Advice needed …Is there an online site that gives information of what musician plays on album tracks and what instrument they play? My CD buying has all but ceased (Spotify and Qobuz being my replacement) but I miss the minutiae of album info found on the CD insert
Any pointers would be gratefully received, cheers all.
Album Info – Online Resource ?
by 18 Comments
Discogs.com
They usually include credits provided they are included on the original LP sleeve or CD Booklet. You can often also click a musician and find out what else they played on and credits on any other release. Same with producers, remixers, even designers. Data quality varies but Discogs is pretty well verified by its huge user base
Discogs are good but so is Allmusic and even Wikipaedia as possible alternatives.
These are the 3 I’d go for.
Discogs is definitely the first port of call, if you draw a blank there AllMusic is very well appointed.
Wikipedia is good for quick reference, but may only go deep with the big boys and girls of this world we call Pop
Another vote for discogs. It’s fabulous for buying second hand records as well. You can set up a wishlist and you get a regular email telling you if anything on your list has come up for sale.
Mind you, it can get expensive. Most people will charge a set postage fee for, say, posting up to six records, so I always end up browsing what else a seller has available… just to get my money’s worth, you know!
I do that.
Yup, Discogs is the first port of call here.
I tend to go first to Allmusic which invariably has the answers.
Sleeve credits aren’t always the gospel truth. On the sessions I did, it was on the whim of the artist or record company, that one got any credit. Reasons for being left off would be vanity (played the whole thing themself), or money (no credit, no evidence).
I wish there was a database of studio sessions, listing the session players. Jimmy Page and other’s diaries from the 70s would be quite revelatory. It would take a bit of extrapolation because many session guys never knew who was going to sing on the recordings they were playing on. Incidentally, I have heard Danny Thompson played on “Congratulations” by Cliff. Often they would use a bass guitarist and double bass player to make the “click and boom” sound of the late 60s.
I use discogs but finding your way around (especially back) isn’t obvious. To get all the info, you need to bring up every release of that album, because it’s not always shown on the first. Sometimes later (and foreign) releases will have information that the original lacks.
I generally user Wikipedia or Discogs, plus I have an ancient paperback called something like The Book of Rock somewhere which is basically just loads of early 70s credits in book form.
Many thanks all for your help, I will use the options suggested!
The other one of course is Google it and look through the images – I’ve found decent readable images of the back cover in the absence of anything else.
In case you also hanker after a printed compendium of useful record facts, up in the loft at Foxy towers I have a few volumes of the tome known as Musicmaster. This was a huuuuuge (the last one I have is about 4 inches thick, printed on really thin good quality paper) bright red hardback monster that used to come out yearly or so, a copy of which was held by most proper record shops. I think the thing was still being printed into the 1990s.
Fantastic amount of detail in there. You can find a second hand copy of one of the later editions on eBay for less than the price of a pint in that London – well worth a punt, and will give more pleasure than even a well looked after ESB at room temperature.
This was a feature at Virgin Records, back when it was a record shop, with seats with their own headphones, and a rack of music magazines, and a manager who actually knew his business and was pleased to order obscure stuff. Somewhere to hang out. That didn’t last long, did it?
We had Musicmaster even in my day working for the man in a megastore and Our Price. It was indeed a huge tome. We used it for tracking down records (ask your dad) …it definitely had catalogue numbers and distributors/labels.. it was a work of art.
A side issue, but does anyone else, when googling information about a band, studiously avoid the band’s own website?
Often there’s no biography, and little about the members individually. It’s all tours, photos, and merchandise, with links to FB and Insta accounts. All well and good – they’ve got to live.
…but little use when trying to find out more about them and their history.
It depends really what genre of music you’re into – I’ve always found Vernon Joynson’s books (Tapestry of Delights (British music 63 – 76), Fuzz Acid and Flowers (US music 63-77) and the latest volume A sharp shock to the system (British punk, new wave etc 76-86) most invaluable.
The books are expensive but beautifully presented on good quality paper and a valuable addition to any library.