I picked up the classic Marvin Gaye album today, the sentiment is still as timely today as it was 30 years ago. And it’s a magnificent sounding record. Also got the first Cars album – it was a day for classics, yes it was. And to round things off, I also got Conmemorativo, the first Gram Parsons tribute record, with a decidedly more countrified lineup than the more recent Return Of The Grievous Angel collection. But it has Uncle Tupelo doing a splendid cover of “Blue Eyes”, so it’s worth the price of admission right there. And also Bob Mould and Vic Chesnutt tackling “Hickory Wind”. The songs are so good it’s usually a treat to hear anyone do them.

So the King streetcar tracks are going to be out of commission till late May, meaning I have to add the extra 10 minutes it’ll take to walk from St. Andrew station to work into my morning schedule. Hooray.

np – PJ Harvey / To Bring You My Love

A day later and I still like the new design. Unprecedented. Hopefully this will last me the summer. Even after the grand unveiling yesterday, I spent most of the day and evening debugging stupid little things. The search function now works though why I had to do what I did to get it to do so is beyond me. Not really thrilled about going deep into Nucleus’ source code and commenting out lines that were fine before, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

I did get out of the house for a bit yesterday though – went for breakfast at Mars, and on the way back home I had to walk east along College while the day’s anti-war protest marched west. I felt a little strange going upstream, trying to move against the wall of chanting humanity, but I’m sorry – I live the other way and I need to use washroom.

I did step out last night to catch Cuff The Duke at the Rivoli. I’d heard nothing from them before, only read the press but they sounded up my alley. And while the show got off to a bit of a slow, sloppy start (first impression – poor man’s Sadies), by the end I was pretty much sold by the energetic set of countrified cowpunk. The fact that it was a homecoming of sorts for the Oshawans after a jaunt to SXSW in Austin and the room was packed with their friends and fans contributed to a great atmosphere.

Looks to be a beautiful day out, I should get out and get some air but I’ll probably just stay in and (re-)do my taxes or something boring like that

np – Television / Television

Check it out. In honour of the start of Spring, I’ve redesigned. Well that and the fact that I got envious of Val’s latest redesign. I like the colours – there actually are some now! The search function is currently pooched, I’m going to try and get that fixed. I also want to put some sort of image in the background of the page, just for a little more visual interest. But most of all I’ve redone the backend file structure to be a lot tidier, which should make future redesigns easier.

If anyone finds any bugs, please let me know.

np – Yo La Tengo / President Yo La Tengo / New Wave Hot Dogs

This is a bit of a treat. Lake Holiday’s debut split 7″ from last Fall has garnered a couple reviews, and they’re even positive. There’s one here and another here (3rd one down the page). While this is only mildy exciting because I didn’t play on either of these tracks (they’re Brad’s demos from before the band was assembled), it’s encouraging because our stuff now sounds loads better than those tracks.

I left work a little early today on account of a splitting headache that just wouldn’t go away. I suspect it’s some kind of barometric-related thing, I seem to have these spates of headaches around the start of Spring and the end of Summer, basically when it goes from cold to warm and from warm to cold.

I’ve spent the first part of this evening cleaning up all the code on 517’s Teenbeat Mailing List archive pages, which now reside on my server. He’s also offering a weekly rare mp3 from the Teenbeat archives. This man owns everything that label ever put out – no mean feat. His My Mean Magpie site will be migrating over soon enough as well. I think we’re also FINALLY getting the Lake Holiday website out of cobwebs.

np – The Electric Soft Parade / Holes In The Wall

I’d intended to go to the protest at the US Consulate this afternoon – at least pass by to show support – but I was tied up on a conference call to Seattle until 5:30 and thus lost the window of opportunity I had to huck a tomato. Something that’s surprised me since the war officially began last night is how jaded everyone seems to be about the whole thing. I’m not sure if this is primarily a defence mechanism people are using to deal with the horrors taking place halfway around the world or if they genuinely can’t see this as anything more than source material for jokes and exercises in irony. Probably a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone, but I know in my case that it’s primarily a coping mechanism. Thinking too hard on all this just turns my stomach.

I’m of many many minds about this whole thing – the war, that is. Optimist Frank wants to believe that global protests will eventually make a difference on a grassroots level. Pessimist Frank believes that the short- and long-term reprecussions from this invasion will be far more fearsome than the powers-that-be imagine and this really is the beginning of the end. Pragmatist Frank believes that nothing he does will really make a difference one way or another. Realist Frank accepts the fact that like it or not (and he does not), this war is happening and isn’t going to stop, and that the best thing to do is to actually pull for Bush (as abhorrent as that thought is) and hope that the American forces are successful and finish this quickly and with a minimum loss of life on all sides (Pessimist Frank overhears this and scoffs, loudly). Attention Deficit Disorder Frank is already bored with the whole shebang. And all Franks are in agreement that if coverage of this war pre-empts any episodes of Buffy, 24 or The West Wing, then someone, somewhere, is going to pay.

Anyway. Back to more music geekery.

The Dismemberment Plan is bringing their farewell tour to Toronto on July 19th, venue to be announced. Do not do not do not miss this show, the Plan are fantastic live. This will be terrific and yet so very sad.

The new Radiohead album is called Moving: Target, released on June 10 in North America. Thanks to Audrey for the news. She’s got the tracklist on her site as well.

np – Whiskeytown / Faithless Street