The Best Discography Sites - Part 3 of 5

Previously, this series was introduced with a 90s indie band and then followed up by a 50s rockabilly queen.  Today, for the third installment, we'll go to the late 70s with The Shapes.  As we can see from 45cat.com, The Shapes released a 4-song 7-inch in 1979 featuring "Wot's for lunch Mum? (Not B*****s again)" and "(I Saw) Batman (In The Launderette)" and also a 2-sing 7-inch in 1980.  As always, 45cat excels at providing high quality pictures of the original records, the sleeves as well as the insides.

Both Wikipedia and Discogs have the same two releases along with the 1998 collection which first brought The Shapes to my attention.  Discogs also includes 5 appearances on various compilations, including their appearance on the excellent Messthetics series.  Importantly, they are findable as a UK band via wikipedia's well-known, but too-infrequently-imitated disambiguation feature.  They're a tad harder to find on Discogs.  If you enter "The Shapes" into the search tool on Discogs, nothing that comes up initially is close to what you want, but if you click on "Artist" at the top, you quickly get to a set of links for various bands called "The Shapes" from which you can find the right one.

Allmusic.com is relatively incautious about disambiguation.  I don't know if bots are too blame or if it's due to their minimal use of crowdsourcing corrections.  The bio at Allmusic appears to be accurate, or at least consistent with other reliable sources, but the discography includes not only the collection that is truly theirs but also two other releases that are almost certainly some other band's or bands'.  For instance, this record can also be found at bandcamp, and I really don't think the original The Shapes became a mathrock band called Shapes.  Mind the "The".

Musicbrainz.org does an impressive job of listing the different options for The Shapes.  You can find the band that Allmusic.com miscategorized at musicbrainz.org under "Shapes (Birmingham, UK Rock Band)" and you can find The Shapes for whom we are looking today easily identifiable as "The Shapes (UK Punk Band)" second on the list.  Musicbrainz only lists 4 compilation tracks, not the 1998 collection or the original singles, but it feels like musicbrainz has at least built a framework that will allow for continuous improvement.

Rateyourmusic, on one nice single page, list the 4-song 7-inch (the EP), the 2-song 7-inch, the collection, and 5 appearances on various compilations.  I can't tell for sure if the 5 compilations included by rateyourmusic are the same as the 5 listed by discogs.  They have slightly different titles and dates, but only rateyourmusic has cover photos for all 5.

This round goes to Rateyourmusic, but Discogs a very close second.  Allmusic, to my surprise, comes in dead last.  I knew they were facing tougher competition these days, but I'm starting to wonder why I keep putting up with the aggressive pop-up ads for what is increasingly looking like an inferior site.  I hope they make a comeback, because they're a site I've valued as a resource for many years.

And now I think it might be time for lunch.  I don't think I'll have beans, just to disimbiguate myself from The Shapes.

The Best Discography Sites - Part 2 of 5

I recently introduced a new series to evaluate the best discography sites, starting with Vehicle Flips, a 90s indie band.  Let's shift now to the 50s with Lillian Briggs and see how allmusic, discogs, rateyourmusic, 45cat, wikipedia, and a new competitor, musicbrainz, stack up.

This time I'm going to start with Wikipedia.  The Lillian Briggs wikipedia page rather boldly asserts that she was the first woman to achieve super-star status at the dawn of the rock'n'roll era.  The wikipedia page also provide the year and chart position of her first single, and it closes by noting that she has a new 2013 collection on Jasmine records.  It also includes my favorite Lillian Briggs fun fact.  She owned the boat (monkey business) where Gary Hart got caught with Donna Rice, knocking him out of the presidential race.

Let's move along now to allmusic.  As of the very end of 2013, allmusic is the only source that lists the new collection on Jasmine records.  Yes, the wikipedia page mentioned its existence, but it didn't show a cover or give a track listing or provide any useful information about it.  The collection is the only record allmusic lists in the Lillian Briggs discography, but, it too mentions the monkey business fun fact.

Discogs.com fills in quite a bit more of the Lillian Briggs discography with 6 singles, an EP, a 1985 collection, and 6 compilation tracks.  The compilations include Hot Boppin Girls, Vol III, They don't have the new collection though, and that reflects a general observation I have that allmusic tends to list new releases faster than the other sites even when the other sites are otherwise more complete.

Rateyourmusic also has 6 singles, but they aren't exactly the same ones as discogs.com, and rateyourmusic has dates for all of the singles, while discogs did not.  RYM has 2 EPs, and 5 compliation appearances, but no collections, neither the new collection listed by allmusic nor the 1985 collection listed by discogs.

As you would hope, 45cat stomps the competition in the singles category.  They list 10 singles in the US alone, and most have not only the release year but even the release month.  They also have high-resolution pictures of almost all of the records.  They list 7 additional releases ex-US for a total of 17 listings.

By popular request (or maybe just a single comment on a previous blog post), I'm also consider musicbrainz.org.  They list 3 compilations and that's it.

It's hard to pick a winner this time.  It may be a 3-way tie between discogs, RYM, and 45cat, but you can't totally discount the fact that allmusic was the only site (as of the end of 2013) to list the new compilation.  On the other hand, the new compilation is easy to find on Amazon, so maybe it's not so important for it to be covered on music sites. No - I think the music sites need to cover it.  I'll need to check back during 2014 to see when any of the other sites pick it up.

This concludes part 2 of our series.  Stay tuned for part 3 because, in Lillian Briggs' words, I can't stop.

The Best New Wave Albums: US vs. UK Voters

Rate Your Music has a feature that allows users to see the average ratings for albums ranked not just by genre, but also by the country of the voters.  Because ratings are always being added by RYM users, this is not a static list, so you may see slightly different results than I'm talking about here when you click the links, depending on when you're reading this.

I was curious about the best new wave albums as voted by US versus UK voters.  If you look at the US voting, there are 3 Talking Heads records and 3 Elvis Costello records in the top 6.  The Cars come in at #7 and The Pretenders at #8.  The highest The Jam charts is #23.

If you look at the UK voting, I was amazed that Talking Heads still manage 3 of the top 6 albums with Ian Dury, Blondie, and New Order rounding out the top 6.  Elvis is 7th in the UK.  The Jam are there at #8 followed by XTC and The Stranglers.  The Cars show up at #52 in the UK while New Order shows up at #41 in the US.  Ian Dury just barely manages to creep into the top 100 (at #100) in the US.

Talking Heads are also #1 among German voters, and The Feelies (!?) are #2 in Germany with the B-52s at #4.  Japan also gives Talking Heads the top spot and 4 of the top 7 spots.  Japan comes in at #24 in Japan.  Talking Heads are way on top in Australia as well and Split Enz surprisingly couldn't manage any better than #24 there.  In New Zealand, Split Enz come in at #2.

I don't really understand how RYM makes its charts.  Even in Ukraine, Talking Heads are #1, but there's a band with a name I can't spell with the english alphabet that has 4 albums in the top 10 with higher ratings.  I guess their algorithm must involve both average rating and number of ratings.  Anyway, the Talking Heads global dominance in this category is simply astounding.