IUMA

I recently ran across a piece at Wired.com that I had missed when it came out. The news was that IUMA was back. That prompted me to go digging through my CD/DVD archives. What I found was two CDs dated 2002. (As a result, I now know that CDs last at least 10 years as an archive media.)

IUMA was an early musicians’ website that offered unsigned musicians a route to making their music available to a wider audience. The IUMA acronym is the short form of Internet Underground Music Archive and it began in  ‘93. The Wired article said that  IUMA had gone through several owners but had ended up – most recently – at archive.org. Excellent news! As you should/may well know, media at archive.org is either Public Domain or Creative Commons.

Back in ’02, I had collected and backed up my IUMA files because I thought  they were good. If you take a look at the “browse” option at archive.org’s IUMA section, you’ll see that the collection  includes some off-the-wall band names – you’d be right to think twice before digging deeper: Pulled Groin, Gear Box Enterainment (sic), Pukey and the Vomets – the names themselves are astounding, and there are many 100s of them.

In the “Browse” listing, you’ll see only a single (1) for most bands, but if you proceed, you’ll see that most bands’ links include more than one song. Some bands’ archives extend to 100s of MB of mp3s. I haven’t been through them all, so my posting here is based on my CD archives (and I checked: most of them are among those that have been transferred from IUMA to archive.org.) The collection is so large/extensive, that I will sort/select and comment more at a later date.

Because my own musical tastes are eclectic, the selection I highlight here is also “mixed”. I think you’ll find it worth your time. I will confess before you proceed, that my “bent” at that time appears to have been more country/folk than my overall taste leans to.

Bruce Adams: My Heart Is Like The Sun (appears to not be online at archive.org yet).

Andy Rau Band: The Jackson County

Bob Irwin Jazz Guitar: Desafinado

Hair of the Dog: The Old Black Rum

Again these are all from my 2002 archived CDs and with the exception of the Bruce Adams file, are all still online @ archive/IUMA