There are no new topics on the Internet.

Case in point, after a recent stint as a passenger in a car known as the Red Whip, cruising the freeways of Phoenix, I was reminded of the adhesive scourge known as the "Calvin pissing" decal, affixed to the rear window of many a vaguely angry-looking Arizonian's truck. I immediately began to catalog Calvin's various pissed-upon targets, and was winding up to mock these clue-free desert denizens for their taste in tacky bootlegged bumper stickers, when the husband points out an already-existing and near-perfect diatribe on the subject, complete with a catalog. So then, my rant would then become like some ABC echo-reality show, like Super Nanny, after Nanny 911 had been on Fox for months.

Allow me therefore to move on to the rankling subject of alt-rock musician's web sites, most of which share the following identical, and utterly counterproductive design strategies. I understand that some wizened gnomes of Internet history have built entire careers on this matter of web site 'insulting consulting,' and I am once again late to the party, but it's this specific subgenre of musicians that has me baffled, since these are allegedly creative people, who make a profit on their ability to, in a sense, coherently and attractively arrange information.

There is also an interesting parallel to the issue of creative control, a subject that iconoclastic music types often whinge about in relation to their record contracts. Since a web site is a musician's calling card and face to the world, in a sense, you would think that musicians would be down with more of a power to the people ethos, in regards to making actual information about their music accessible to individual fans, rather than burying it in tired, pre-millennial tricks of Internet design subterfuge. But then, you say, I'm a recording artist, not a brick layer, and it's the record label's fault, and yadda yadda. All I know is, it bugs me.

Let us begin the airing of the grievances:

"This site requires the Flash plug in."

Sample offender: Lisa Germano

It's not a matter of whether or not I have the Flash plug in, as it's sort of like an epidemic venereal disease of the Web that we've all regrettably acquired. It's a matter of whether or not I want to lose all control of the ability to browse information, and let some web design rodeo clown make all the decisions about whether I want to be startled by sudden loud noises, or see text appear in an impossibly small box with a scroll bar, in between old-timey retro-romantic graphic flourishes.

Splash pages.  

Sample offender: Rogue Wave

There must be some sort of stats-related reason that these shark-infested moats to information exist, but I can't think of what it could be. Splash pages are sort of like walking into Circuit City, and being directed first into a sensory deprivation chamber, where all lights, sound, and other cues that you are moving closer to wildly overpriced TV show DVD box sets are completely muted for several moments, for reasons that the store employees refuse to reveal.

The tiny secondary window.

Sample offender: The Wrens

The Wrens, a great band, commit the vastly popular and epically annoying sin of opening the main content (following, I might add, a splash page) in a TINY SECONDARY WINDOW, so that scant handfuls of information like, say, three tour dates, which should have the entire web browser window in which to sprawl, immediately require that you click the scroll bar and then take in the data through a tiny and completely unnecessary keyhole view, as though you're looking at Niagra Falls slides with a Viewmaster, and it's 1963.

The take-out menu of design options.

Sample offender: The Arcade Fire

Why are graphic designers for bands or record labels not forced in shackles to obtain degrees in information design before they are allowed to run wild with ironic retro Victorian page designs, paired with take-out menus of ways to view their clever Easter hat and butterfly designs? I mean I don't know about you but, when I go to a band's site, I am not thinking "I think I might avail myself of the slow-loading Victorian stencils today," but rather, are there any free MP3's, and when the hell are they playing in town? Designers, please consider the adage to think outside of the box, and by this I mean, your own block-heads, where this issue is concerned.  

Form without function

Sample offender: Cat Power

The following site seems to commit all of the above design crimes, melding them in an unspeakable fireball of incoherence, wherein the information you seek seems hopelessly entombed beneath fluttering, Wheel of Fortune Flash tiles, hide-and-seek navigation, microscopic Viewfinder windows with one-pixel scroll bar buttons, and a blasting, viral audio onslaught, after which Chan Marshall's bio proclaims, if you are brave enough to find it, that she "exists on a plane somewhat different than yours or mine." So, apparently, do the Web designers at Matador records.  

Time may change me

It is entirely possible that content on both the Me page and the Random Fiction Corner has recently changed.

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