The Beatles Complete on Ukelele

This site features excellent explications of Beatle songs along with versions performed by well known and lesser known artists. According to their biography at their blog, “Roger and Dave are perfomance philanthropists who write songs, create installations, make visual art, write books, produce records, organize performances, produce films, re-create historical events and share a weakness for beauty.” They have a grand vision that will take them well into 2012, at which point perhaps the Beatles catalog will be remixed for yet another round of emptying our wallets for the same albums we already own in multiple formats. A) “Record & perform on ukulele all 185 original compositions by The Beatles with 185 guest artists. B) Write essays to coincide with each release. C) Make available for download one new recording and essay every Tuesday for 185 weeks, beginning January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day) and climaxing July 31, 2012 (The eve of the London Olympics)”.

CBC Radio: The Sunday Edition

Included in this year and a half series titled “Twenty Pieces of Music That Changed the World” are segments on Presley’s “That’s All Right,” Dylan’s turn to electric, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” and “We Shall Overcome.” ” Canadian Broadcasting is the host site.

Expecting Rain

One of the premier Dylan sites. Takes its name from Dylan’s “Desolation Row” from Highway 61 Revisited. “Everyone is either making love or else expecting rain.”

Folk Den: Roger McGuinn in the Folk Tradition

One of the best sites of free music on the net by one of the folk-rock originators whose group the Byrds put Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man on the map of AM radio before penning their own hits, including “So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star.”

Little Steven’s Underground Garage

If Rockademia is where the garage ends, Little Steven’s site is the garage itself, dedicated to songs where everything you need to know can be summed up in less than three minutes by crunchy guitars, crashing drums, and raw thoughts and emotions sung full tilt.

Sound Opinions

The widely syndicated show about rock, pop, and folk hosted by Chicago music critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogotis. Includes interviews and studio performances and allows you to listen online or download Mp3s of the show. Billed as the only rock and roll talk show.

Wolfgang’s Vault

Legendary rock impresario Bill Graham’s exhaustive (and exhausting in a way) collection of concerts and paraphernalia, much of it from the sixties and seventies. If you ever wondered what it was like to be a music fan back in rock’s heyday, this is a good place to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”

Backstreets

For all things Bruce, this long-running site acts as a portal to BTX a forum and field recordings for the Boss and the E Street Band.

Literary Links

The American Poetry Review

The online version of one of the top poetry journals in the country.

Book Dwarf

For those of you who like to crack open a book now and then, this is a blog by a reading fanatic and includes a long list of literary blogs, too.

Book Slut

This online journal/blot has just the title to appeal to the average rock trogg and features a header of a comely nude outline reclining with her face against a book (the book of love? the Joy of Sex? the little red book?). Don’t get your hopes up, though. The interviews, reviews and features appeal mostly to another

Poets

Site of the American Academy of Poets. Much free verse! And who knows? This could be the very site where the bard of borrowed poetry lifts and twists from Timrod and other poets.

Poetry Archives

This archives classical poetry, including the Romantics like Keats and Shelley who inspired Mad Dogs and Englishmen like Mick Jaggar, who quoted Shelley’s “Adonais” at Hyde Park in eulogizing the founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, whose drowning death at a young age eerily mirrored that of Shelley. The site is not comprehensive, of course, even omitting “Adonais.”

More Literary Links

The Poetry Foundation:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Psychology Links

American Psychological Association

Home of the American Psychological Association and starting place to find more information with a psychological perspective.