Oh god- the Iron & Wine link appears broke. I really need to hear it. The Sons and Daughters one is good (and great). Congrats on the handsome Citizen photo!

I think the Iron and Wine link should be working now. I'm having problems verifying this stuff. (Let me know if it's not.)

-Photo?- Oh god...

My first visit to a music blog. I'm retired but not dead and love more kinds of music than most people who hate rap ( so my opinion should count for something, right? ). I've spent the last three months downloading my favs from the good old days.
Just back from a road trip with three friends my age who all placed orders for some of the cd's I'd made and brought along for the 10 hour drive.
My problem with the 'new music' is not getting enough exposure to the cream cuts, although attending Bluesfest does help (Xavier Rudd). And I'm a big fan of Matt Mays from my old home town.
Anyway, I loved the Iron and Wine download and will revisit the site to look and listen for more.
By the way Sean if you read this and you get to Ullapool or Skye while in Scotland try the Ferry Boat Inn or the Tongadale Tavern in Portree,Skye for a pint and a wee dram. Nice people at both.
All the best,
Scott (retired and loving it )in the West End.

is it wrong that 'evening on the ground' makes me think it should be the soundtrack to an exploration of voodoo spiritualism and the deep south? i loved the song, and its sound.

and congrats to sean, jordan and dan for the spread in the citizen - yay for well-deserved accolades!

Hey guys, been reading the site for a few months now. I'm from Ottawa and just saw the Citizen article. Is it just me or is the Citizen actually pretty on top of things? Matt Mays and MIA have both graced the cover of Arts section in the past couple of weeks.

Anyways, keep up the good work.

You are making me a blogging addict! Thanks for the great tunes. Much love from Ottawa.

Hey Sean, saw the Citizen stuff... impressive. Shout-outs to all the robotics alumni. Still in Ottawa.

Nice music, too.

Hey Pat,
Check out hipster n poser.

hey sean, magnolia electric co. are touring the uk - being edinburgh based you might want to check out the glasgow gig on the 31st may, at stereo.

oh and check out edinburgh based band the magnificents. http://www.themagnificents.com/

keep up the good work;)
nat

"The idea is to be kind of a cool older brother," says Keith Serry, an Ottawa PR consultant whose own MP3 blog, Pregnant Without Intercourse, is six months old.

-- But why are there so many cool older brothers out there, and relatively few cool older sisters? I've been trying to come up with a good explanation for months and have not, nor has anyone offered one. Not that it's very important, it's just that, as someone who once studied epidemiology, I keep wanting to understand the etiology of and risk factors for music blogging/music nerdhood.

Congrats on the OC article.

Thanks for the "Medicine." Any idea when the U.S. release date will be for "The Repulsion Box"? June seems so far away.

Are they still producing Hipster and Poser? I read all 3 issues they put out last year, but I get the impression from the web site that they aren't doing any more of those.

Re the Citizen, above:

The relevant article aside, the Citizen's music coverage has been terrible IMO since I moved back to town a couple of years ago.

Last summer I read a few front-page articles in their Arts section by critics who're grudgingly admitting that hiphop is moving past "bitches and hos" to show "real emotion", because they've just heard of Outkast and the last twenty years apparently never happened.

Their main concert critic just cheerleads for every single act that comes to town, with no interest in fact-checking or engaging with the music on any level.

Sorry for the rant, it's just something that's been bugging me for a while, and my wife's getting sick of hearing it every time I open a Saturday citizen.

Congratulations on the article, though, in all sincerity (I don't mean to be totally negative).

Well put.

Have to concur about that Iron & Wine tune, it's the best thing he's ever done. That serrated guitar that comes in around a minute and a half takes Mr Beam someplace else completely.

I'd go back and check out Endless Numbered Days too--I got that shortly after being underwhelmed by Creek Drank the Cradle, and it didn't stick out much. Then a year later, it opened up for me somewhere around "Free Until They Cut Me Down." Creek Drank the Cradle still doesn't hold up as well though. Not sure why not.

Jennifer,
I have a few possible answers for you (although I'm not super clear on what exactly you're asking, but hopefully this will help). I've been studying related stuff for a long time at school and so I have some ideas. First, there's the idea of popular music, which is traditionally considered to be masculine in North America (the majority of bands are made up of men, music critics tend to be male, music producers and fans are much more likely to be men, whole genres of music are considered masculine such as all hard rock, heavy metal- not that there aren't huge amounts of women doing all of these things, just that numerically they are considerably fewer). There are many possible reasons I have run into for this, including: music is considered to be rebellious, girls are not supposed to be as rebellious as boys, music venues can be dangerous to girls who might not feel as safe out on the street at night, girls might be less likely to learn to play instruments like the guitar or drums because they are coded as masculine already (try going into a guitar store and you'll see), etc.
Second, there is the idea of taste - there is a cultural disregard for women's taste (this is harder to talk about, but if you think about how girls are supposed to be into top 40 and pop music (more than boys are, anyway), or "music for the tasteless masses" while boys are more likely to be into rock music, and other kinds of music that is considered to be "better," it's easier to see).
Third, there is the problem of things that are technical: science, electronics, computers etc are also considered to be male domain, which explains why women do not populate engineering and math classes, why girls are less likely to learn to play electric guitars, to use ham radios, or to learn how to program websites. Finally, there is nerdiness, which is also considered masculine, particularly music nerddom. Men are more likely to know the names of obscure albums, to have extensive record collections, to be into dungeons and dragons, to have huge amounts of arcane knowledge about any given subject. Because nerdiness is sometimes just plain nerdy, but it is also what makes a person cool in music circles.
Anyways, that's a lot of stuff so sorry if I went on, this is something I'm pretty interested in and I hope I helped. Also, just to be clear, I'm not saying that any of these things have to be true, or that they always are, I just wanted to help you out by thinking up some answers and pointing out how the lack of these blogs might be related to a whole bunch of other things too. There are tons of women doing all of these things, playing and listening to all kinds of cool and not so cool music, building computers in their basements, whatever. So I'm definitely not saying that women in music don't exist cause obviously, obviously they do, en masse.
Anyways, all this to say, I am all for more cool older sister blogs, that would be amazing!
Thanks.

Hey Sean! Where the hell is "Ottawa"? :)

Actually, how many cities have Henry Cow songs abut them? That's pretty cool. But you're probably wondering why I asked you here today... It's because I wonder if you would ever consider putting something ("stg" or "saidthegramophone") in the ID4 comments tag. It would be nice to just have an STG playlist without having to track everything down. I think all MP3 blogs should do a little brand-tagging like that.

Nothing about the music, sorry, haven't even listened to it yet. But it sounds like it sounds great.

Christine - Thanks! I have to mull over everything a little more. I've thought about all those issues that you raise. The thing is, there are clearly women who blog (and blog and write well!), as evidenced by the high-quality lit blogs out there. But perhaps the ratio of male:female bloggers overall still favors men ... this I don't know. And it's true that maybe if I were able to survey the women I see at the shows I attend, I'd discover that many of them are accompanying men; and maybe my music tastes happen to coincide with those of boys, and not girls (quite possible, too). But as this is slightly off topic, I'll quit here. Again, thanks for all the grist for the mill.

Thanks for those sage observations, Christine, and to Jennifer for the question in the first place. It bothers me quite a lot, actually. I go to meetings for music-writers at the local paper, and there's maybe one girl; a journalist asks me to recommend female mp3bloggers and at the time I can think of only one...

Thanks for the warm words, Scott (I'll visit Skye and drink to your honour!), Eoin, Matt, Pat.

I'm probably going to go see Magnolia Electric Co in Glasgow, yeah. And I'll try to catch the magnificents some time; the buzz is certainly big. (This friday I'll be seeing My Latest Novel, who are also hot-to-trot right now.)

Rodii - for -my- posts, I try to add a "said the gramophone" tag in the "comments" id3 field.

Pat - hello!!!

congrats on the article, guys. glad to see you're getting props for all of hard work you put into said the gramophone.

and fyi, seeyouinthepit.com, the sxsw mp3blog, was run by two women.

Hey Sean - congratulations on the Citizen article! I've linked to this post and Lilith's Song, if that's okay. As for girls blogging about music, I agree they're out there, but I find mostly the token categories like 'womenfolk' get linked, so they're harder to find. It's funny that this discussion is happening around Beam's Women King, though.

If you think that Iron & Wine song is good, try to find "Trapeze Swinger." It's a mindblowing, phenomenal 9 and half minute track. Heartbreaking, beautfiul. Find the lyrics online. It's most impressive., and exactly why Sam Beam is a genius.