The Dispatch from Moline, Illinois • 69

SUNDAY, JULY 28. 1996 THE DISPATCH AND THE ROCK ISLAND ARGUS 5 MUSICTECHNOLOGY CP reviews on Q-C Online The ultimate buzz for music fans Woodstock veteran puts together a music disc to blow away all music discs yp 1 1 jjsi I -ct cvj 1 1 vv. Lr ,5 1 I Xti Want to get the skinny on the latest music releases? Now you can get reviews of hot new rock, pop, jazz, rap and country CDs each week on" Quad Cities Online. Log on and check out the entertainment menu under music reviews. This week we feature reviews of the following discs: HARRY CONNICK JR.

"Star Turtle." Columbia PSYCHOTICA "Psychoti-ca." American ELECTRONIC "Raise the Pressure." Warner Bros. QUAD CITY DJ'S "Get on Up and Dance." Big BeatAtlantic KRISTINE "Land of the Living." RCA BKJ 3 tmW I Orange County Register At the start, there was no grand plan to change the world. Michael Wadleigh just got frustrated that he couldn't find the music he wanted. Music is important to Wadleigh. After all, he was the director of one of the most celebrated concert films of the '70s, "Woodstock." And just as he helped galvanize the flower-power generation, he's hoping to hook up to the computer-powered generation with "ROCKnROM: the Ultimate Database of Popular Music." The single disc, selling for $1,500, has a depth not found anywhere else in terms of music information, sources and deep databases all cross-referenced in a way where a consumer can custom-create almost any package of music-related information.

"If we are indeed in the Information Age, the central problem is there's too damn much of it. How do I find my way through it?" said Wadleigh, 53. When it comes to music, "either you can give up and say there's so many CDs coming out each month that I'm going to glom onto my favorite magazine and do what the editors say." Or? "We're taking the other point of view. We're trying to give you tools so you can find what you want to find. I don't want to open up Rolling Stone and go by what those editors say.

And I don't want to just give up and not stay current." And you could find it before, but it took a lot more digging. In the interest of preserving rock history, greed or anything. It won't care if it's a piece of music or a video or a book. I think that's the future of searching." Think of this scenario when Wadleigh finishes the next two phases of the project cataloging the history of film, then cataloging books. One could type in "despair" and "suicide" and come up with hundreds of entries, from Nine Inch Nails' CD "The Downward Spiral" to Nicolas Cage in the film "Leaving Las Vegas" to J.D.

Salinger's short story "A Perfect Day for Ba-nanafish." Said Wadleigh, "I showed this to the chief librarian of the British Library system. He said 'We need this for all of our library materials'," Wadleigh said. So when can you play with this $1,500 tool-toy? Eventually "ROCKnROM" will go on the Internet. Before then, Wadleigh expects to see chains such as Tower and Blockbuster set up systems in their stores using the CD-ROM to allow their customers to browse. "You can go in and grab ahold of Hole or Garbage or anything and really have fun, not only analyzing them but profiling the group and their lyrics and musical complements, then finding other things," Wadleigh said.

"You can say, 'Hey, why do I like this and analyze your own tastes. It's just an analysis tool we're producing. People aren't used to analytical tools except in science. Applying them in popular culture is something that could be rewarding, both creatively and for business." From Mariah Carey to Madonna to Courtney Love of Hole, ROCKnROM covers the gamut of pop music. Wadleigh has put in one spot the entire database of Billboard's legendary charts.

Altogether, the system cross-references 500 million bits of music information. Virtually any obscure musical factrecordinggenre can be found. Check out everything from Swedish death-metal bands to Mariah Carey, and a concept analysis feature that will pull up similar themes in the works of artists as diverse as Madonna, Guns N' Roses andBabaMaal. Of course, changing the world wasn't the plan, either, when Wadleigh was involved in the original Woodstock event in 1969. But change the world it did, for those who argue that the muddy concert was the pinnacle of the Age of Aquarius, and for the music industry, which suddenly realized there was more money to be made from rock than it ever imagined.

Whatever the societal fallout, for filmmaker Wadleigh it meant the freedom to do what he wants. "For better or worse, the original Woodstock was highly altruistic," Wadleigh said. "I was a civil-rights filmmaker at the time. It was an age where there was the possibility' of other values than money." Ironically, "it was because I made money that I was able to stay altruistic," he noted. "I made my first millions with Woodstock 25 years ago, and I've never blown it." With "ROCKnROM," Wadleigh not only helps users find virtually any music with the click of a mouse, but he may have altered the way the world's libraries, museums and computer databases catalog information.

But because of its cost, it's not something available at every corner computer store, and it's not designed for home use at all. "It's obviously a professional product for musicians, studios, DJs, recording enterprises," Wadleigh said. "The whole idea is you can search by concept. I want things that are about dogs, or envy or Braxton scores her first No. 1 hit Another cover: Tlaygirl' tabs singer as hot Dallas Morning News Those "deep aquamarine eyes." That strawberry-blond hair.

Those pecs. They belong to rock band Deep Blue Something's Todd Pipes, whose bare chest dominates the cover of August's Playgirl magazine, on some newsstands now. A story on 1996's "10 Hottest Rockers" asks the crucial question: Which dude goes nude? Alas, not the "sexy, soulful" Pipes. "I said, 'That's not going to he says. "They couldn't get me to pose naked." Playgirl's staff was entranced by the singer's "upbeat, sexy looks," says editor Judy Cole.

"We look to see who's got stuff that's looking hot," she says. "We were aware of the band's single at When we approached them, they said And when we saw the pictures, it was 'Hoo, Pipes, whose eyes are described as "simultaneously challenging and alluring," is profiled along with other "hot rockers" such as White Zombie's John Tempesta, Goo Goo Dolls' Johnny Rzeznik and Father MC (who does "go 'NET NOTES ploded, and plenty have leaked week, they're running 1-2 again, but with Braxton in the top spot. Back on the pop out to the collectors. The Prince Bootleg Page gets more and more amazing as the weeks go by, with detailed information on his live shows and the new songs, some of which KISS fans can find another batch of photos from the band's first in-makeup appearance in years in Irvine, Calif. Go to http:www.pe.net bigdavekroq.html.

Big Dave, proprietor of the page, had put up some photos within hours of the event, but there's a whole new selection there now. You can check out Big Dave's homepage at http:www.pe.netbigdavemain With a lot of recent Prince activity, as well as his coming new album, the number of unreleased recordings and songs have ex- the best looks at an artist's output and muse, check out the page at http:www.unik.nomariushbo otlegs.html. From there you'll find links to much more than you ever wanted to know, but at least it all focuses strictly on the music. Be warned; if you're going to look at the whole bootleg list, it's getting up near a half-million bytes. For those who do a lot of audio taping, go to http:www.gla.ac.ukgkrxllBr uceCovers.html to download some free software that helps you make customized labels for those tapes.

Knight-RidderTribune News Service Just when it looked like Toni Braxton would be forever known as Ms. No. 2, she pulled off a big shocker this week by finally scoring the first No. 1 pop hit of her career. The record that finally did it for her is the two-sided single "You're Makin' Me High'V'Let It Flow," which had spent five straight weeks at No.

2. 2Pac's "How Do Want Love" slipped out of the top spot. Braxton also got an unexpected return to No. 1 on the singles list, where her "High'V'Flow" had ruled for one week before being knocked down to her usual spot No. 2 by the 2Pac single.

This list.a new single made strong a debut that stamped it as a future No. 1 contender. Blowing in at No. 6 was yet another two-sided single: Alanis Morissette's "You Learn," backed with the acoustic version Prince Toni Braxton appear on his new album, many more that don't. For one of of her hit, "You Oughta Know." LIVJooO Lju(IL Whip, whirl and swoosh on the greatest collection or naes on Earth, including Viper, one of the Top 5 Roller Coasters in the World according to Inside Track Magazine, seven additional exhilarating roller coasters and four super-soaking water rides.

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