JUST OLDIES is a midi instrumental site that plays songs runnig from the 1940's through the 1980's. The deal is that you go to the main page, linked to from our index page, and you get a sidebar of blue buttons with text, mostly years, you select what you wnat and click on it. You arrrive at another page with the sidebar and a list of links that are the song titles, you then select the one you want. You go to a page with an anigif of a jukebox and a real bonus if it is not an instrumetnal, the lyrics. also a "download" link.

The site uses javascript to play the material for some reason. some of this does not work in FIREFOX and ditto the download feature. sometimes that doesn't work at all. In one case I hit the download feature on a song and got a 404 Not Found, I flipped into Internet Explorer and it was there as plain as day.

First and foremost: that this site exists and is as accurate as it is is a B- right out of the box. That it provides the lyrics makes for a straight out B. The only general problem I have with it is that it goes past the area in which I am interested here but for a pop historian: 2di4

As for content. Some of it seems a bit out of place like The Isley Brother's TWIST AND SHOUT IN '59 and a Buddy Holly tune in '60. There are a few others but this is rare. Unfortunately there are certain thangs that aren't there that really should be HANDYMAN by Jimmy JOnes (he does have GOOD TIMIN'), TELSTAR, SPANISH HARLEM and a couple others. DUKE OF EARL is there so are HEY PAULA, ONLY THE LONELY, DEVEL OR ANGEL and THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT. All signature pieces. All in all, the choices are good and gets a B+/A-. I mean how often do you find GOODBY CRUEL WORLD? And as I say, "the lyrics....".

The arrangements are a mixed bag. First; hearing some of these done with synthesizer sounds is a bit disconcerting.. The only place where that would be relevent is RUNAWAY and he chose to use the Hammond (which still sounded good and he had the notes right) They Vary in goodness of fit. THOSE OLDIES BUT GOODIES is fabulous. The added organ is a great touch although the sax sound a bit like a kazoo (I suspect that this is the fault of the GM files and I use SounMAX which is far better than the Windowns General MIDI files). STAND BY ME, a signature piece of the time, would have been A+ but for the annoyi8ng bells and gong in the left speaker. The sax lead is great and the strings are fantasitc. the Melody of CALENDAR GIRL was inaudible and tte meloddy of RUNAWAY was almost so. I found ANGEL BABY incomprehensible. So the arrangement and perfomrance run from A+ to F and fall mostly in the B range. .

But when you stop and realize that there are over 500 songs there. that ther would be a few croppers in the lot. That's understandable so it's not like the thing is riddled with errors. No more than you would expect from random drift and probably less. They only stand out with me because I'm a hound for this.

A big huge humongus PLUS is that the owner actaully TALKS to people and that aloine iw worth a half-letter upgrade, so that what was a B/B+ with an A for effort and care goes to a solid A- If it were a stock, I would list it as a "buy for value"