Holy shit.

Elliott Smith, dead at 34.

The Shins hate Canada. That’s the only explanation. First, they skip us on their Fall tour, and now Chutes Too Narrow has been delayed until next week. Bastards.

My disappointment was offset by the fact that as I rode home, Shin-less, I saw Beulah pulling up in front of Lee’s Palace in their First United Church of California tour van while John Vanderslice moved the pylons out of the way. Fantastic. I think this bodes well for tonight.

The Posies have given up pretending they’ve broken up and are reuniting for a new album expected to be out next Fall. Good news. Pitchfork has the specifics.

This could be neat – UK punk forebears The Buzzcocks are playing Lee’s Palace December 1. And Victoria-based new wavers Hot Hot Heat are at the Opera House December 13.

My phone is still dead.

np – Ken Stringfellow / Touched

I get home last night and check my messages – except I can’t, because my phone is dead. That’s super. I check the demarcation box outside the house and it’s still dead, so the problem is with Bell’s network. It occurs to me that I haven’t paid a bill since I got my phone installed a month and a half ago, but that’s because I haven’t received a bill in the past month and a half. I managed to get in touch will Bell’s support line from the payphone in the rehearsal space, and the problem is not my unpaid bill – they don’t know what the problem is. They promise it’ll be fixed by tonight, so anyone who’s trying to reach me by phone – and I know there’s scads of you – be patient. Your call is important to me and I will be with you as soon as possible. Now hum some Billy Joel to yourself. There you go.

Finished watching Neverwhere last night. Man… even though the BBC series came first, the book was better. When I first read the book (it’s come back to me since my last post on the subject), I was struck by how similar Gaiman’s prose work was to his comic book work – maybe it’s because I’d been reading his stuff for almost a decade at that point, but I could and still can spot his style and his preferred archetypes a mile off. For someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the exotic and esoteric, he certainly has his favorite devices. The television series had its charm, but was handicapped by the low production values and rather unconvincing acting by the lead actor in the role of Richard Mayhew. He did succeed in looking like a young Paul McCartney, but little else. The quality of the rest of the cast ranged from very good (the Marquis De Carrabas, Mr Croup and Mr Vandemaar) to adequate (Door, Hunter). Maybe my chief complaint, and it’s not very fair to the show, I admit, is that compared to the visuals I’m used to accompanying Gaiman’s work, particularly Dave McKean’s unique style, the shot-to-video realism of the miniseries was just… drab. It would have been better if they’d gotten McKean to go over the whole thing Waking Life-style or something. Oh well. The ‘making of’ interview with Gaiman was pretty illuminating, though. If I get a chance, I may try and get through an episode commentary or two before it has to go back to the store.

Chart has a little chat with Mojave 3.

New Shins album today! Beulah show tonight! Huzzah!

np – Beulah / Yoko

You know, try as I might, I can’t find a single interesting thing to write about today. Not a blessed thing.

Except maybe that the Steve Earle documentary, Just An American Boy, will be premiering November 7 in New York City, Boston on November 28 and then in additional cities throughout November and December. Amazon says it will be out on DVD November 25. The double-live album of the same name is pretty kick ass, hope the film is as good.

So.

How’s everyone doing?

Update: Rannie has some much better photos than mine from the Death Cab show up on his site. Go see em.

np – Steve Earle / Just An American Boy: The Audio Documentary

Being pretty ignorant of ‘zine culture, I didn’t know what to expect from Canzine 2003 today – I went a) for something to do, and b) because if nothing else, I knew Five Seventeen and Claire would have tables there and I could at least stop by and say hello. I honestly wasn’t expecting what I found – three large halls and two floors filled with ‘zine publishers and readers. It was bedlam, but very cool bedlam. I ran into far more people that I knew than I expected, I guess Canzine was the ‘thing to do’ today. I would have liked to have picked up more items than I did (a grand total of three, including the free ish of Broken Pencil I got with admission, 517’s latest Tape-Gun and a little squarebound comic I bought pretty much at random – Wag #9 if you must know), but I was pretty overwhelmed with everything that I didn’t really stop at many tables to inspect their wares. Next year, perhaps. It’d be neat to participate, there was a very cool vibe about the whole event. Maybe I’ll make a print version of this here blog? So retro! So 20th century!

I’ve done another cull of the CD collection to sell off stuff I never listen to. This time there’s around 40 items, mostly vestiges of my Britpop days. I don’t know what I can get for them – I’ll post a list soon if anyone wants anything. Then I’ll do eBay and when nothing else seems to be moving, I’ll just haul em down to the stores and get rid of the rest there.

I’ve started watching the BBC miniseries for Neverwhere, the television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s first proper novel. I’m only one episode in so far (there’s six), but despite the charmingly cheesy BBC production values (think Doctor Who – not that bad, but same ballpark), it’s not bad. I don’t remember boo about the book so I should be able to judge the show on its own merits rather than comparing it to the source material.

The Chicago Sun-Times talks to Steve Earle up the documentary film/album Just An American Boy. Link from LHB.

I don’t think I’m getting any sicker (knock wood). God willing it will stop with the scratchy throat, and my cough never really went away from the last cold, so… back to work tomorrow for me! Yay.

np – Superchunk / Cup Of Sand