.com

After a somewhat dark but soothing opening graphic, the viewer is shown a quote from Voltaire — "all the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others" — followed by the venue’s eclectic offerings. The performance schedule, featuring mostly singer/songwriter types, is always up to date, and you can peruse Serrano’s menu online as well. Easy to navigate, all of the elements of Tin Angel’s well-constructed site are indeed a light to the others.

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Spaceboy Music

www.spaceboymusic.com

When you’re a brick and mortar record store specializing in current and underground releases and rare vinyl, how do you combat the overwhelming influence of online music shopping? You build a website that allows customers to browse through stock with the click of a mouse and ask questions at a virtual counter. Though record buyers will still have to go to the store to browse Spaceboy’s vast used-CD stock (and really recent stuff, like the new U2 and Radiohead), the site’s a nice way to make sure you don’t waste a trip to Fourth and South.

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Media Bureau Networks

www.mediabureau.com

Seems like MBN has been on the cutting edge of daily, streaming, web-only audio and visual programming for like three years now. Unfortunately, streaming, web-only content that’s more enjoyable than problematic still seems a couple of years away. MBN’s steadfast loyalty to Real Media Player, the most obnoxiously intrusive bit o’ software since AOL, is the main reason I don’t visit more often (they are looking into Quicktime streams, though, which would be a plus).

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Skoolhouse.com

Skoolhouse.com

A DJ networking hotspot where anyone from trance DJs to hip-hop DJs post their mixes and "skoolhousers" vote on them. Plus reviews of clubs, events and record stores around the globe.

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PhillySoulCollective

www.phillysoulcollective.com

An elegantly minimal flash site with information, events, DJ mixes, top tens and photos pertaining to Philly’s thriving underground deep house crew, the PhillySoulCollective (Carl Michaels, Sean Thomas, Willyum, Kevin V and friends). The site’s design is altered regularly.

C 3 U 4 T 4 V 5

Ovum Recordings

ovum-rec.com

Home of Philadelphia’s premier techno/house label, Ovum Records, this snazzy flash site keeps you updated on all the goo about Josh Wink, King Britt and other Ovum-related news. The site should be updated more frequently, yet its intricate minimalism and dashing sperm cells remain aesthetically pleasing.

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GFS Productions

gfsproductions.com

Constantly hit by jungle fans all over the world, this is the home of Philly’s drum ’n bass duo, GFS. Everything you wanna know in utter detail about what’s new with one of America’s leading jungle DJs, J. Smooth, and his other half, JG, including tourdates, releases, photos, history and more.

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Local 13

local13.com

C flash site that’s both euphoric and cartoony, this is Local 13’s guide to upcoming dance parties on the East Coast, plus Internet radio and a monstrous message board with ongoing topics relating to rave and club madness, primarily in the Philly area.

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Ravegear

ravegear.com

Home of Philly’s latest rave-boppers, with hard trance in your face and Peace Love Unity Respect (the four pillars of the rave community) in effect. Listings of all upcoming Ravegear events at The Warehouse, as well as glowsticks for sale, plus pictures and info on Ravegear DJs like Scorpion, Robbie Tronco, Hectic and more.

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—Brian Howard, Sean O’Neal, Michael Pelusi, Mary Armstrong, Debra Auspitz and Patrick Rapa

Government • City Guides • Education • Citizenship/Advocacy • Community Groups • Transportation • Media • Arts/Culture • Galleries/Museums • Research • Sports • Shopping • Movies • Music/Concerts • Radio