I’d like to easily know whether some musicians I admire ever collaborated, when I think the combination of their talents would be a good match. Say, did Maceo Parker ever play with Ray Anderson, or Stanley Clarke with Herbie Hancock and Billy Cobham, or what about the five jamming together for chrissakes? If they did, what did they do together?
So I wish Allmusic were as smart as Imdb. Allmusic does have a "worked with" option under its related artists section, but it doesn’t show you what songs/records the artists worked together on. (Though I suspect it doesn’t list all collaborationss by far.)
Contrast that with Imdb and its "look up joint ventures" feature, which makes it easier to play "six degrees of" (you know whom). Too bad Allmusic uses a dll for its search engine while Imdb gets its "joint ventures" through POST forms. If only they used REST (i.e. GET forms), we could link to specific search results (i.e. I can’t point to the result page for, say, Kevin Bacon and Denise Richards.) By the way, these are typical questions *not* to ask Google if you value your time at all. Structured databases still have their place.
Intersection is where things get interesting. I love early 70’s fusion, where Jazz and Funk happily copulated and bore beautiful children. There’s nothing like the sexual humping of Funk mixed with the more cerebral Jazz. Good Jazz-funk gets your brain *and* your body into motion. Brawn and Brains. Earth and Air. Find the allegory that fits you best to celebrate the wholeness of being Human. And to these islamofascists bent on denying us the right to be sensual as well as rational, rot in hell.
