The most interesting blogs are those that offer music that is not otherwise easy to find. Excavated Shellac for instance is a “blog dedicated to 78rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world” and offers anything from Peruvian muliza to Norwegian Hardanger fiddlers to Jewish singers of the Maghreb (Excavated Shellac is also on Facebook here). Another great resource is Awesome Tapes from Africa, run by Brian Simkhovitz in Brooklyn who digitises cassette tapes with African music and puts them online: from Ghanian rap (be sure to listen to Okra’s Agynoamoa Kwesi) to traditional Toma music from Guinea, it is all there and you would never hear this were it not for the net (be sure to also check this interview with Brian in Green Owl). Or what about a blog like Monrakplengthai offering all kinds of Thai music digitised by another enthusiast.

Know any other good mp3 blogs? List them in the comments for others to enjoy..

To listen to it all Mac users can get a gem of a little program called Peel, which allows you to subscribe to mp3 blogs, listen to the music they offer and download the mp3′s you like to iTunes, all from within one interface; it could hardly be made easier!

For your added musical entertainment below is the teaser of a documentary hopefully to be made on music in Mali after the 1960s and the role of regional and national orchestras in its musical development since then, great stuff! Also check this tape of the Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali on Awesome Tapes from Africa and a description of the band here)

On 3 October Pere Ubu performed “Bring me the head of Ubu Roi” in the Passionskirche in Berlin as part of their current European tour,  featuring electronics wizard Gagarin, and animation by The Brothers Quay. As always drummer Steve Mehlman and bass player Michele Temple did a brilliant job in keeping the performance on track.

An evening with David Thomas is never dull, whether he performs solo, with Two Pale Boys or Pere Ubu. And so we got it all: Thomas in the role of Ubu Roi himself, whispering and thundering while being backed up by the band who also played their parts in the theatrical music piece that Thomas has created; Thomas giving stage directions during the performance, explaining the audience he believes in “rehearsing on stage”; and Thomas becoming appropriately intoxicated for his role, keeping the audience wondering whether we were watching a genius at work immersing himself completely in his role or one of rock music’s legends with a substance issue.

In the end that is a rather artificial dichotomy though: Thomas is a fully dedicated artist taking his work very seriously but is also the first to poke fun at the pretentiousness of a performance like this. Indeed, a DT performance never comes without a fair dose of self-relativisation and Thomas exclaiming “It’s hard being a method actor when you’re drunk”, when forgetting some lyrics, was quite memorable. As were the three Pere Ubu songs that finished the evening, including of course the brilliant Non-Alignment Pact.