Blue Plate Special Lounge music is back - and possibly already out if you're an avante-hipster. According to the site's creators, Blue Plate Special is "a jump and swing band from a cowtown you've probably never heard of." I hadn't heard of the band either, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the Bachelor Pad Music clips found on the site. This place is one long promotional, but is punctuated with retro graphics and a witty bio. A Recommended Listening page offers detailed liner notes, and mentions many albums, making it a good reference for anyone looking to swing.-MP

B+

Ceolas Celtic Music Archive While it doesn't *look* particularly inspiring, The Celtic Music Archive certainly delivers content. You'll find everything from song lyrics and artists, to basic information about instruments used in Celtic music. There's also a semi-current listing of Celtic-related events and concerts organized by geography and by performer.-SK

B+

Everything But the Girl Everything But the Girl is a post-punk duo that's been performing since the early 80s. To navigate this site, you click on different backstage passes for entrance to various areas. While this makes for a unique design, it's difficult to determine what the "All-Access" area offers (answer: band bios). There's tons of information about the band here, too: in-depth bios, songbooks, photos, tour dates, etc. There's even a section I've never seen on any other fan site: a page fetishizing musical instruments, complete with pictures. It's only *slightly* creepy.-MP

B+

Geffen DGC Home Page Aren't you dying for record company information on various Geffen artists like Lisa Loeb, Sonic Youth, and Urge Overkill? Each artist's area offers a way-long "official" biography, a discography, fan club info, pictures, sound files, and video clips. These pages are well-designed with nice graphics that look good despite their small size. However, no matter how good the site looks, it's still corporate propaganda. The true masochist can even download the "official" Geffen newsletter in the oh-so-convenient PDF format - not like they have the money to translate it to HTML.-MP

C+

Global Electronic Music Marketplace The Global Electronic Music Marketplace is a good idea that fails to deliver. When you connect to its home page, you're presented with a form on which you type an artist or band name. When you submit the form, the GEMM server searches its database for related keywords, looking for sale items and related Internet resources. It works... sort of. Many searches of established artists turned up nothing. -MP

B-

Mazzy Star Spectacle At first, the Mazzy Star Spectacle isn't much to behold. The colorful design is dominated by a huge, washed-out image map of singer Hope Sandoval. If half the size, Hope's image would still take forever to download. Then there's song lyrics, a discography, a reprinted interview from *Rolling Stone*, and audio clips. The best area, by far, is the photo page. These expandable .GIF thumbnails feature Hope in all her attractive glory. The site's creator even posted a photo of her with him - and I'm not jealous at all.-MP

B

Michael Nyman Who is Michael Nyman? As a film composer, he scored soundtracks for Peter Greenaway's films. However, fans will tell you that he's a talented performer and musician in his own right. Follow his discography. Read his composer's notes. Check out his CD covers. Leave messages for other fans. Be mesmerized by the many photographs of his balding pate. This page looks classier and is better organized than most music fan sites. -MP

B

Nutra World's Spudland When MTV began broadcasting, its only good videos came from a single group: DEVO. Now, even though this new wave institution has disbanded, its presence still haunts pop. As you enter Spudland, a background filled with energy domes (those flower pot hats) protects you from evil. Now you can look at video stills mysteriously arranged to form some sort of indecipherable story. Read weird Devonian writings from the back of a bootleg album. Feed your DEVO fix with cheap, post-industrial garbage. This site could have weightier content. It could have flashier design. It could be weirder. But it's DEVO. -MP

B

The Alanis Web Alanis Morissette's career began long ago - she was the little girl who had slime poured on her head on "You Can't Do That On Television."Now that show manages these fan pages. You'll find her very deep lyrics, a voluminous discography, and an epic bio detailing her long show-biz resumé. And what fan page would be complete without tear-jerking testimonials from obsessive fans? Now get ready for the best feature of the site: You can slime a younger, but still-annoying, Alanis herself. Way cool. Just push a button. Too bad she doesn't let them do this to her on MTV. -MP

A-

The Mighty Mighty Homepage Dedicated to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, this site features the usual reviews and tour dates. There's also a well-organized discography that features cover art, lyrics, and sound files. The fan confessions I read weren't that rabid, though they were revealing. People either complained about skinheads ruining shows, or reminisced about how cool the band was when it played at local schools. All in all, a useful resource for fans, albeit slightly uninspiring.-MP

B-

The Punk Page The Punk Page is a simple, easy-to-use resource cataloging punk stuff on the Internet. It's not much to look at, but it organizes a gaggle of content : old-school bands, new-school bands, punk record labels' home pages, skater stuff, and punk-themed links. It's a good tool to find your fave bands and zines, and maybe to discover new ones. Makes you feel like piercing your nether regions with a snowboard.-MP

B+

They Might Be Giants They Might Be Giants is a certifiably weird band. While this site doesn't quite capture the group's oddness, it does offer cool fan resources: news updates, tour info, links to lyrics, FAQ, FTP archives, and a link to a MUSH that's partly modeled on TMBG product. The best part is Dial-A-Song Online. For 10 years, the band has put a recording of demos, new songs and assorted weirdness on a regular phone line that you could call for free in the New York City area. While it's less costly to get this from the Web, it does take longer. -MP

A-

Welcome to the Rykoverse If it's rock, reggae, rap, funk, folk, jazz or world music, Rykodisc releases it. Rykodisc is a specialty label known for its Zappa and Bowie reissues, and even a few new acts, like Sugar and Morphine. Each artist has an area with the usual corporate info and links to other resources. You'll also find cool stuff like Zappa screensavers and special CD offers. It's surprising, though, that a technologically adept company that supports CDLink and CD Plus has such a lame site. Other than nifty screensaver files, content and design is plain - and this gives me great pain.-MP

C+