The excellent Cool And Strange Music Magazine may be sadly deceased but they’ve bequeathed us an online version of their Thrift Shop compilation at www.danacountryman.com/coolandstrange/comp.html

Boasting “31 of the most wacked-out obscure recordings we’ve ever heard”, the hot MP3 action includes Lil’ Markie’s ‘Diary Of An Unborn Child’ (fundamentalist Christian alert!), The Four Skins’ ‘It’s Beginning To Look Like Syphalis’, Aunt Bertha & Tiny Tot Calvin’s ‘Cowboy For Jesus’, Pacho The Parrot’s ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’ and Caught In The Net’s fave, Buck Ritchie’s ‘The Slave’.

“This is a Vietnam-era, anti pot-smoking, anti-hippie rant,” says the blurb. “Ol’ Buck was probably a card-carrying member of the NRA, I just have a hunch.”

A magazine that’s very much alive and online is www.missminx.com

“Having been in a grrl rock band for a while now, I can tell you first-hand that being a female musician is not an easy thing,” says the editor of the estrogen-powered ‘zine. “You get viewed with a mix of awe (wow, that’s soooo cool), ignorance (so, you’re lesbians then), disbelief (really?) or plain dumb-ass stupidity (girls just can’t rock like guys). It’s the latter reaction that gets me in a Hulk-like rage. Sometimes, just occasionally, I think it’d be nice for things to even out a little bit, to let some equally talented and more charismatic female grace the cover of rock mags. And I’m not just talking about Avril frickin’ Lavigne.”

It mightn’t have a staple through its middle, but MissMinx.com is as sharply written as anything you’ll read on the newstands with Atomic Kitten, Alanis Morissette, No Doubt,
The Bellrays, River Schools and The Vandals interviewed and/or dissected with surgical precision.

Which just leaves us with time to mention www.buggeroff.org/dental.html
(aaaaaargh…home dentistry!); www.winkelman.co.uk (daft Tone, Dubya and Sadaam animation); and www.stupidanimals.co.uk (Robert Smith lookalike cows, anyone?) b