Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Electrelane. March 25th, The Horseshoe. $10. On sale Thursday January 22. Commence celebrations… NOW. There’s also a Ted Leo concert DVD of his show at Coney Island last summer, Dirty Old Town, coming out on the 24th of February (more details at Information Leafblower). You can celebrate that too, if you like.

I’m seeing a strange concert listing for the Kool Haus on April 1. Grandaddy, The Fire Theft and Saves The Day on the same bill? Weird weird weird. Caveat – I don’t know if it’s legit or a computer glitch on the JAM! listings site.

I picked a Flaming Lips EP last night for just a couple dollars. Besides a few redundant mixes of “Waitin’ For A Superman”, it also contains two proper stereo mixes of tracks from Zaireeka and some videos. I’ve heard the octophonic mix of the album before, and it sounded nothing like these mixes – these were practically new songs (and honestly, more listenable). A shame they haven’t followed through with their promise to release a new edition of Zaireeka including proper stereo mixes.

Superdrag have gone on indefinite hiatus, but are preparing a box set for release later this year, and have also a live CD from September 03 in Boston available on their website.

John Darnielle offers his vision of the future of rock.

My favorite part on 24 last night was when Jack pulled of his prosthetic left arm and revealed his cyborg machine gun appendage to blow away the Salazars – That kicked so much ass. Even when Ramon called on the power of Greyskull to fight back, I knew he had no chance. Close second was Wayne Palmer turning out to be one of the lizard people from V. I always thought there was something suspicious about him, even when he was principal at Sunnydale High. Damned human-eating monsters, leave Earth alone! The only real low point in the episode was when Kim solved that arithmetic problem on her own. Like we’re supposed to believe that.

Okay, so I missed last night’s episode. I highly doubt it was any better than the one in my head. But there will be no discussions of the plot until I find a copy of the show and catch up (it’s downloading at home right now, so probably tonight). None at all. Unless it’s made-up.

I need new boots/shoes. What kind of boots/shoes should I get?

Update: MTV is reporting that a reunited Pixies have confirmed to headline the Coachella festival in May. Any truth to this? At all? I remain skeptical.

np – Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks / Pig Lib

Seems my mp3 of the week has instigated a Tanya Donelly love-in over at Information Leafblower. Many fond rememberances of 1992 through 1994 when our dear Tanya, along with Juliana Hatfield, was the ubiquitous cute-as-a-button indie/alt pin-up girl. They certainly made a case for Boston as ground zero for really cool chicks, and are in no small part responsible for Beantown being my favorite American burg. For more Belly love, I direct you to Beestung has a whole slew of TD-related rare mp3s for filching, er, sharing.

The Broken Social Scene EP due out on the 23rd of March will be entitled The Bee Hives EP. I believe this is clearing out the cupboards from the You Forgot It In People sessions rather than recently recorded material. Scoop from Tiny Mix Tapes.

Pitchfork reports that long-MIA Virginians Sparklehorse are working on a new album with Dave Fridmann, due this Summer. Which is actually what they’ve been saying for the past year, so really, it’s not news at all. Boo.

Thanks to Glamorama for bringing to my attention that there’s a new Paul Auster novel out. Oracle Night is on my ‘seek out’ list now… though the library has no copies. Hrmm.

Sony Pictures is offering Spider-Man 2 skins for Blogger and Livejournal users. Do with that information what you will.

While getting breakfast this morning, I heard over the radio a horridly bland version of “Tracks Of My Tears” by some craptacular New Country tart. I think there should be a law that if you want to cover Motown, you need to pass some sort of test to gauge if you possess the requisite amount of soul to not make a mockery of it. If not, you should be dragged in the street and pelted with Boyz II Men CDs until dead. Examples must be made.

np – The House Of Love / The John Peel Sessions: 1988-1989

I’d always thought to myself – in jest, of course – that if I ever had a flood, that’d be the perfect blog entry title. Which just goes to show – be careful what you ask for.

As I cryptically alluded to yesterday, a pipe burst and flooded my apartment, and I had a bad day. At its worst, there was about two to three inches of water absolutely everywhere in my apartment. Every square inch was submurged, it was awful. Like Waterworld awful. It took a good number of frantic phone calls to get the stand-in property manager (the regular property manager having just gone on vacation to Mexico on Saturday, natch) to send in a plumber, I ended up with quite a collection of people milling about my apartment trying to help. We finally did get the water main shut off and the pipe repaired, but still had several hours of bailing water out with wet vacs, mops, buckets and dustpans. A couple sump pumps were called into action but neither wanted to work, so we had to do it the hard way. Thank God for my brother and his girlfriend for coming to help – the wet vac cavalry, so to speak. So now I sit here with a mostly dry if not clean apartment, save the bedroom – which is still damp (it’s the only carpeted room). I expect we’ll need to tear the carpet out and replace it before the mould starts up. I’m just happy that none of my stuff was permenantly damaged – I’m reporting this to my insurance company today anyway, though. Just in case.

As it stands, I am more exhausted today than I’ve ever been in recent memory, and my back HURTS. I’m barely able to function.

The New York Times tackles this strange new phenomenon called ‘blogging’. Well, teen blogging. I cannot imagine what high school would have been like if we were as wired then as we are now. From Stereogum.

A photographic tour of the world of the Replacements. From Traveler’s Diagram.

Tiny Mix Tapes has finally returned from their extended holiday hiatus. Huzzah.

British Sea Power and their foliage come back to the Horseshoe for a show March 8th.

Got an abandoned brewery you don’t know what to do with? Turn it into the biggest pot-growing operation anyone’s ever seen. Seriously, this boggles the mind.

np – Matthew Sweet / Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu

Burst pipe = flooded apartment = me not having a good day.

Update : Christ, what a mess.

Stereogum has graciously compiled a list of things that are in and out for 2004. For the aspiring hipster.

We have really taken to Centro-Matic, who have a bunch of mp3s available for sampling on their music page.

Neatness – Adult Head is a book of poetry by Jeff Tweedy, due out in March. I’m not generally a big poetry guy, but I liked Joe Pernice’s Two Blind Pigeons a lot. I would imagine Jeff is in the same league, verse-wise, as Joe, so this should be a good read. Follow the link above for some sample poems. From Donewaiting.

The DVD for Kill Bill Vol 1 will be coming out the Tuesday (April 13) before Vol 2 hits theatres (April 16). You read that right – no longer a February release, it’s now April. I don’t think I’ll need to see it again to remind myself of the plot… Uma gets sword, kills lots of people. Yeah. Five will get you six that there’ll be a nice DVD package of both volumes in time for Christmas, so patience is recommended.

Speaking of swords – Who would win between a medieval knight and a feudal samurai? Someone finally tackles that age-old question.

np – various artists / Beyond Nashville: The Twisted Heart Of Country Music