Blog Names: The Late Greats

Wilco: The Late Greats

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The Late Greats was one the first blogs that garnered a bookmark upon my discovery of this wing of the web. The Duke of Straw does the writing, and while his words are often brief, the qualities of the songs speak for themselves. As the Wilco song the blog is named for might suggest, The Late Greats often features tunes you won’t hear on the radio - or anywhere else in the blogosphere for that matter. He’s single-handedly turned me on to large a number of artists that I wouldn’t know about otherwise.

Some of my favorite aspects of The Late Greats are the recurring post topics. Wayback Wednesdays, Compare/Contrast, and Homonyms are some of the templates The Duke regularly injects great music into. Well put together mixes, features on Canadian/Australian artists, and Guilty Pleasures (hot female crooners) are some of the other posts that keep me coming back. But one of the most unique and useful idea The Duke has come up with is Digging Through the Live Music Archive (So You Don’t Have To), which is exactly what it sounds like. Taking a few queues from this music-blog veteran - The Late Greats has been posting since early ’06 – I have some similar recurring post themes over at my place.

What sets The Late Greats even further apart from other music blogs are the occasional original compositions mixed in with the tunes. The Duke and his wife Coconut are part-time musicians. Some of their work can be found here.

Currently, The Late Greats is in the midst of a Mix Week. They’re pulling older mixes from the archives to bring you an unprecedented amount of musical goodness. It’s blogs like this one that got me started and continue to remind me what community music sharing is all about.