Other Links from Incompletely Conspicuous

Now, what would a non-commerical website be without a big, rambling, self-indulgent list of links?

For links to the source publications for the articles, see Source List. For links to some artists and bands that have worked with TPOH, see Pursuit Pals. For almost but not quite everything else, you're in the right place.

Other TPOH-related sites

The Wonderful www of The Pursuit of Happiness: As noted elsewhere in this site, Rob Winder is a tenacious web surfer whose ability for digging stuff up continually astounds me and my fellow mailing listers. At the time I started work on my site, Rob was doing some first-class scrounging for his own links list. While I've used some of his links for my nefarious purposes, some fell in the cracks for me, but are worth your own bout of treasure-hunting.
Loveslaves: The Pursuit of Happiness Mailing List: We're not a very boisterous lot with a bunch of wacky dreams and theories to stuff your inbox, but we're bright kids with great dedication and a hell of a lot of patience. If this sounds like you (you poor thing), our fearless leader, the charming life-force known as Amit Saha, has now moved us to Yahoo Groups so you can conveniently jump on rickety train of love.
Bad MonkeyX TPOH Reviews: (this site is moving, and is unavailable right now. We'll let you know when it's back, and you can get its Monteforte mp3s on the Monteforte page.) While this lovely music webzine isn't strictly about TPOH, the career overview, reviews of all the albums (including Summer's Over) and Monteforte page earn it a place here.

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Other bands

The Real Danny Michel Page: Musician, singer/songwriter, webmaster, ex-Starling guitarist/keyboardist, YakBak sampler, slot car and Columbo devotee, Bowie disciple and the cutest damn tennis ball boy in all of music video. (AND NOW HE'S NOMINATED FOR A FREAKIN' JUNO AWARD! WOO-HOO!) He once opened for Moe, who later turned me on to him, and I'm eternally indebted. Each gig leaves my heart light, my smirk softened and my brain gently shaken. And Incompletely Conspicuous may not have gotten up without his clear CD in my CD-ROM drive. If you load up this snazzy-ass flash site (though you can get good info from the entry page beforehand), you can hear three tracks off his current album, but we also recommend clicking on the phone for the excellent answering machine messages.
El Sitio Web de Falsificacion Danny Michel: This is allegedly a fansite for Danny made by these wacky kids who met him when he was on vacation in Mexico and adored him so much they took over his .ca domain that he'd had before he got his present snazzy-ass flash site listed above. Yet somehow they happen to have a lot of the very neat stuff that was on his old site (foreign radio interviews, etc.) and a brilliant "Who the hell is Danny Michel?" video cut with ultra-exclusive footage taken throughout his long and storied career. Hmmmm..... Mystery and hilarity closely aligned.
Ben Folds Online: Fine, so my second favourite band on Earth has broken up, but its leader is back in the fray. Get news and samples from the solo album Rockin' the Suburbs.
Frank Maynard's Ben Folds Five site: Still keeping up with everything involving my second favourite band on earth (which, again, has broken up...sniffle sniffle) is the wise and very patient leader of the Magical Armchair mailing list.
Large Mound: "Moe wrote short simple and meaningful songs about life / And most of the time he got it right / Words like conciousness over A, G and D / After two albums faded into obscurity...." So wrote Anthony Mackey in "I Thought You Were Dead," by these scruffy Irishmen with the lo-fi sound and the power-pop brain. You just have to visit a site by a band that wrote a song about the Pursuits and has had a guitar player named "Six Cans For a Fiver," even if they didn't have cool downloads.
Nine Inch Nails: Yeah, it doesn't fit in this list, but you gotta be visceral sometimes. And it's a Cleveland thing. Also not the least obscure band on the web - the link above is to the more-or-less official site in association with nothing records. There's also the fan site (though that term seems an injustice) Painful Convictions. As far as websites are concerned, these guys are grad students and I just made it outta kindergarten, Front Page Express in my Elmo backpack.
Rogier's Police Page: The band that first kicked my head in so I'd notice I had a brain in there. (And they never officially broke up...sound familiar?) This Dutch site is simple but thick with info, kinda like the site you're at now. The Stingchronicity site is snazzier, but c'mon - Sting is in the title, for God's sake!
National Arts Centre Orchestra Tour 2000 Multimedia: So my friend in Ottawa filmed their tour of Europe and the Middle East, and I discovered possibly the most kick-ass website for any orchestra anywhere. Quit whining. Download the Beethoven Symphony No. 1 mp3s and thank me later.
The Supers: The purest power pop this side of Marshall Crenshaw with a website every bit as ingenious and cute (with brilliant artwork by Toronto legend Kurt Swinghammer). Never mind the fact that Maury (one of the most in-demand bassists in T.O.) has played with Danny Michel in Starling and the Wedding Band, and Graham unwittingly contributed a sound card to the birth of I.C's MP3 of the Week.

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Other music stuff

MapleMusic: Sure, links for this are all over this site, now that TPOH and Moe Berg have their own little home there. But it's worth noting here because more and more, this is becoming the place to be for Canadian artists who seem to fall through the marketing cracks. Enjoy all the bios, sounds and merch from an array of genius Canucks from Cowboy Junkies to Hawksley Workman to Moxy Fruvous to Rheostatics to that Danny Michel kid listed up above in this list. Look for many of the Pursuit Pals there too.
Chart Attack: Powered by my old buddies at Chart Magazine, this is the best source to learn about what's going on in Canadian music, onstage and in the boardrooms. Also has the listings for Love Junk and "I'm an Adult Now" among the Top 100 Greatest Canadian Albums and Singles of All Time.
UmbrellaMusic: Like their friends MapleMusic, Umbrella is all about fabulous Canadian music, but they're also all about multimedia: news, interviews, videos and radio streamed on Windows Media Player and lots of mp3s (hey, they're the ones who tipped me that there's a WMP for the Mac!). Admittedly, there's a smattering of old-fashioned text in the form of commentary and a message board.
Muchmusic's Much News: The best part of the Muchmusic site (though the interview transcriptions are pretty cool) is this frequently-updated list of entertainment stories, even including handy categories. When looking things up, you'll likely run across lots of other bookmark-worthy sites.
MTV News: Man, I remember the days I could go online every week and get the transcript to "The Week in Rock". It was like I could hear Kurt Loder's world-weary voice embuing me with knowledge. (Wistful sigh.) Well, it's still a pretty useful place.
North By Northeast: Younger sister to South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, this conference and festival takes over Toronto every June with hundreds of bands sharing wisdom (or lack thereof) and playing their asses off. Of course, TPOH has played in it, and Moe is a perennial panel-member. Oh, and be nice to the helpful volunteers, cuz I've been one of them.
Songwriters Association of Canada: In our Features section, particularly through the columns Moe has written for Canadian Musician, Incompletely Conspicuous fancies itself as providing a bit of wisdom for songwriters and bands about somehow making it through your chosen wacky life. If you're Canadian, the SAC can really help you. Known best as the gang who put on the Bluebird North series, they have a variety of services to help you find your voice and fight for your rights.

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Other sources of information

Canoe: Yes, this is also on the Source List for all the articles from the Sun newspapers of Canada and for the TPOH biography in the Canadian Pop Encyclopedia, but there are a myriad of other things to discover in there. From the Soundscan charts to live streaming to original comedy to the hockey pool to the stocks to the TV listing database, these kids have the country covered.
Pulse24.com: An addictive TV station called CP24 is the best idea Citytv god Moses Znaimer has come up with since...well, that thing where the anchorpeople have no desks and stuff. If you want to know what's happening in Toronto RIGHT NOW (news, weather, traffic, etc.), this is where you go.
toronto.com: For the weekly vibe on what's going on in this fabulous town, there's Now and eye (the latter especially for the club listings grid), and you can check for them in the Source List. For the daily update, however, as well as more touristy things, this is the first place to go. Also associated tightly with The Toronto Star.
Virtuecast.com: The Canadian arm of Britain's Virtue Broadcasting, these guys provide fine live and archived streaming from the worlds of music, film, comedy and even business. Thanks to them, lots of folks around the world have seen Moe in this year's NXNE Songwriters Circle. Also the place to find the wacky Trailervision.
CBC: Ahh, the Mother Corp. Tax dollars well spent. Encorporating all the wonders of CBC TV and Radio. News like crazy, and everything about every show under their banners. My fave sites here are for the radio shows Definitely Not the Opera and Radiosonic (the latter counts Moe among their many friends, for good reason).
Mapquest: It's helped me find gigs on more than a few occasions.

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Other geek tools

CNET.com: For every platform, for every level of knowledge: news, instruction, downloads coming out the ass. There should be a button on everyone's browser that goes directly to this thing.
For Dummies: Yup - most of my webmaster expertise came from my reading Creating Web Pages For Dummies on a train ride from Winnipeg to Toronto. (Hands up - who could tell? Yeah, I thought so.) That's also where I got some of the utilities that nudged me forward: the Ant Template, Paint Shop Pro, WebLater and HTMLValidator.
MacAddict: My transition from PC to Mac has been not unlike puberty - ick. This magazine has been my Judy Blume. News, hints, reviews, communities, hand-holding and the requisite snarkiness. Also, the kids at Apple home office are pretty good at helping out, so it's well worth going to their Support section.
Free Stuff Center: Absolutely invaluable, despite the fact you may never be able to tear yourself away from it. Among the zillions of links are my beloved TheCounter.com and the Cool Graphics site I have linked at the bottom of this site's home page.
Web Developers Virtual Library: Helping out this very slow learning curve of mine, there's wisdom there for every level of knowledge.

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Other miscellany

CIC Canada - Immigrating to Canada: So why on Earth would someone from the U.S., let alone anyone else, want to immigrate to Canada? Ideally, one just does. That's how it was with me. If you want to as well, God help you, and check out this government site.
Homestar Runner!: So last fall, we were at a 6 Ross party, and someone said, "Hey, have you seen the Homestar Runner site?" And Chris Murphy and us said, "uh, no." So we went upstairs to the computer and they cranked it up and we all laughed so hard we cried. And that was more than two months before Entertainment Weekly said it was cool. We swear. No lie. Really. Strong Bad emails rock wicked hard.
Salon.com: Even if you don't subscribe to their Premium service (buggers!), there's plenty of intelligent writing to feast on in this online everyday Sunday paper. And since you're a TPOH fan, the Sex section is always a must.
Vice Magazine: One could call this a "men's" magazine, if it didn't sometimes do things that were so frigging brilliant. Fashion, music, sex; lunkheaded, offensive and genius observations on everything. And Charlie Rose wrote a nice letter to them, for God's sake! And if nothing else, check out the "Vice Guide to Happiness."
The Official Peanuts Home Page: Because before there was Moe Berg, there was Charlie Brown.
Hint Fashion Magazine: A fashion site so cool, it's unlikely any of us are really cool enough to be looking at it, but that's the beauty of the internet. Highlights include the "Inside Trax" music section and "Chic Happens," the nastiest fashion gossip column anywhere.

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