Sunday, December 28th, 2003

"That is perverse. Do not tell anyone you don't own fucking Blonde on Blonde. What about Television?"

Ever since Jack Black uttered those words in High Fidelity, I’ve felt a twinge of record geek shame every time I looked at my collection. Well no longer – I now own Blonde On Blonde, the super-duper remaster/reissue, no less. I’m curious to hear the 5.1 SACD mix – That’ll require someone with a far superior stereo than I, though.

And I’ve had Television for years, thanks.

Metric’s Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? was the somewhat surprising unanimous choice as album of the year by both of The Toronto Star‘s music critics, Vit Wagner and Ben Rayner.

Check it out – Bubba Ho-Tep finally has a Toronto premiere! February 27 to March 3 at the Royal. Anyone tries to get ahead of me in line, I will cut you. I swear I will.

Happy birthday to Five Seventeen, celebrating the big three-oh today.

I am currently reading Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco at the urging of Vic, and damn it’s some heavy stuff. Joe Sacco was a journalist working out of the so-called UN safe zone around the Bosnian town of Gorazde during the Bosnian-Serb War of the mid 1990s, and he recounts the stories of the people there in unflinching and deeply unsettling detail. Oh yeah, it’s a comic book. Similar in tone to Art Spiegelman’s Maus, but without the animal allegory – everything in Sacco’s work is very much done by and to human beings. I admit I knew next to nothing of the conflict in the Balkans before reading this, and really – now that I do know something of it… God, humanity can suck so hard sometimes. We really should just give it up and let the squirrels take over. Read a review of the book here.

np – Son Volt / Wide Swing Tremolo

By : Frank Yang at 11:52 am
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. 12/28/03 1:30 pm

     Paul says:

    Meh. Blonde On Blonde isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. John Wesley Harding, either. Every other album Dylan released between 62 and 70 is better than either of them.

  2. 12/28/03 9:08 pm

     will says:

    after the comic book, read General D’Allaire’s book on the genocide in Rwanda. fun fun fun.

  3. 12/30/03 9:52 am

     Frank says:

    Very few things that are venerated to the extent that Blonde on Blonde is can really measure up to the myth. It’s still a damn fine album though, and as good a starting point as any for my education in early Zimmerman. I’m getting Bringing It All Back Home next.

    I don’t know if I can handle much more genocide-lit. I do have Sacco’s book on Palestine on hold at the library, though. That should be a laugh a minute.

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