Writeside Review: House of Blues

House of Blues New Media—On Line Preview

A blues-based enterprise, with an expanding club roster.

The House of Blues site opens with an intro page containing the words "Unity in Diversity"—a nice summation of HOB's mission, set forth elsewhere, to "create a profitable, principled, global entertainment company to celebrate the diversity and brotherhood of world culture, to promote racial and spiritual harmony through love, peace, truth, righteousness and non-violence." If this seems an impossibly lofty ambition, think of it this way: if the site can achieve the profitable part, the music will take care of the rest.

This modus operandi is apparent at the core of the HOB site, the Essential Blues section. The first thing on view is a full-page ad for the two-CD "Essential Blues" set at $29.95 (cassettes, $24.95). It's not as crass as it sounds, because of the way it sounds: .au clips of many blues greats are available here, and they download quickly. "Essential Blues" also provides bios for all of the musicians on the recording. If the rest of the site were up to this standard—i.e., if the music played an equally important role—it would easily rate five stars.

Sadly, this is not the case. There is a great deal of flashy (albeit well-executed) design and a heavy dose of HOB corporate information; neither serves to focus attention on the music itself. Instead, we're reminded that House of Blues is striving for global-entertainment-company status: clubs in three cities and a fourth on the way; a radio show broadcast in 120 cities and 20 countries; a weekly TV series on TBS; a record label. Links are provided to interesting projects and technologies—e.g., the August CU-See Me Web concert from the Hollywood House of Blues, and a QuickTime VR tour of the Green Room at the same Sunset Strip club. But these are basically further diversions.

House of Blues is worth seeing (and definitely worth hearing); it's not a bad site. But it could achieve considerably more by allowing more of the blues to come through.

(Reviewed October 2, 1995)