Dec 14

Google

GOOGLE
 
 
Google  is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products.  These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software.  Most of its profits are derived from AdWords, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.  Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University.  Its mission statement from the outset was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, and its unofficial slogan was “Don’t be evil”.  In 2004, Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
My fondness for the Queen Anne’s Lace album is echoed in an even better and much more obscure album that is among the greatest treasures that I have rescued from the mud of Katrina:  Nachgedanken by Schattenfreiheit.  Like Queen Anne’s Lace, Schattenfreiheit is basically a male/female duo.  Their album is self-published with amateurish drawings on the cover (including the band’s name written in the shape of a performing porpoise) and is a luscious pop-psychedelic masterpiece that is probably my favorite rock album that is sung in a foreign language (as is apparent from the long words, that would be German).  According to Google Translate, the band name means something like “shadowy freedom” (though maybe it is really “freedom from shadows”), while the album name is “after thoughts”; most of the Internet translation devices don’t seem to know either word though. 
 
(August 2010)
 
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The only true prodigy that I know of who made it big in the rock world is North Carolina’s own Tori Amos, who could play the piano before she could speak.  The fans of her excruciatingly personal songs are among the most devoted on earth; and, long before Google came along, there were dozens of websites honoring her. 
 
(June 2011)
 
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That is not how everyone does it though, and a lot of people apparently like that sort of thing, since they are everywhere on the Internet.  The most prominent post on Phil and the Frantics is a really snide piece by Mark Prindle from www.markprindle.com entitled “Frantically Ripping Off Everybody They Can”.  (One nice thing about there being a Wikipedia article is that it usually comes up at or near the top of a Google search rather than junk like this). 
 
(August 2012)
 
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There are other cool aspects of the CD; the opening track, “Beautiful Wreck” starts with Holly Ramos saying a single word – “sing” – and ends with car-crash sounds.  Ramos begins “Ocelot” – a species of wild cat that is also known as the dwarf leopard – with a series of “meow’s”, probably as a counterpoint to the closing line:  “Don’t try being something that you’re not.”  The word is spelled “oceolot” twice on the CD insert; that might be an alternate spelling, but in any case, “oceolot” gets 122,000 hits on Google.   

 

(June 2013/2)

 

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Additionally, J. Reuben Silverbird has at least four different websites:  an American website (www.silverbird.us/), an Austrian website (www.silverbird.at/), a Norwegian website (www.jsilverbird.no/) – translation of the website is available through Google – and an ordinary “dot-com” website (www.reubensilverbird.com/).  The websites have completely different looks, but for the most part, they have similar information. 

 

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Much of the overheated rhetoric about J. Reuben Silverbird is about his name changes; even the minor switch from Ruben to Reuben is mentioned.  Using stage names is hardly limited to rock musicians – the very term itself shows that its origin is in the theatre.  You needn’t go any further than the drummer for the Beatles to find one:  Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey).  Guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones used the name Keith Richard for many years.  The John Birch Society called Stones frontman Mick Jagger “Mick Jaeggert” back in the 1970’s; a Google search brought up only two websites using this name – one French and one Hungarian – so this is probably not for real. 

 

(August 2013)

 
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There are actually a lot of websites out there that talk about Blair 1523:  It might be surprising to some that a search of the band name in quotes brings up 18,100 hits on Google.  The first page of Google hits has a YouTube video of “Fantasy of Folk”, the Bomp! Mailorder site where the “last copies” of the CD can still be purchased plus another listing on Amazon.com, the mention of the band in my Wikipedia article on the Outcasts, the Allmusic review and the Julian Cope blog mentioned above, a listing on last.fm that actually has some information and even a photo of Blair 1523, and more barren listings on mtv.com, Discogs, and Rate Your Music.  Further Google pages bring up other barebones listings – the one on Ticketmaster that offers concert tickets and tour schedules for a band that broke up 20 years ago is particularly hilarious – and other places to buy the CD and rate the music and see the lyrics and download “free” MP3’s (Napster lives!). 

 

So how can there be so many Google hits when, on one of these sites, Blair 1523 has a 94.0% rating on the “obscurometer”?  Simple:  The album exists, and it is easy for web pages to be generated for even unknown albums by websites that pride themselves on knowing about all of the music that is out there.  But trying to get a handle on actual information about the band is difficult indeed among all of that dross.  That is the reason that Wikipedia typically comes to the top of a Google search. 

 

(September 2013)

 

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When I first looked up the Liquid Faeries album, Eggshells & Snake Leaves on the Internet, nothing helpful was coming up; so I entered the band name and album name together.  Amazingly, I got only about 20 hits on Google – by contrast, I got 18,100 hits for past UARB Blair 1523, and they are plenty obscure as well.  I suppose I spelled something wrong, because later on, I had hundreds of hits. 

 

(February 2014)

 

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At long last, my UARB posts are beginning to come up at high positions on Google searches.  A few days ago, I looked for Schattenfreiheit and their album Nachgedanken – they are not officially a UARB, though I talked about them in the post for past UARB Queen Anne’s Lace – and I was thrilled to see my UARB post show up second in the search.  Of course, there were only 10 results today for that search (and just 4 the other day).  However, just now a Google search for “the Invisible Eyes band” (with no quote marks) generated 17,600,000 results; and my original Facebook post for the band was #2 on that search also.  That is truly thrilling for me; Wikipedia entries come up high on a Google search more or less automatically, so I missed seeing high placement on Google for my work. 

 

(December 2014)

 

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But I was surprised when so many “Crawdaddy” entities came up in the initial Google searches for this post.  Make it a search for “Crawdaddys band”, and there is a host of results:  Besides the UARB the Crawdaddys, there is a rock band from Australia called the Crawdaddys, a Cajun/zydeco band from Baltimore called the Crawdaddies, a Canadian band called the Crawdaddy’s, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band called Crawdaddy Band, a bluesman from Detroit named Crawdaddy – and that was just on the first page of search results.  There are also Crawdaddy’s music clubs all over. 

 

(January 2015/2)

 

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The years are sure flying by; it seems like I just wrote the article about this Alive Records artist.  Normally I talk about new bands in January, but I liked these guys so much that I brought ’em in early.  The message of appreciation by Hollis Brown for my picking them as a UARB comes up highest of any of my stuff on a Google search.  

 

(May 2015)

 

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Chosin Few, Chosin Few – This is the only release from an obscure heavy metal band and came out in 1988 on the equally obscure Statue Records label.  I had to go to the second page of Google results before I found out much; the website Rob’s Metal Shop says of the album:  “This is a quality release from an indie band.  Definitely worth picking up if you can find it for a reasonable price.  To me they sound a lot like Holy Soldier when Steven Patrick was the vocalist.”  (Not that I know who Holy Soldier is either).
 
(December 2015)
 
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In the post-MTV era, YouTube has become an important venue for new artists, although the blizzard of posted videos makes this a daunting task to say the least. Barely a decade old, YouTube – the second most popular website on earth (after Google) – has ballooned to the point that 400 hours of new videos are being uploaded every minute (as of February 2017). According to Wikipedia: “It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.” 
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Greg Shaw and the Bomp! Records crew even came up with a cool term for the kind of music that they like: “Bomp-Worthy”. Sadly, in the 12+ years since Shaw’s untimely death in 2004, this term has largely dropped out of sight on the Internet. I remember one “thread” (in the pre-blog era) talking about Linda Ronstadt’s Bomp-Worthy music that was still findable not so long ago, and I wish I could remember more about it. It was one of the references for the Wikipedia article that I wrote on the Stone Poneys. Now, there are only 20 results on Google for “Bomp-Worthy”. 
(June 2017)

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I also keep these pieces personally informative; in short, I learn a lot myself from putting these Facebook Notes together.  While most of the kernels of what I write about are lodged in my brain somewhere, I coax the details from simple Google searches, with my primary sources being Wikipedia and Allmusic.  For the UARB’s and UARA’s, I sometimes find myself mounting searches for hours.  I often put in extended quotes that I find on-line, particularly for matters that I don’t know too much about.  That is perfectly fine with Wikipedia, but not so much with other Internet source material.  

 

(Year 5 Review)

 

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Most of past UARA Phil Gammage’s music was only released in Europe, mainly France; he might be the most prolific of all of the UARB’s and UARA’s, with dozens of albums to his credit, either as a solo artist or in a band. I had already located a fair amount of music by Phil Gammage on the Bandcamp website, where my nephew John Lucas’s music can also be found. (John Lucas, a/k/a Lucas Kovasckitz is also on Amazon and Spotify and is now supporting his family strictly by sales and licenses of his music – Google used one of his guitar figures for a national ad not long ago; that’s what got the ball rolling).
 
(Year 10 Review)
Last edited: April 3, 2021