I’m very disappointed in you, Toronto. In a truly rare occurrance, the juxtoposition of touring calendars gave us the opportunity to see two top musical talents, Elf Power and Tobin Sprout, on the same night on the same bill, and you don’t show up. Shame. Granted, it was a Monday night, but surely a few hours of pure pop bliss is worth being a little sleepy-eyed at work this morning? I’d be surprised if there were more than 100 of us at the Horseshoe last night, but thankfully, what we lacked in size we made up for with enthusiasm.

I missed the first openers, Elf Power tourmates Zumm Zumm, but from seeing them running around the club after their set, I can imagine they played a pretty energetic and likely chaotic set. Call it a hunch. Elf Power took the stage next with a different lineup than when I saw them last, but they still sounded pretty much the same (that’s a good thing). As expected, the set drew heavily from their new record, Walking With The Beggar Boys, which I hadn’t heard yet – I only bought a copy last night at the show – but really, despite making a number of stylistic shifts over the course of their career, you can still tell an Elf Power tune when you hear it. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t touch on much material from When The Red King Comes or A Dream In Sound, but the set was altogether very enjoyable if a little short – they were technically opening, after all.

And it was only proper that they deferred the headlining slot to Tobin Sprout. After all, the man is a legend – at least in the eyes of those who regard him as legendary. His main claim to fame is as a member and songwriter of Guided By Voices during their prime Bee Thousand through Under The Bushes period, but he’s also been a fairly prolific solo artist and painter, releasing work and touring when he feels like it. Like last night, for example – the tour wasn’t really meant to promote anything. It was just him and the band out playing selections from his extensive catalog of material, and what an embaressment of riches that catalog is. While the GBV material got the best response, obviously, there were enough die-hards in attendance that even his more obscure solo or Airport 5 material elicited cheering from the audience. It was especially nice to see all of Elf Power in the audience, dancing and bopping like enormous fans. Tobin’s stage demeanor was laid back to the point of almost being non-existant, but the glory of his jangly pop anthems were enough to keep the crowd enraptured for the nearly two hours of his set. Musically, his songs are pretty simply constructed, but his melodies and vocals just put them in a different orbit. With all respect to Bob Pollard and his talents, GBV hasn’t been quite the same since Tobin left. Who knows how long it’ll be before he comes back to town – I’m glad I was in attendance and got photos of the event.

I’ve decided that the Decemberists/Long Winters show on the 6th of June isn’t going to happen for me – that’s the same day I’ll be once again taking part in the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation’s Ride For Heart and biking 50 km along the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway in the morning. Last year, I tried to go to see Brendan Benson the evening after the ride, and I was pretty much asleep through the whole thing. I’m just not as indestructible as I once was, I guess.

The littlest Ben of all, Ben Kweller, is on his way to the Horseshoe June 10 to support his new album, On My Way, which came out at the start of the month.

Because shopping for a little Zimmerman these days isn’t confusing enough – Those Bob Dylan remasters which flooded the used CD market last year, and then dried up as soon as I put them on my shopping list, will be re-released on June 1 as remasters but without the SACD version. What does this mean? Hopefully it means that they’ll be cheaper and clearly marked – I believe this means this will maks three editions of each Dylan album in-print and in-stores. Madness.

Ever wonder where bands get their names? This site has solicited the origin stories of many many band names and put them online for your perusal. No guarantees of accuracy, of course. From Over Anything.

np – Elf Power / Walking With The Beggar Boys

The hardest-working band in indie rock? The second leg of the “Never Send To Know With Whom the Van Rolls, It Rolls With Thee” tour will bring The Decemberists back to Toronto June 6 at Lee’s Palace with The Long Winters as support. Their show last month was terrific – this one will be a little less intimate, sure, but should still be a fine evening of music. The Long Winters were pretty damn good when they opened for Death Cab last year, too. Boo-yah.

Plexifilm has posted the cover artwork from the forthcoming Galaxie 500 DVD, Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste, out June 29.

Pitchfork is on a Pixies reunion jag for today’s “We Are The World”, scrutinizing three tracks from their reunion show live CDs.

I watched 24 on tape delay as I had to watch the Leafs lose in double-overtime live. It’s really the only way to do it. But what a treat I had waiting for me: Ack. Eek. Urk. Okay, that was the most tense and unnerving episode in a while, congratulations to the producers for managing to torpedo my snarkiness about most of this season and genuinely freak me out. The infiltration of Saunders’ apartment building was really tense, but I’m getting irritated with the ‘always-one-step-ahead’ villian device, I mean, come on. I realize that it’s a plot necessity, but I’m still feeling a little cheated. As for the closing scene was… man. Jack’s bosses have got to stop getting into aircraft with him. It just ends badly. I really felt for Jack and Chapelle, and as Sam correctly pointed out, that may have been the first truly good piece of acting we’ve seen this season. Bravo. Finally – what’s with putting Cleveland on the list of cities to unleash the virus in? Cleveland? Why not just pick Buffalo? Sheesh. These last five hours are gonna be good – and the next one is in less than 48 hours.

np – Nellie McKay / Get Away From Me

It’s always nice to find something new and interesting on the newsstands. Case in point: Harp Magazine. Their tagline is “Words On Music” and indeed, it contains many many words, mainly about music. The content leans to the singer-songwriter side of the indie/alt worlds, and it comes off as the bastard child of Magnet and No Depression, but somehow slicker and glossier than both. What’s curious to me is the abundance of ads for musical instrument manufacturers – who exactly is the target audience of this publication? Musicians who just want to read about good artists and look at ads for gear? Sign me up. The ads are the only thing I really like in guitar magazines anymore, so if I can get them with some decent editorial content (this month – Sparklehorse, Magnetic Fields, Will Oldham and a Minus 5 cover story), all the better. I haven’t really read anything yet, but it looks to be a very well-put together mag. Anyone know who publishes this? I can’t imagine it doesn’t have someone with deep pockets behind it. It’s a bi-monthly, and I only wish it was published on off-months from Magnet instead of the same month so that I would have something to pick up at the newsstand every month.

The Jay Farrar live album, Stone, Steel & Bright Lights, will come with a bonus DVD that contains 11 live songs from a San Francisco show in January of this year. This practice of issuing DVDs chock full of content with albums? I like it. It’s out June 8.

I bit the bullet and picked up some stuff yesterday that had been on my ‘to get’ list for ages now.

Chart talks to Elf Power about Walking With The Beggar Boys and the decision to release it themselves. They’ve also redone their website – very nice. EP will be in Toronto on Monday with Tobin Sprout, you can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to this show. I don’t have the new album yet, but reviews have been decent and I will be picking it up at the show. I haven’t heard anything Tobin has done since Let’s Welcome The Circus People, but apparently he’s promised to play everything he ever wrote for Guided By Voices on this tour – Inestimable pop goodness will abound. Hamiltonians can catch both Tobin and Elf Power on Sunday at the Casbah – don’t miss it.

Longwave’s Life Of The Party EP, out June 8, will feature new songs and videos to keep the fans satiated until they finish working on their new album with producer John Leckie, slated for release early next year.

I think I watched like a dozen episodes of Sports Night last night. Damn, this show was so good. I’m not surprised it went off the air though – Ted McGinley is broadcast death, everyone knows that.

Know what’s weird? Any Blogspot pages I try to read I have to refresh at least once, the first time it loads there’s inevitable loads of code gibberish about one screen down. What’s up with that? Anyone else getting that? Weird.

np – The Jayhawks / Rainy Day Music

24 fans may want to swing by their local funny papers show on Free Comic Book Day this July 3rd to pick up a preview of 24: One Shot, an officially licensed comic-book detailing Jack Bauer’s first day at CTU, being put out by IDW Publising. There’s no way to make sure you take an entire day to read the thing (it is 48 pages after all – you’d have to read pretty damn slow) nor is there any guarantee it won’t suck, but it’s an interesting idea and the artwork looks nice, so… The full version will be coming out later on July 30. Comic Book Resources talks to the creators about the genesis of the project.

Another day, another Wilco nugget – the press release for A Ghost Is Born has some interesting info about the making of the album, the themes on the record and the thinking behind the current lineup of the band. Note – it’s a PDF so you better have Adobe Acrobat installed.

I have my Pixies tickets for the Arrow Hall show. Now I have seven months to figure out exactly how I’m going to get up to the airport and back in November. But to whet my appetite, JAM has a review of Wednesday night’s show in Winnipeg. Verdict? GOOD. Apparently bootlegs of the show are already circulating online. I’m shocked.

The Punisher is getting some truly heinous reviews. Dolph Lundgren must be feeling pretty vindicated right now. “It wasn’t me, it was the material!”

I got myself a DVD-RW drive last night – easiest new hardware install ever. No software (besides installing Nero to burn) and within 15 minutes I was clearing crap off my hard drive in 4.5 GB increments. I went with the DVD burner instead of a new hard drive because realistically, I shouldn’t ever need immediate access to more than the 100GB of storage I already have. And now I can pirate movies! Ahhrrrr. Nuts to that set painter guy in the PSA before the trailers. Nuts, I say.

np – Steve Earle / Sidetracks