There’s a lovely eulogy for Mary Hansen of Stereolab from David Pajo of Slint and Tortoise here.

np – Television / Marquee Moon

I had thought about going to see the free screening of the Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back at the Bloor, but considering the linuep was almost to Bathurst at 6:30 and the show wasn’t till 9:30, I decided my evening would be better served doing almost anything else. Some other time, perhaps.

And that time actually was better served rewiring my pedalboard. Yeah, that is my idea of a fun night. Surrounded by tools and wire and solder. Whee! Quite satisfied with the results, though. Every cable is cut to length and tidy, and the sound quality from using much better cables is really audible. Happy happy. The choice to use soldered plugs instead of the $7-a-piece solderless plugs also turned out to not be a big deal, I figured out a system for building the cables lickety-split, it was actually really easy. I also bought a couple of 250K pots for the Telecaster but as Derek at Ring correctly speculated, the control knobs on my import Tele don’t fit the dimensions of the American-made pots. Which means I have to go back to the guitar shop for even more parts. It never ends.

I went to pick up some food for the food bank at the supermarket this evening, I’d been told that baby formula is always in short supply so I figured I’d get some of that. It was only when I got to the store that I realized I have no idea what baby formula is. Solid? Liquid? Gelatinous? Hoping there’s be big boxes marked ‘Baby Formula’ in large block letters was probably too much to hope for. Can anyone tell me exactly what I should be looking for? I never thought charity could be so confusing.

np – Television / The Blow-Up

Taken from Exploding Dog. Cause on days like today, it’s so true.

np – Longwave / Day Sleeper

There’s a track from the new Rainer Maria EP, Ears Ring, available for download on the Polyvinyl website. It’s surprisingly aggressive and tough-sounding – their past stuff was never wimpy but it had a more distinct naval-gazing tone than this new track. Part of it is that Caithlin De Marrais has found a lot more strength in the lower registers of her voice, there’s more oomph in what was once a thinner, more wavery voice. It’s an unexpected development but not unwelcome.

The new full-length is called Long Knives Drawn and is out January 21.

Finally dumped a load of tracks off the BR-532 and into Cool Edit Pro 2.0 for some mixing and effecting. They’re just short instrumental fragments, but still sorta fully realized and let’s be honest, I’m not doing any more work on them so I may as well mix them down, mp3 them and put them up for others to hear so I can free up the disk space for other stuff. I also added a phased/delayed slide intro to my other song, which I am still ostensibly working on. NOW it’s just short of lyrics and vocals… but even after more than a month, I still like the tune – that’s just unprecedented. Usually the stuff I write has a shelf life of maybe a week before I decide it’s crap and wipe it from existance.

Playing with the effects plug-ins on CEP2, I realized that I really have no idea what I’m doing. Too many parameters, not enough clue. My approach is to just turn knobs (figuratively) until it sounds interesting.

Some music news of the alt.twang persuasion…

Word is a new Wilco EP will be released in the Spring. Not sure if this is going to be a pared-down DecibelsPerMinute, or a wholly different release. ADDENDUM – Here’s the skinny on the new EP, and the DVD for I am Trying To Break Your Heart is out on Februrary 18th.

The Jayhawks are back on April 1 with Rainy Day Music. I *think* this is Marc Olsen and Gary Louris playing together again, but I’m not certain. Either way, since they’ve fired most of the band I expect a more stripped-down offering than Smile or Sound Of Lies.

It looks like March 11 will be the release date for the three Uncle Tupelo reissues of No Depression, Still Feel Gone and March 16-20, 1992. I can do without the remasters but the bonus tracks mean that I’m a-gonna have to have the Columbia reissues sitting alongside my Rockville original editions. Someday someone will beat some sense into me, but until then… I just hope that their live version of “I Wanna Destroy You” shows up. And some official news on the release of Not Forever, Just For Now – the legendary recording of the last Uncle Tupelo show, would be nice.

Ryan Adams puts out Love Is Hell in Februrary. We’ll have to see if he follows an opposite pattern to Star Trek movies… odd numbers good (Heartbreatker, Demolition), even number bad (Gold, Love Is Hell?). Hope not, but we’ll see.

Other notes… The Tweedy/Kotche/O’Rourke project Loose Fur is out in January. The Minus Five’s Down With Wilco is out Feb 25. Mojave 3 drops a new one in March and Sparklehorse in April.

Got my Longwave EP in the mail today, Day Sleeper. It’s brief, but pretty impressive. The instrumental title track is epic, with touches of Mogwai and Mercury Rev – no missing Dave Fridmann’s touch here.

np – Starflyer 59 / Easy Come Easy Go 1994-2000