Web Author: Jeff Hofman

By way of a change I have decided to review an American Website for this edition of Manifesto. 'Dusties' is a Soul show on KSER radio which broadcasts on a Friday Evening between 8 and 10 pm Pacific Standard Time. For anyone interested the show can be picked up via an audio link on the website itself. Unfortunately I am not sure as to how Pacific Standard Time translates to Greenwich Mean Time. Jeff Hoffman, the programme's DJ has developed the website to promote his show.

The home page is written in a very functional brown text on a plain white background, which is nice and easy to read. The wavelength details and a hyperlink for picking up live broadcasts follow the introductory title. When I tested this link the show wasn't being broadcast but I had no problem in accessing KSER's live coverage of a baseball game. The home page is completed with some acknowledgements and the main menu options. These are: Sign Guestbook; Read Guestbook; Playlists; Music Links; Top 25 R&B Artists by Decade; KSER 90.7 FM; Top 25 R&B Artists by Decade; Upcoming Soul Releases; #1 R&B Hits; Unknown Originals; Photo Gallery. The main faults with this home page are that the menu options are not sufficiently differentiated which makes it difficult to distinguish one from another and there is no logical explanation as to why "Top 25 R&B Artists by Decade" appears twice.

As one would expect the 'Photo Gallery' contains photographs of sixties and seventies Soul Stars, eight very big pages of them. I didn't visit them all, but I suspect that if anybody is looking for a picture of a particular soul artist this would be a good place to start. Rather less obvious is Jeff's '#1 R&B Hits' in which he lists every record that topped Billboard's R&B Charts between 1942 and 1974. Jeff has identified 1974 as the year that 'soul' died and 'Disco' took over and he refuses to have anything to do with R&B releases after that date, a policy with which I have every sympathy. The information he gives about each record is:- its name; the artist who sang it; the date that it reached number one and the number of weeks it stayed there. My only queery is why there only appears to be 49 or 50 weeks in every year?

Visitors to most sites usually tend to ignore the 'Links' page, probably because most British Webs all link to each other and therefore tend to be pretty much the same. Being American however this one is somewhat different, it not only includes a wealth of new references but also a much greater diversity. There was even one dedicated to Blue-Eyed Soulster Mitch Rider. Now if that's not obscure tell me what is.

By selecting 'Playlists' the surfer finds themselves confronted with the dates of every show which have been transmitted. These dates are themselves hyperlinks to the track listings for each individual show. Some of them were based on themes such as "Tribute to Johnny Taylor" or "Celebration of Stevie Wonder's Fiftieth Birthday", but in the main the music seems to have been selected randomly, according to the DJ's preference. Personally I thought the breath of music was excellent and taking his show of April 21^st as a typical example it included such Northern Stompers as 'Baby Reconsider' by Leon Haywood, 'Just a Little Misunderstanding' by The Contours and 'Landslide' by Tony Clarke. There were also classical Stax numbers such as 'In the Rain' by the Dramatics, Funky numbers such as 'Let The Music Take Your Mind' by Kool and the Gang, and Gentle Philly like William De Vaughn's 'Be Thankful For What You Got'.

The KSER 90.7 FM option is an external link to the site of the Radio station itself. There wasn't anything of a soulful nature here so I quickly returned to 'Dusties' take a look at the 'Upcoming Soul Releases'. This concentrated heavily on classic Soul Re-issues, but as they were American I didn't dwell too long on this page either. Of much more interest was the 'Unknown Soul & R&B Originals' which listed many big Pop hits, usually for White Artists, which had originally been big flops for Soul Bands. A good example of this was Manfred Mann's smash hit 'Do Wah Diddy' which had originally been cut by the Exciters. Details of both the originals and the re-issues are given and makes interesting reading. It really brings home to the surfer how much white bands exploited the music of Black America.

Although I found much of interest on this site its highlight for me was unquestionably the two "Top 25 R&B Artists by Decade" pages. They are both logically organised in the form of neat, easily read tables. The first identifies the top 25 soul artists from each decade (1940 - 1970). The results are based upon the highest position their records reached and the number of weeks they stayed there. The formula for allocating points is clearly explained at the bottom of the page. According to these charts the top three acts of the forties, in descending order, were Louis Jordan, Nat King Cole and the Ink spots. I was surprised to see Elvis included in the 50's chart, but was pleased that he only ran a poor second to Fats Domino. The sixties saw Ray Charles beating Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and Aretha Franklin. I was also amazed that Bobby Bland hit eighth spot above Jackie Wilson, Otis Redding and The Impressions. The second of Jeff's 'Top 25' pages was dedicated to identifying the best soul records as opposed to artists. There was no scoring system given for this table but the criteria appeared to be: Number of weeks at number one, but in the event of a tie, number of weeks in the top ten. If they were still level it went down to number of weeks in the top forty and finally number of weeks in the top hundred. Again there were some surprising results. Would anyone have guessed that the top soul record of the sixties was 'Tossin' and Turnin'' by Bobby Lewis. Was this even released in England?

Since I began writing Cybersoul I have visited some fabulous sites, all with something to offer. This is by no means the best technical site, nor is it the funniest or the most homely but without doubt its content is the most interesting. Where Jeff gets his information I have no idea, but it is so clearly and effectively presented that only a monkey could fail to understand it. To anyone who's got a computer go and take a look at this one. I'm sure that like me you'll end up spending hours wading through the charts of yesteryear.