Finding New Music

Guest post! by Wilson Cusack, age 17, high school senior. Because this post is about an abstract, music, I slid in a few beautiful visuals to accompany it by William Goldsmith. His landscapes remind me of the planets of the little prince. 

Talking during car rides usually annoys me. Car rides are for music. When I first started going to school with my siblings I woke up every morning excited almost solely for the car ride.  We’d fight over who’s iPod we’d use, and whoever was the current DJ had the perfect opportunity to show off their latest and greatest music, or perhaps pull out an old song we’d forgotten about. There were always those songs that made the car quiet, that made you not want to talk, just listen.

Everyone would just stare blankly out the windows, captivated by the sound. One of us might casually grab the iPod to see who it was, but we’d play it off like we just wanted to check the time or something. After all there was almost no greater compliment than the, “Who is this?” If you did come out and say that, you might say it with tone of disgust,to make it seem as though you were unimpressed, when really you’d have the song on your own iPod by the next morning.

Finding the latest and greatest music became a game, and the game was taken to a new level when I picked up my own musical escapades. Everyone expects a musician to have great musical taste, so I was always searching for the best thing. The blogosphere has made that job 100x easier, even if it does feel like I’m letting someone else do all the work for me. I tell people about the blogs I like or follow, but it is kind of like giving away your recipes, or showing the secret to a magic trick; you’ve taken away your luster.

But, as I like hearing other people’s new stuff as much showing them my own, giving away my secrets has become a habit. Which is precisely what I will do now.

The best music site, in my opinion, is HYPEM. It is not a music site so much as a music aggregator. They have hundreds of music blogs that post to their site, so rather than going and checking all sorts of music blogs, it’s all in one place. If you create an account you can follow blogs,  like a music version of google reader. You can click on the latest tab and you can see what your favorite blogs have been posting.

So far as who to follow, I have a couple favorites:
Indie Shuffle
We All Want Someone to Shout For
Sunset in the Rearview
Earplugs Not Included

And, two blogs I like that aren’t on Hypem:
Pretty Much Amazing
The Sixty-one  (this is  a site for mostly indie artists, the artists post their songs and then people vote on them, “hot right now”
consistently has good stuff. I don’t like their new site so go to this one: old.thesixtyone.com)