To everyone currently pursuing a degree in science… be warned. The worst jobs in science, courtesy of Popular Science. It starts with “FLATUS ODOR JUDGE” and goes downhill from there.

Pity Mick Jagger – apparently it’s tough being a sex god. Unpleasant mental images courtesy of TMFTML.

Some uber-keener has already started annotations for Neil Gaiman’s 1602. Gaiman’s work is always rich with subtle and obscure references, so this would be a good companion piece when the series is wrapped up. There’s also a good history of Miracleman linked off that site.

np – The Super Friendz / Mock Up Scale Down

It looks like Hurricane Isabel is coming right up our asses this weekend. I suppose a hurricane is the perfect way for Toronto to wrap up this glorious summer. SARS, West Nile, blackout, hurricane… Granted, there probably won’t be much left of the storm by the time it gets through customs, but it’s the principle of the matter. Wanna see what it looks like now? Check it out. Daaaaamn.

A hero for our times – Angle Grinder Man! He even has his own website.

Time has run an obituary for Johnny Cash. Heartbreaking. I hate the timing, but I think I do need some more Johnny Cash in my collection. The double-disc Essential set from last year should do, as well as the recent American Recordings albums and maybe some of the classic live albums. They ran that Larry King Live interview again last night – it was from November of last year, and not a couple weeks ago as I had thought, but as I mentioned before, Cash was so clear and vibrant, despite his infirmities, that it made me even sadder that he’s gone now. I take some comfort in the fact that no one’s dredged up the ads he did as spokesperson for Canada Trust’s “Johnny Cash” ATMs back in the 80s. Those were just weird.

Nothing helps one get over a cold better than discovering in the middle of a rain shower that your umbrella is broken. Fantastic!

np – The Jayhawks / Rainy Day Music

Nick Cave offers some memories of Johnny Cash.

Check out a track from the new Ryan Adams album, Rock N Roll. It ain’t country, folks.

Scott Levesque talks about Wheat’s epic multi-label odyssey in getting Per Second, Per Second, Per Second, Every Second released. The way things have gone, if I were them I wouldn’t assume that long, strange trip is over until the CD is actually on store shelves on October 28. Update: I suppose it’d be useful if I linked to the article I’m talking about. Sheesh.

Now that they’ve cast Batman, more info on the forthcoming film is coming to light. Noteworthy is they’ve revealed the villain of the piece – Ra’s Al-Ghul. A classic Batman villain, but hardly a household name (probably because he didn’t appear in the 60s television show).

So you might think that all I did this weekend was go to concerts. Well, that is pretty much all I did. Saturday I rode my bike from one end of town to the other and back again, picking up various sundry items on my ‘housewares to get’ list. Sunday I cleaned… and almost didn’t leave the apartment at all. I set up a server on my computer for doing some development work – it was actually really easy to get Apache, PHP and MySQL all installed and running. Who knew. But mostly, there’s been a lot of puttering around the apartment, coughing up a lung and dealing with the results of going to sleep really late.

np – Wheat / “World United Already”

Saturday night at the Horseshoe was a Good time. There was a pun there, though it’s okay if you didn’t catch it. I don’t mind. The Sadies were playing and anytime those boys take the stage, you’re guaranteed of a shit-kicking party.

Unbilled openers Ox’s Whiskeytown-esque country ballads initially impressed on the strength of Vancouver-ite Mark Browning’s strong vocals and instrumental arrangements, but sets end had lost a lot of interest due to the sameness of the material and consistently slow tempo. Ox would do well to offer a little more variety in their set, but they’re definitely doing something worth paying attention to.

The next band must have bribed someone to get on the bill… The Good Brothers, multiple Juno-award winning Canadian country stalwarts and also father and uncles to the Sadies’ Good brothers. The Good Brothers were consumate professionals delivering Maritime-influenced folk and country songs with gusto and polish.

The Sadies live are a force of nature. Nattily attired in matching faux-Nudie suits, Dallas and Travis Good reel off one jaw-dropping country/psych/rockabilly number after another with an instrumental prowess that boggles the mind. It says something about a band’s drawing power when they can pretty much sell out a largeish club like the ‘Shoe with only walk-up sales, there were no advance tickets. Last night was my third time seeing them, the second time headlining, and like last time this seemed less like a concert than a musical whirlwind that consumed the whole room. The Good brothers are a curious pair, Dallas being the laid back, congenial host and Travis the intense, hard-rocking foil. Watching Travis pummel his Gretsch makes me feel unworthy to come within 100 ft of a guitar ever again. Gawddamn these boys can play!

The family affair theme of the night continued with Margaret Good, the boys’ mother, coming onstage to take vocals on a few numbers (she also appears on most of their albums) and later on, their father as well. What it must have been to grow up in a household with so much music! Mind-boggling. Blue Rodeo’s Bob Egan also guested on pedal steel on much of the set. It was good to see Mike Belitsky behind the kit since he didn’t get to do drum duties this summer with his other band, The Pernice Brothers. And, as with the night before, there was a wholly expected but still rousing tribute to Johnny Cash, this time “Cry Cry Cry”. It seems odd to say, but I think I picked the right weekend to see a couple of unabashedly country-influenced acts.

The moral of this story? If you ever get a chance to see the Sadies live, by god you have to do it.

Photos? Sure.

np – The Sadies / Pure Diamond Gold

Last night was my first concert in about a month and a half, and it seems I’ve grown unaccustomed to large crowds. And there was a large crowd at Lee’s Palace for My Morning Jacket and The Sleepy Jackson. I guess the hefty promotional push this show had gotten over the past week did its job.

The Sleepy Jackson are a hotly-tipped outfit from Australia whose debut album Lovers is getting some solid reviews. Their live show traded off much of the eclecticism of the record for balls-out arena rock moves – there were more than the requisite number of windmills and feet on monitors, maybe something they’ve picked up from touring with MMJ. They were let down somewhat by a shoddy mix, but made up for it with enough energy and enthusiasm to impress much of the audience. I was particularly impressed with frontman Luke Steele’s ability to make sense of his pedalboard – the man must have had at least 20 different effect boxes on that thing. Insane, I’d hate to be his roadie. Lovers is available only on import in Canada, and they had no copies for sale at the show.

Kentucky’s My Morning Jacket were in Toronto for the fourth time in a year and a half, but for some reason this felt like their coming out party, promoting their major-label debut It Still Moves, out just this week. Two of their shows were opening stints for Doves and Foo Fighters and another show at the Horseshoe back in May seemed to have come and gone without anyone noticing. Well people noticed this time – It Still Moves has been getting high praise from everyone who matters (including me! – har har) for its blend of country, southern rock, gospel and blues boogie (yet still somehow remaining indie-rock approved). And there’s nothing about these guys that isn’t big. The songs are big – more than a few epic length jams. The sound is big – the backline was all Mesa/Boogie amps turned up to Spinal Tap levels. The hair is big – lots of whipping around huge huge rock-n-roll approved manes. The beards are big – enough said about that. The moves are big – anyone who thought the Sleepy Jackson had energy hadn’t seen ANYTHING yet. And the voice – Jimmy James has an incredible set of pipes, a massive, soaring, plaintive field holler that sends chills down your spine and wrapped in a huge blanket of reverb, it’s like hearing heartbroken dispatches from a mountaintop in Appalachia. Stunning. And while totally expected, his solo acoustic encore of “Ring Of Fire” was still a touching tribute to the passing of The Man In Black. So everyone who goes on about My Morning Jacket being an incredible live act? They’re right. And having picked up It Still Moves and At Dawn at the show, they’re no slouches on tape, either.

Oh yeah, photos.

np – My Morning Jacket / At Dawn