Little Johnny England. Sounds like a football hooligan? Wrong, it's a collision of rock music and English traditional song. Intrigued? Visit www.littlejohnnyengland.co.uk and all will become clear, as it did for me on one of my ambles around the more arcane reaches of the web. Exploring musical cyberspace earns me a few quid - I write about music - but most people do it for love.
Nothing short of love could have driven the folk enthusiast Martin Nail to compile his page of hotlinks to working folk musicians with websites - more than 120 soloists and nearly 100 bands. These range from well-known names such as Ralph McTell, Fairport Convention and Pentangle (who can all be found through www.folkcorp.co.uk to the most obscure newcomer. However, if by "folk music" you mean the really traditional sort as espoused by Vaughan Williams, go to the extensive and informative site run by the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
From folk to family funk. My son Will plays bass guitar and spends hours flitting around manufacturers - www.fender.com, www.warwickbass.com and so on - or keeping an eye on secondhand vendors such as www.musical-exchanges.co.uk and www.guitars2ndhand.com. Taxiing Will to his gigs has also introduced me to a number of young local bands, most of whom devote loving hours to their DIY websites such as www.autonomy1.com or www.mycoolband.co.uk.
If you're not buying, try selling. Wondering if I could turn my surplus old vinyl into cash, I looked at several of the hundreds of internet barterers. My starting points were Record Buyer magazine's site and VIP Events: both listed record fairs across the UK, had links to traders, and included small ads.
Fancying a natter about rock and pop, I tried Microsoft Network's music chat listings. Weed Smokers Lounge sounded promising - at least I'd find silliness and laughter. Well, no, as it turned out: Eminem16: "I luv Marshall"
Beggar: "f off em he a gobshite he sux"
HevvyKid: "yah death to MM cos Bizkit rock"
Eminem16: "r u a prat or wot"
SlipGirl: "em16 u wanker"
After a few minutes of this, I gathered that nu-metal kids are a trifle hostile to whitetrash hip hop and left them to bicker into infinity.
Yahoo! boasts a wider selection of chatrooms, its banners advertising interactive discussions on music. The day's "featured room" was called Groovespace but, predictably perhaps, housed a populace of sub-teen Nirvana dweebs. After 30 seconds of RudeTart, Slutino, Poogrrl (sic) and their pals, I felt extremely old. The rooms devoted to country and western, R&B, jazz, and soul were so dull I began to lose the will to breathe. Surely Yahoo!'s classical music chat would prove more intellectually stimulating? Nope - except to anyone fascinated by a Nebraska 24-Hour Bach Telethon. Mind you, there was some lively debate about the weather around the USA. It's cold in Nebraska. And there was me thinking weather-whingeing was a British foible.
Yahoo!'s Geocities proved much more interesting. Be warned - you can get lost in here for hours! For example, follow the menus to "song lyrics" and you get no fewer than 875 collections ranging from nu-metal to old musicals. Or try the arts and entertainment category at AskJeeves, again narrowing the selection through "music" to "lyrics" to "rock and pop". The Big Index at www.myths.com caught my eye with its proclamation: "Words to songs which I like". This bizarrely eclectic one-man listing also offered links to "real websites chock full of lyrics with search engines and all that stuff" but I dallied. After comparing Layla with Lola (take away the music and the former is revealed as embarrassing schmaltz while the latter remains a witty take on transvestites) and brushing up on Talking Heads' Life During Wartime, up popped US meteorology again... "Oklahoma!... where the wind comes sweeping down the plain." Cold there too, then.
Of course, there's also plenty of mainstream stuff online. I check out the album and singles charts at www.totp.beeb.com/charts/album1 or at www.nme.com each week, and usually catch up on the day's pop news at www.music365.com.
I also visit www.allmusic.com frequently. This resource for pop and rock fans offers an extraordinarily comprehensive guide to popular music. Just enter the name of your favourite singer, band or whatever and - bingo! - an essay, photos, biography, discography and links.
Effective searching is the key to exploiting the web but search engines can be blunt instruments. I learnt the basics from http://home. sprintmail.com/~debflanagan/ engines.html and later stumbled across www.searchenginewatch.com. The layout may be turgid but the content is fascinating and useful.
