Licorice Pizza Calling it Quits

I am sad to report that the legendary Licorice Pizza is calling it quits after nearly two years. For those unfamiliar with the blog, it is well known for being one of the best lounge music blogs. There is a great deal of vinyl rips of jazz, exotica, space age pop, and many other vintage sounds to be found there also. If you are familiar with LP, please do go pay your respects and thank this man for two years of music blogging. I will be leaving Licorice Pizza on the blogroll, as it still receives a great deal of traffic; however, you may want to download what you can before it is too late.

Licorice Pizza
http://my.opera.com/Licorice%20Pizza/blog/

Featured Blog: Weirdo Music

Weirdo Music is the first non-blog to be featured here. You may be wondering why the featured blog isn't a blog at all. The reason I chose to feature Weirdo Music is because it's owner does a great deal to promote and share music that would remain largely unnoticed were it not for his efforts. The site is operated by Marco Kalnenek from Heerlen, the Netherlands.

Weirdo Music is a multi-purpose site, delivering news, reviews, and columns, in addition to serving as an online record shop. One of my favorite areas of the site is the downloads section, where Marco features a revolving collection of music blogs which focus on rare and unusual music.

In addition to Weirdo Music, Marco has also been operating his own net-label, WM Recordings, since 2004. The WM catalog features a rather eclectic selection of independent artists, offering everything from Pop to Afrobeat. The majority of the WM Recordings catalog can be downloaded for free, but there are also a few commercial releases available at a generous price. Marco is also an accomplished independent musician in his own right, having self-released several full length albums and EPs. You can read more about his musical projects here.

Weirdo Music:
http://weirdomusic.com/


WM Recordings:
http://wmrecordings.com


Previously Featured Blogs

A Few New Features and Plans for the Future

As some of you may have noticed, I have replaced the Grazr widget that I used to display the latest blog updates with a new method. The Grazr widget was great, and is a more user friendly method for displaying blog updates, yet it only allowed me to list 50 blogs. I would like to thank Mindfield, who runs the Xchannel aggregator for introducing me to the Google Feed Ajax API, which is the script used to display the updates. It will allow me to list updates for every blog on the list. As of yet, I've only managed to add a few dozen blogs, but I will work my way through the entire list over the next few days.

I'm still not entirely pleased with the appearance of it though, yet my javascript skills are rather weak, so I will have to need further assistance before I can make any more modifications. I plan to increase the amount of text from each post that is displayed, and list the title of the blog instead of the post author, as I'm sure more of you are familiar with blog titles rather than their respective authors. If you're familiar with javascript and willing to help me out, please leave a comment.

I also plan to overhaul the custom search engine that I created. I just recently found out that more people are using it than I realized, so I will do my best to make it more user friendly. I will be adding more sources to search, changing the appearance, and possibly integrate it directly into the blog so that you don't have to exit the page.

The last bit of news I would to announce is that I have created a new button for the blogroll. The old button looked nice, but it gave one little clue as to the purpose of the site. I think the new version does a much better job of that. If you are currently displaying a button for the blogroll on your site, please replace it with the updated button. The new button can be found below, and if you need the code to display it click here. For future reference, you can find the button and code on the main menu where is reads "Show Your Support". I would like to know what you think of the recent changes, and the possible new features. Please leave a comment.

http://zer0ii.zer0ii.googlepages.com/dmblogroll.png

Featured Blog: Chocoreve

The Chocoreve music blog hardly needs any introduction to many within the music blog community. It's operator, Chocoreve has been going strong since February of 2005. During it's first few months of existence, it simply linked to other websites, pointing out where to find quality albums. However, in June of 2005, Chocoreve started to serve up albums from his own collection. During the last couple of years it has developed into a vast treasure trove of vintage music from around the world.

Chocoreve is probably best known for it's huge collection of compilations of rare garage rock and psychedelic tracks from the 60's and 70's, the majority of which contain tracks that you won't find anyplace else. It is a simple site in terms of presentation and design, remaining largly unaltered in appearance since it's first inception. Most of the albums do not feature reviews; however, don't let this small fact discourage you from downloading any of them, as the majority of them are unsung gems well worth listening to. Chocoreve is a legendary blog to all who are familiar with it, and if you're unfamiliar with it, upon visiting it you will soon understand the reason why. Have you left your comment today?

Chocoreve:
http://chocoreve.blogspot.com/


Previously Featured Blogs

Featured Blog - Stigma Rest Room

This week's featured blog is Stigma Rest Room. There is much that could be said about Stigma Rest Room, but unfortunately time permits me from writing everything I would like to about this amazing blog. Stigma Rest Room is one of the more eclectic blogs on the list. You can literally find music from all over the world at the Rest Room, as Stigma2 leaves no stone, (or nationality) unturned on his quest to share hidden gems from around the globe. There are also a number of great series/compilations to be found here, such as the Ultra Lounge, A Rough Guide, The History of Rock and Roll, Secret Museum of Mankind, and a number of others. It become obvious rather quickly that this blog doesn't shy away from music regardless of it's genre either. You can find everything from punk rock to soft jazz here.

One thing that really stands out to me about this blog is the exceptionally nice layout. It would be a daunting task to seek out a specific type of music on such an eclectic blog, but fortunately there is a very handy tag cloud at the top of the page, which makes finding what you are looking for on Stigma Rest Room a snap. The three column layout is also something that you don't see on most blogger-hosted blogs, and it serves to put all that free space to good use, and makes for a clean looking and easily navigable blog.

Stigma Rest Room:
http://stigmarestroom.blogspot.com/


Previously Featured Blogs

Major Update Tomorrow

As some of you may already know, I spent the majority October working on uploading material for my other blog in celebration of the blogger community's Halloween Countdown. During that time I managed to put together two lists of blogs offering Halloween treats, but my work on these projects didn't leave me much time to update the blogroll itself.

Tomorrow I will be making extensive changes to the list. Unfortunately, several blogs have been deleted since then. I will update the urls if they have moved, and remove them from the list if they haven't. There will be a number of new blogs appearing on the list, and a few old blogs that I've only recently discovered.

I also plan to replace the grazr widget at the top of the page. The grazr widget is great, yet it limits me to including only 50 blogs, and I've also recently been made aware of better methods of sharing unlimited blog updates. It may take some time for me to implement this change, but it will definitely be worth the wait. I hope you all will enjoy the changes and additions to come. As always, please leave me feedback to let me know what's working, what isn't, and what could be improved.