People outside are blowing shit up. God bless Victoria Day.

Full band rehearsal tonight after essentially a two-week layoff. The rust was in full effect – even the rock equivalent of a pressure washer dose of CLR wasn’t quite enough to get things back into sync, but it helped. One more rehearsal and we should be back in the groove… just in time for Brad to go to Chicago for a week. Of course.

Damn my ears are ringing. The time off and they thought they’d get a chance to heal…

Okay – there has GOT to be a way to keep people not in my contact list from spamming me on MSN. It’s simply not conceivable that THAT many college co-eds have set up webcams in the past week and they really want me to come by and have a look. I mean come on.

Oh goodie, tomorrow marks the start of summer hours. Instead of 9-5 days, we go to 8-5 with the payoff being a half day Fridays. It goes without saying that I’m not getting this Friday afternoon of because I have a meeting.

On the remote chance anyone is interested, there’s a big honking repository of Weddoes chords, lyrics and guitar tab here.

np – The Wedding Present / Hit Parade 1

Once again, a compilation has proven insufficient to satisfy me and I am going out in search of individual albums. The latest winners of a full back catalog hunt? The Posies, though I saw this one coming. The stuff on the Dream All Day comp is really good – I just generally wait till the amount of crap on my list of stuff to get is at an ebb before I load on more stuff. Well, it’s ebb time. Gimme some mo’ Posies.

First Luther Vandross goes down with a stroke, now Barry White is felled by a stroke (though he’s expected to recover!!). Dammit. If things really do happen in threes, Isaac Hayes must be very nervous right now.

Went for a good ol bike ride around Toronto today. Not too far, just my usual haunts, but it was neat getting around so quickly. I think I’ve definitely narrowed down my target neighbourhoods for moving out. Five will get you six that I’ll be off of College somewhere, around Bathurst. Little Italy-like. It’s a cool area and is really central to everywhere I usually go. Lots of apartments around, too. Though I may end up a basement dweller. Still, it’s good to narrow things down.

np – The Replacements / Pleased To Meet Me

So my computer was hijacked last night by the bastiches at lop.com. Without getting to much into the nitty gritty, I’ve managed to clean up most of their crap but the one thing I haven’t managed to undo is the co-opting of my domain guessing function on Mozilla. In a nutshell, what used to happen was if I typed in a single word in the location line, it would wrap a “www.” and “.com” around the term to try that URL. Handy for lazy folk like me. Now any DNS error redirects me to www.lop.com. I found some alleged fixes on Usenet but nothing has actually worked yet. I am pissed off. For more info on these fucknuts, check out their entry on Spywareinfo. Asswipes.

Met up with Bryan and Andrea last night, just over a month away from their wedding day. Today was utterly wasted, as befits the first day of a long weekend. I did replace the quick releases on my bike with regular old bolts, significantly increasing my piece of mind about parts getting ripped off. Went out and bought some clothes and played far too much Neverwinter Nights. My eyes were going all buggy. Tonight is Five Seventeen’s 5/17 party. Which reminds me, I need to burn him a copy of the Wilco EP.

See the lovely video for The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” here. Link from ze Catbirdseat.

np – Elvis Costello & The Attractions / Get Happy!!

Spent last night holed up in Lake Holiday HQ laying down tracks for the new album… Okay, one track. For one song. But I have managed to reduce my recording time to track time ratio from one hour per minute to half an hour per minute. And I only needed four takes this time. No punch-ins. Huzzah.

Afterwards, I went to see Fruit Bats at B-Side. I now remember why I don’t drive anywhere… finding parking was beyond a pain in the ass. Anywawy, I was so beat that I was thinking I’d just go home but I found a spot and got to the show with about 10 minutes to spare. Immediately dozed off. Well, not immediately, but quickly. Dark + tired + warm = dozy. Anyway, I did stay awake through most of the set. While some might complain about the abbreviated set (45 minutes), it was perfect for me since I was ready to go home anyway. It was a good show – they sound like the quieter side of The Shins (new website!), John Vanderslice and Honeybunch. Wonderful 60s-ish folky pop music, dead-on male/female harmonies and bloopy synths. Good stuff – I also picked up their new album, Mouthfuls.

Spoon are releasing a 7-track mini-LP for That’s The Way We Get By in August on 12XU Records. In addition to the title track, there’ll be 6 live tracks and scads of videos from Kill The Moonlight. Okay, maybe not scads, but more than one. Maybe.

Free music. A clip of “Stacy’s Mom”, the first single from Welcome Interstate Managers is available for curious ears on the Fountains Of Wayne website. I wonder if Ric Ocasek’s lawyers have been mobilized yet?

Mogwai have put “Hunted By A Freak”, the leadoff track from Happy Songs For Happy People up in the Audio section of their site, along with five other rare tracks. Go get em.

Welcome Interstate Managers is out June 10. Happy Songs For Happy People is out June 17.

np – Fruit Bats / Mouthfuls

They may be bloated, over-the-hill undead with guitars, but if The Rolling Stones play a free show in Toronto to encourage post-SARS tourism, they’re okay with me. Though Keef is still scary.

I’m going through a Future Shop flyer this morning, and I see an ad for The Essential Shawn Mullins. Essential? Didn’t this guy only have one album in the first place? An odd inclusion alongside Dylan, Gershwin and The Clash. Hell, even Kenny Loggins. Oh, but it’s been digitally remastered, so that’s okay I guess.

np – Steve Earle / El Corazon