If you listen to any other kind of music than the mainstream schlock on the radio, then you know how hard it can be to keep up with bands. For instance, when I lived in DC I saw a band called
Blank four or five times. They were great. Every time I saw them they were opening for someone else, and every time they were better than the headliner. But I forgot to ever buy one of their seven inches. Or maybe I never saw one for sale. Doesn't seem likely, but I really can't remember.
But now there's a new problem. Try searching Google for a band called Blank. The results you get are ridiculous. Only recently have I been able to find any good info on Google. I didn't know the names of any of the band members, and while I could remember what the covers of a couple of records looked like, I couldn't remember the names of any of them. Eventually I found a little bit of info: the singer's name. With that and a little more digging, I found his new band. But we'll get to that in another post. This article is about the good news.
There is a new website called
BandtoBand.com, and it is made for situations like this. You can enter a band name and it will give you the names of members, and what other bands they have been in. Here is an example from their front page:
But it gets better than that. Let's say I want to find out what bands
Tonie Joy has been in. OK I could just go dig around on Google, and I would probably find every band he's ever been in (I would, and it's because they are
all good). Or I could enter him on BandtoBand and get pretty pictures. See the incomplete picture below right, also a screenshot of the website.
So now I know what bands he was in. I knew already, but I actually didn't know all of the records. But this is where it gets good. I know Tonie Joy was in Born Against with
Sam McPheeters, cause if I click on the
Born Against record from the previously mentioned image on the right, I find every single band member who recorded with Born Against (including their pseudonyms). I can find out what other bands Sam was in by clicking on his name. It's that easy. You could pretty much go forever this way, one band to the next. But what if there isn't a direct link between two bands?
My Favorite PartLet's say I want to know if Tim Kinsella (of Cap'n Jazz, Owls, Joan of Arc, etc.) ever played with any of the guys from Native Nod. Look for the Create Map box on the right side of the page, about halfway down.
Search those names and you have this ↓
It tells us that
Eric Bocek was in
Joan of Arc with
Tim Kinsella and
The Firebird Band with
Christopher Broach. Broach was also in
The Firebird Project with
Chris Wilson, who was (or is) in
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, which also contains
Dave Lerner, who was in
Native Nod (
so was Ted Leo, he is the brother of
Chris Leo, the singer of Native Nod).
Whoops. That was Danny Leo, another Leo brother. So we found a link. Not direct, but not that far away, either.
This is a great tool for finding out what happened to bands you loved in the past that broke up without a trace. Expect a slew of posts in the not-too-distant future about bands I find through this site. Have fun! Find somebody good. And please, let me know what you find, even if it turns out to be something that is, in retrospect, painfully obvious.
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Labels: Hardcore, Hardcore Music, Indie, Music, Reference, Tutorials
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