Funny how I’m going away at the exact time I need a vacation, but really don’t want one… if that makes any sense. Recent happenings have left me mildly useless at work, but I feel guilty taking off. I went to visit my friend at the hospital last night, and he’s doing about as well as can be hoped right now. He’s breathing on his own, and they’ll take some of the equipment out of his lungs helping him out tomorrow. Most of the concern is about his neurological condition, which they can’t comment on till they ease up the painkillers.

Man. Something like this, it’s sobering beyond words.

And now I’m going to Las Vegas.

Cheers to Jeff Birgbauer for finally setting up worthy websites in honour of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. They’ve been woefully underrepresented on the web for far too long. And to kick things off, he’s got details on the long-rumoured MBV box set.

The eye music critics poll gathers lists and commentary on the year that was from a wide range of Canadian music writers. The lists aren’t so interesting, but the short cuts make good reading.

The Canadian Music Week conference and festival will be taking place between March 3 and 6 of this year in Toronto and the festivities will include the 4th Annual Canadian Independent Music Awards, or “Indies” for short. Voting is open to the hoi polloi, starts January 26 and runs till the 15th of February. Yeah, awards by their very nature are pointless, but there’s a bunch of deserving artists up for consideration and they’re worth your time to support.

Hey Ya, Charlie Brown! From Chachacha.

Subpop takes a good-natured shot at Pitchfork. From LHB.

Gary sent me this link to MusicPlasma, which aspires to be a visually stimulating “If you like this artist, you might like these artists” guide. It’s neat, but I’m assuming their database is still being populated – no other way to explain why Ivy has a galaxy of decent recommendations while Wilco nets you… David Wilcox. Do the bearcat indeed.

Ryan Adams fell off a stage and apparently broke his wrist during a show in Liverpool last night. Witnesses say they say Jim DeRogatis fleeing the venue shortly afterwards, twirling his moustache evilly.

A couple new Toronto shows of interest have been announced: Stereolab will be at the Phoenix on April 10 with Clearlake as support. Tickets are $20 and this is an early show – 6pm. Also, The Delgados continue to tour Hate and will be at Lee’s Palace with Malcolm Middleton of Arab Strap and Sluts Of Trust on March 22. $15 gets you in the doors. Tickets for both shows on sale next Thursday.

A bit of a personal aside now – A close friend of mine was in a car crash Wednesday night, and is in intensive care in pretty rough shape. It’s been heavy, to say the least. Initial reports were pretty dire, but recent info has been a little more encouraging. I don’t want to get into some sappy homily about the fragility of life and all that, but if anyone’s inclined to go and hug someone they care about… I sure wouldn’t say it’s a bad idea.

np – Cracker / Kerosene Hat

Today is the Chinese New Year, which reminds me that I should call my mom. Though born in the year of the rabbit, myself, I’ve always had an affinity for the simian sign. Happy year of the monkey to all – may your feces fly true and your nits be plump and tasty.

Splendid has an interview with Broken Social Scene, complete with panoramic photos of the whole band. Or some of them, at least.

Centro-Matic are going to be in Buffalo on February 19 at Mohawk Place with The Pale, but aren’t taking that final step across the border. Um, let’s hold a little contest – first person to email me, gets to pick me up, drive me to the show and bring me back home! And as a bonus, you can even pay my cover! These rock’n’roll road trip candidates always seem to fall on weekdays, and at points in my life in which I don’t have a car. Centro-Matic’s Flashes And Cables EP is out February 3.

You can grab the new Mountain Goats single, “Palmcorder Yanja”, from 4AD. We Shall All Be Healed is out February 3.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are back February 27th at The Phoenix. $20 will get you in the door, tickets already on sale at Rotate.

Batting practice with penguins! My top score so far is 321. From Geekent.

Starsky And Hutch… the trailer. Ben Stiller certainly has perfected that one character of his.

A lovely evening of technical difficulties. Net outcome – all my bookmarks were erased (will copy from work), chunks of code in my blog were erased (backed up, thankfully) and the cable went out for an hour and a half (no internet OR television…). Computers suck. And then I forgot to turn my alarm on this morning, and overslept by about an hour and a half. But on the plus side, I’m well-rested.

np – Golden Smog / Weird Tales

Ah, live rock shows, how I’ve missed you. I caught the Toronto stop of The Jayhawks’ Rainy Day Music tour with Rick from Over Anything. I just got there in time for the start of the show, delayed thanks to a standoff between a surly bus driver and a belligerant passenger.

I’d seen Josh Rouse about seven years ago when he was working the solo acoustic singer-songwriter angle, and wasn’t really impressed. Since then, however, he’s picked up a few new tricks and a full band and sounds much better. Apparently things in his hometown of Nashville were getting stale so he turned his eyes westward to Memphis when making his latest, 1972. The new material is pretty damn good in that 70s Soulsville USA vibe – I was certainly impressed.

I’d really enjoyed seeing the ‘Hawks open for Lucinda Williams last Thanksgiving, and was anxious to see them do their own headlining show. What I got was essentially a director’s cut of that last performance. An equally excellent perfomance, but longer, louder and featuring a broader set list – they even dipped into the Golden Smog catalog for a reading of “Jennifer Save Me” from Weird Tales as well as dusting off “Pray For Me” from Tomorrow The Green Grass, which they claimed to not have played since 1995. Gary Louris took advantage of the full-length set to really stretch out some solos, reminding the crowd that he’s got as much rock in him as country. Tim O’Reagan was again impressive on drums and vocals – I still can’t get over how good his material is. An extra treat was Sadie Dallas Good making a surprise appearance during the encore to play guitar in “Tailspin”. A great show all around and a terrific way to kick off the 2004 concert season. Photos here. I got some good ones from right up front, though I wish they’d ease up on the red lighting just a little bit.

Ride are endeavouring to release a DVD of some stripe this year, and are seeking a little help from the faithful in putting material together. In a recent mailing, they ask:

One thing that someone on the list might be able to help with is tracking down a guy in the States that made a short film to OX4 around 1993. It was a little B&W / sepia clip and it won a couple of awards at film festivals etc. If there is anyone that knows what i’m talking about then do get in touch. Also if anyone else has any half-decent footage knocking around form live shows, backstage, festivals, anything really! Then it might be interesting to throw it into the pile of potential content – if you don’t mind, of course.

If you’ve got anything, drop the band a line through their website.

Chart has a chat with Wheat about the ‘S’ word that’s been following them around since the release of Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second. No, not ‘Sasquatch’, ‘Sell-out’.

Look for a new Rilo Kiley album in May or June. From Pitchfork.

2/5 of My Morning Jacket have departed the band. Keyboardist Danny Cash misses his family and guitarist Johnny Quaid misses his horse. Official notices of resignations are on the website. The band has enlisted some temporary replacements, so anyone hoping to fill a vacancy has some time to start growing their beards.

Buddyhead’s Rules Of Rock for audiences – the perfect companion piece to their Rules Of Rock for bands (or people who want to be in bands). From Burned By The Sun.

Wavelength has announced the line-ups and dates for their Wavelength 200 4th anniversary shows. Running from February 12-15, headliners will be Jim Guthrie, Fembots, Controller.Controller and Sea Snakes. Full details here.

No new 24 episode this week, but that doesn’t mean there’s no scuttlebutt. Salon solicited some suggestions on how to improve the show, with some interesting responses and here’s an article about what Jack’s dead wife thinks about current plot developments in season three.

np – Longwave / Endsongs

Magnet can now be forgiven for their putting bland prettyboy Pete Yorn on the cover last year. 2004 kicks off with the totally unmarketable but thorougly remarkable Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock on the cover as part of their ‘Eccentrics and Dreamers’ feature. Also in this ish, the year in music 2003.

Another Sassy New Band Alert! Trespassers William were brought to my attention by Sean Hotsauce, who gave me their cover of Ride’s “Vapour Trail” (soon to be an MP3 of the week – patience). This Californian outfit combines country and shoegaze influences into a lovely, spacey narcoleptic brew. Think equal parts Slowdive and Mojave 3, Mazzy Star, maybe some Cowboy Junkies… I just got their sophomore album, Different Stars, through CD Baby, where you can stream the entire record to preview. The band is making some headway in the UK right now and deservedly so. It’s really good stuff.

Indie Rock Live has gotten a shiny new makeover, and has some new material up. Check out shows from Super Furry Animals, Azure Ray and Portastatic. They’ve also got shows in Bit Torrent format. I just discovered Bit Torrent. I am all about the Bit Torrent. Actually, I just like to say it. “Bit Torrent”. Say it with me, kids. “Bit Torrent”. Ahhh.

If anyone in Toronto is used CD shopping in the next while and comes across what looks to be a near-complete set of Mark Kozelek/Red House Painters CDs, please drop me a line. A friend’s apartment was broken into this weekend and a pile of her CDs stolen. The RHP ones are the ones she really wants back. Thanks.

Ever worry that you’re not quite a big enough geek? These DIY Imperial Stormtrooper props will take care of that in a jiffy. Guaranteed to get you disavowed by even your mother.

The Jayhawks tonight! Looking forward to busting out the camera again, it’s been a while. Not looking forward to finding myself in the bitter cold at 1AM, far from home. But what can you do.

I’m not going to talk too much about the Bloggies thing, though I registered well over 500 hits yesterday – that’s more than double my usual traffic, and today is already even busier. I’m was ranked #36 on the Blogdex this morning (though down to 53 now). Not to sound disingenuous, but I’m really taken by surprise by this whole thing. To this point, despite all my traffic trackers, I’ve never really thought about the fact that people read this thing. I mean, I know my friends and the modest network of other bloggers I link to visit, but the notion that there were many more visitors whom I’ve had no contact whatsoever with… it never really occurred to me. Now I feel like some guy who’s been goofing around on a dark stage playing AC/DC air guitar and singing “Highway To Hell” off-key, only to have the house lights turned on to reveal a packed audience. Uh, hi. So bear with me while I get over this hopefully-temporary bout of extreme self-consciousness. And if it sounds like this is going to my head, someone slap me. With a fish.

Thanks to Five Seventeen for the title bout poster up above. I won’t ask why my shorts are hiked up quite so high. And finally, I’m not going to lobby, but I will say this – I don’t think Moby needs that $50 gift certificate for Amazon.com.

np – The Soft Boys / Underwater Moonlight