Site news: A little spring cleaning, and a calendar update

Over the weekend, I had a chance to do some updating and spring cleaning around the site.

The first task was updating the local links sections on the right sidebar, with extensive revisions to the "Bands and Musicians" and "Concerts, Clubs and Festivals" categories. This (finally!) takes care of a big backlog in links to be added, and I also went through and deleted any dead links in those sections.

(If you've sent a link to be added in recent weeks, and it's not up there now, please re-send, as your request may have fallen through the proverbial cracks.)

Next, I got rid of Sphere, a plug-in that, for any given post, was supposed to pull up related stories from the web, but that never really worked all that well.

It's been replaced with LinkWithin, another plug-in that is supposed to serve up links to relevant related posts from within StLJN's own archives. So far, the selections it's pulling up seem to be somewhat random, but the software's authors say that after installation, it takes a while for it to crawl a site's archives and index everything. The plan is give it a couple of weeks, and see if there's any improvement in the relevance of the links.

Also added is what Facebook calls a "like box," which links to and shows how many people "like" StLJN's Facebook page. It also let readers "like" the FB page from the main StLJN site. I've also changed the mix of ads on the site, getting rid of some, adding some others and moving some things around on the page.

There may be some more small changes to the layout as additional tweaks are made, but even if things look a little funny for a short time, basic functionality should still be fine.

UPDATE - 5:30 p.m., 4/3/12: Almost forgot to mention that the old "AddThis" gadget that lets you easily share StLJN posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media has been replaced with a newer version. It appears at the bottom of each post, and also includes icons to let you email and/or print the specific post with one click. To avoid redundancy, the "email a post" function built into Blogger has been disabled.

Lastly, updates of the StLJN calendar for April and beyond are underway, and should be completed in the next day or so. If you're a jazz musician, band, venue or presenter, you can get your gigs on the calendar just by sending your information via email to stljazznotes @ yahoo . com.

Site news: Return to the land of linkin'

The section of St. Louis jazz-related links on the right sidebar has just gotten a long overdue update, with new entries in every category.

In the "Bands and Musicians" section, there now are links for The 4 City Saxes, singer Ann Dueren, singer Carmen Emborski, saxophonist Larry Johnson, singer/guitarist Elliott Ranney, singer Christy Simmons, Sound Unlimited, Three Central, and pianist Stephanie Trick, as well as revised links to new web addresses for singer and keyboardist Curt Landes and singer Brian Owens.

In the "Clubs, Concerts & Festivals" section, links have been added for music venues 2720 Cherokee and the Ambassador Events Center and cabaret promoters The Presenters Dolan.

In "Radio, Records and More," there's a new link to composer John Tamm-Buckle's label Kvist Records, which features electronic music, free improv and more.

Under "Products, Services and Resources for Musicians," links have been added for custom electric bass purveyor CertainBass, the Missouri Association for Jazz Education, the Musicians Association of St. Louis Local 2-197, St. Louis Music Classified, and the St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts.

And in the "From St. Louis to The Universe" section, you'll now find links to bassist Mark Peterson, singer Lynne Fiddmont and saxophonist and composer John Zorn, who once studied here at Webster University.

Also, a few dead links have been pruned, and a couple of misdirected ones fixed. The next spring blog improvement project here at StLJN will be adding some new stuff in the "More Jazz And Creative Music Links" and "Jazz Blogs of Note"sections, plus expanding the "Jazz Notes From All Over" section. More on that later in the week...

In the meantime, if you find any dead links anywhere on the sidebar, please alert yr. humble editor with an email to stljazznotes @ yahoo . com. (Remove the extra spaces inserted to foil spammers.) And, as always, if you have suggestions for other jazz-related sites that StLJN should link to, please send them via email to the same address.

Site news: Land o' linkin' 2009

The start of a new year is always a good time to spruce things up a bit, and so there's been some routine maintenance to the list of links on the St. Louis Jazz Notes sidebar, over on the right-hand side of the page.

A few dead links have been deleted, and I've added new links in several sections. Locally speaking, in the "bands and musicians" category, links have been added for Funky Butt Brass Band, Orange, Pfeffer Trio, St. Louis Rivermen, Utter Chaos, and Wackadoo Swing; guitarists Pete Lombardo and Art Ruprecht; saxophonist Jason Swagler; keyboardist Mo Egeston; and percussionists/vibists Mike and Nick Szwedo. And in the "concerts, clubs and festivals" category, there are new links to Black Cat Theatre, Cabaret St. Louis, Casual Cabaret, Mildred E. Kemper Art Museum, Jimmy's Cafe on the Park, Peppertini's and the monthly St. Louis Jazz and Blues Vespers series.

In the "other local/regional jazz sites" section, you can see what's up on three more local scenes by visiting Madison (WI) Jazz, Prague Jazz, and Jakarta Jazz. Under "more jazz and creative music links," the new additions are the fusion/prog rock/world music site Abstract Logix and the traditional jazz haven Riverwalk Jazz. Last but certainly not least, under "jazz blogs of note," you'll now find links to Hot House, JazzWax, Saxophone People, and Talkin' Jazz Radio.

As always, dear readers, please feel free to suggest additional jazz and creative music-related links by sending an email to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com.

(Edited after posting to add a couple more links I'd forgotten.)

Site news: The land of linkin'

It's been a while since the last update of the StLJN sidebar, and so there's a bunch of new stuff there for you to check out. In the "Bands and Musicians" section, trombonist/producer Lamar Harris has an updated Web address, and I've added new links to the sites of singer Kevin Bowser, violinist Nikki Glenn and saxophonist Mark Casey.

Elsewhere on the local front, I've added new links in the appropriate sections for the soon-to-open live music venue The Gramophone; improvising musician Eric Hall's label Echolocation Recordings; Tony Renner's new jazz radio program on KWUR, The Scientific Method; and Arts Zipper, the online cultural calendar from the Regional Arts Commission.

A special shoutout goes to Steve Pick, local music journalist, radio host, record-store-guy and man-about-town, who was kind enough link to StLJN last week from Lockwood & Summit, the blog for his retail home-away-from-home Euclid Records. Lockwood & Summit - the title refers to the store's location - includes posts from owner Joe Schwab (a very knowledgeable jazz fan), Steve and other Euclid Records staff blogging about some of their favorite music, as well as various bits of news and promotional stuff for the store. (The permanent link from StLJN to there will be in the "Other Sites You May Enjoy" section.)

Big thanks also to internationally known jazz journalist Howard Mandel, who stopped by here a couple of weeks ago to comment on a post, and subsequently blogrolled StLJN over at his online joint Jazz Beyond Jazz. I've added Mandel's site to the "Jazz Blogs of Note" section, and also updated the link for Jazz St. Louis' blog so it now points to the organization's current site instead of a long-dead Blogspot address.

In addition to all of the above, the sidebar section for Local/Regional Jazz Sites has been updated to include new links to sites covering Portland, OR; Toronto; Brisbane, Australia; and Manchester, England.

By way of further maintenance, I've also deleted a few dead links from the sidebar, and over the next few days will be going through the various sections one by one to remove any others that may be non-functioning, out of date, or otherwise irrelevant.

And while we're on the subject of deleted links, the recent redesign of the "blog zone" at STLtoday spelled doom for the generic blogroll that linked to StLJN from all the various blogs there. Now that the entire section has been reworked to run under WordPress (with some some presumably low-traffic blogs discontinued), each of the remaining blogs can now have its own blogroll, and so far, none of them have linked to this site. While the old link never resulted in a huge surge of traffic over here, it was fairly steady in providing at least a few visitors every day. Thus, I'm sorry to see it go, while also remaining grateful that someone over there decided to include a link to StLJN in the first place.

Finally, as always, if you've got jazz-related links, local or otherwise, that you think might be appropriate for StLJN, please send them along via email to stljazznotes (at) yahoo (dot) com and I'll take a look.