The Pancake City Guide To Indie Music

If "Even Jesus Hates Creed" T-shirts make you laugh, but you would feel uncomfortable talking to the music-hipster wearing the shirt, this guide is for you.

There are literally hundreds of wonderful bands that are under the mass media radar. These bands are on independent labels who can afford small promotional campaigns for them at best.

Most of these groups make their livings playing small- to mid-sized venues and catering to devoted groups of fans. It used to be difficult to hear about these bands. For me, it was a mix of not knowing where to start and my (mostly false) perception that people who liked obscure bands were music snobs, clones of Jack Black's character in High Fidelity. I was already a comedy snob and movie snob at the time, and didn't want to waste my third snobbery on music. (We all get three snobs. Dem's the rules. If you have any complaints, send them to LOL CATZ)

What if I wanted to become a cheese snob? Or a robot snob? I didn't want to waste my last snob. The future is a mysterious place, even if you are from the future, because then you wonder where the glee-glerp is your time machine and why do these people keep showing your photo on tabloids shaking the hand of Elvis?

Tangent. Sorry. My worries of succumbing to music snobbery were over-rated. Contrary to what I expected, one doesn't have to throw the Baby Got Back out with the bathwater. More important, the maturing of podcasts and the Internet has made it a lot easier to stick one's toe into a different music world and hear songs that, and here I guess I am being a music snob, are better than 95% of what you could hope to hear on the radio.

It helps to know where to look though. Without further ado, here are some good places to start.


Pancake City Guide To Indie Music

1. Internet Radio

a. Pandora--The best place to start for anyone first exploring the world of indie label music. At Pandora, you type in the name of a band you currently like, and it streams full-length songs from bands with similar music qualities. You can further refine the music you hear by voting "Yay/Nay" for each song, save your stations, and listen to stations from other members.

b. MPR: Online Radio--If you have half-an-hour free, load MPR's stream and let it play as you work. Their song selection is excellent, and while you may not like every song, you won't have to wait long to find a gem.

c. NPR's All Songs Considered--Bob Bollen does a good job sorting through the hundreds of CDs he gets a week and presenting some of the more interesting choices to listeners. You can subscribe to the podcast or listen online. Sometimes the show can't get full play rights on the podcast and you can only listen to whole versions of the song online.


2. Songs of the Day
MP3s for free. You can subscribe to these podcasts on ITunes or directly from the website. I recommend all of these highly.

a. Salon.com: Song of the Day. Many good selections with only a rare dud.

b. MPR: The Current Song of the Day. This newish podcast is slightly less mainstream than Salon.com's, but I like it as much.

c. KCRW's Today's Top Tune.

d. KEXP Song of the Day.


3. Free downloads hubs
I haven't explored this area much as I get enough new music from the above sources and EMusic. Let me know if you have other recommendations.

a. Music.download.com--CNET's music download site has grown greatly in the past year. They have good relationships with most major and independent labels, offer a large catalog of songs to stream for free and have a growing number of free downloads to boot.

Unfortunately, their music is mostly indexed by category and thus more difficult to find music you'll like than sites like Netflix, Emusic, and Amazon that use social networking software to filter the near-overwhelming amount of songs to choose from.


4. Pay sites
Obviously, the reason bands release MP3s for free is to get new fans who may want to buy more of their work. I won't repeat my whole rave for EMusic, but it's the only pay-site I use. It's cheap, DRM-free, and has a wide selection of independent label music.

Subscription sites like Rhapsody may be a good deal, where you have to stay subscribed to continue to access the music but can download all you want, but I can't personally vouch for the site. (Click for 50 free Emusic downloads)


5. Twelve Bands To Look Into
Andrew Bird, Beirut, Camera Obscura, Cloud Cult, Interpol, Joanna Newsom, Lambchop, The National, Peter Bjorn and John, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, Voxtrot. You can copy n' paste these bands into Pandora's search box, and likely hear one or more of their songs.


Let me know if you like the guide or have anything to add. Good luck.