bebop,
I use FrontPage for my band's website,
Storm Online. I have no programming skill at all (took only 2 courses in college), and I find it very easy to use. The only real challenge is you have to find a provider that supports FrontPage extensions (not all do). I use
Hostica -- they support FrontPage extensions and are very reasonable.
As for storing music, I don't really know what the legally correct answer is. As you can see on my site, we do host a couple of songs. They are cover songs, so I wasn't sure about the legality of it all (they aren't the original versions, but then again, they aren't our songs either). I asked the provider before posting them, and they told me that as long as nobody complains, I could post them. I've had them up there for about 2 years and I haven't had any problems. But they are not the original versions, i.e., tracks ripped off of commercial CDs. They're really just there so that we can hand out business cards with the web address to bar owners and they can download the tracks at home to listen to our demo. It saves the cost and time of burning CDs.
You could improvise on the slideshow by creating "Back" and "Next" links below your pictures to give that slide-show feel, but I'm not sure if there's any other (better) way to do it.
Hope this helps,
crow