Any suggestions for how to organize a music blog?

I’m not sure if this forum is where my post should go. If it is not, please let me know where it would go.

My question is fueled by my using WordPress 3.0 for the first time. I’m used to using the previous versions and my mind sort of figures how to do things with that model in mind. But now with custom posts, taxonomies, fields and everything else; I’m slightly overwhelmed 😛

I want to set up a music blog again as a musician. I have:
News
Events
Audio
Podcasts (different than audio)
Videos
Photos

I would usually use a plugin for each of these. Do you think there is a more powerful way of doing this without plugins or would plugins be more powerful because they’re more specific to the task?

And if you think I should do it without plugins, how would you do it using custom posts, taxonomies, fields? I don’t need the PHP (unless you really want to), more just some brainstorming on the way it could be done well organization wise.