It’s “compilations giving props to bands from the late-80s and early-90s who never got their due” day! We’ve got t-shirts made up and everything.

Intended to tie in with the release of Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste: Galaxie 500 1987-1991 on June 29, Rykodisc will be releasing The Uncollected Galaxie 500 on August 3rd. This was originally the fourth bonus disc in the Galaxie 500 box set released in 1996 and contains b-sides and live tracks and alternate versions of the material on the three proper G500 studio albums. While the inidivdual album reissues are still readily available, the box set has gotten pretty tough to find of late – I’m thankful to have picked up my copy for under $50.

The perfect companion to The Creation Years, The House Of Love will release The Fontana Years in the UK on June 15. The double-disc set will contain 33 songs from 1989 through 1993 – full tracklisting here. I suspect that owning Fontana, Babe Rainbow and A Spy In The House Of Love will make the collection redundant for me, but it’s nice to see that the HOL are finally getting some props. And as far as I know, the reunion is still ongoing and a new album featuring both Chadwick and Bickers is still in the works.

The Independent talks to Wilco. He compares himself to Willy Wonka. Almost all of these interviews cover the same ground – if you’re getting tired of reading the same thing, imagine how tired the band is of saying the same thing.

RIP, Ray Charles. I will always remember him as the gun-toting music store owner in The Blues Brothers. Oh, and as one of the biggest names in soul music of the 20th century. That too. But mostly the gun-toting music store owner.

Oh, and it’s official – Franz Ferdinand is off the concert sched, Feist is on. Tickets have been bought and sold and everything. “My blogging duty”? Sheesh.

Sorry for the quick update today – things are busy at work.

np – The Waxwings / Low To The Ground

(ring ring)

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Can I speak to Jamal?”

“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong number.”

“Wrong number?”

“Wrong number.”

“Are you Turkish?”

“Nope.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Oh, okay. Bye.”

NOW’s NXNE minisite has schedules, critics picks, artist profiles and daily updates for the music festival kicking off in earnest tonight. For everything that’s going on, I’m still only planning on going to the Rainbow Quartz showcase at Healey’s tomorrow night ($8 at the door). Maybe I’ll try to get into the Feist show at the Mod Club on Saturday. I dunno.

Speaking of Feist, she is this week’s eye cover girl as well as the main feature in The Toronto Star’s “What’s On” section.

To everyone who thought Ryan Adams was off his nut when he shut down his website in honour of Friends’ finale – there may have been a method to his madness. Freshly recovered from mourning Ross and Rachel and Joey and company, Adams has put an album’s worth of demos up on his website. The material has been circulating amongst traders as a bootleg entitled Exile On Franklin Street and comprises all-new material except for versions of “Come Pick Me Up” off of Heartbreaker and “Rescue Blues” from Gold. I’ve only listened to a few tracks but it sounds good – all very stripped-down and simple-like, sort of how Ryan sounded before he turned up the suck. It’s all in a Flash player so you can’t easily save it down, but it’s surely all available on your favourite P2P network as we speak. I’m not so much surprised that he’s done this, but that he did it without mouthing off about it to anyone within earshot. NME has some more info.

Franz Ferdinand will do an autograph session at the HMV on Queen W at 6pm on Monday June 14 before heading down to the Kool Haus for their sold-out show. For my part, I think I’ve just sold my ticket for the concert. The idea of getting my ass from rehearsal down to the venue and then back home afterwards all on a Monday night is not very appealing at all. And anyway, I saw them earlier this year at the Horseshoe and I doubt this show will better it. The Toronto Star has a piece on the band.

There will be no advance tickets for the Sea Ray show at the Rivoli June 21 – just $10 at the door. Just in case you were waiting for ticket info. Like I was. But aren’t anymore. Ahem.

Okay, so this Orkut thing – it’s different from Friendster how, exactly? Beats me, but I have a profile now. Actually I have two, accidentally. If you’re there too, hit me up.

I had been working a pretty good no-wedding streak since last Summer. Since about March of 1998, I’ve had at least one wedding on the calendar through till August 2003 when the last one came and went – I think there were in total nine or ten in that five year span. Now I don’t mind going to weddings – the food is usually quite good and it’s fun to celebrate the nuptials of friends and family, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to not have to worry about the whole rigamarole of gifts, cards, travel, tying a tie, etc. I’m lazy, y’see. Anyway, that streak is now technically broken – I got an invitation yesterday for the wedding of a girl I knew in high school this August. I haven’t decided if I’m going yet – we weren’t especially close and while it’s reasonably local (ceremony in Hamilton, reception up by the airport), the logistics of it all don’t have me real excited. I’ll ponder it for a while. This wedding is noteworthy, however, for being the first one for any of my friends from high school. Ten years out from graduation and no one else is married yet. That’s kinda weird.

np – Calexico / Hot Rail

Behold the artwork for Tanya Donelly’s Whiskey Tango Ghosts, out July 27. Larger pic here. Over on the 4AD message board, someone has done a track-by-track commentary (I hesitate to call it a review) of the new record.

Wilco appear to be set on becoming a multimedia powerhouse. In the last few years there’s been a feature film and DVD, compact discs, a free digital download EP and biography (Learning How To Die, out June 15). Now there’s another book due out in October – check out The Wilco Book. Produced in conjunction with PictureBox Inc (who designed the packaging for A Ghost Is Born), it’s descibed as follows: “Accompanied by a 40-minute CD of unreleased new music, The Wilco Book is a full color 160-page visual analog to the band’s music”. So there you have it – an album’s worth of unreleased music and a picture book to go along with it. How cool is that? Only thing that could be cooler is if there was the sound of Tinkerbell waving her magic wand everytime it was time to turn the page.

And a Wilco chaser – Billboard reviews their show last night in NYC.

Iron & Wine are doing an instore at Soundscapes on College St on June 29 at 7pm in advance of their show that same night at the Horseshoe.

I don’t know why The Wave has decided that Yo La Tengo are ‘shoegaze’, but thankfully it doesn’t factor into this quick interview with James McNew about nothing in particular. From the GPC.

Curiosa ticket info is now up. As predicted, it’s pricey – $25.50 for lawns, up to $85.50 for seats. And don’t forget, this is before Ticketmaster’s anal rape fees so we’re talking $100 if you want to marvel at how badly Robert Smith is aging from up close. They’re on sale this Saturday though I believe there’s a presale starting today if you’re a member of CFNY’s – sorry, Edge 102’s glee club. I don’t know anything beyond that. Now you damn kids get off my lawn.

An interesting experience helping out at the White Ribbon Campaign concert last night. Who knew The Tea Party had so many fans? Not I. Nor was I accustomed to interacting with all-out rawk fans, with their leather pants, low-cut tank tops and teased-out hair (this is the men AND women, thanks – though the women did generally have much larger breasts). Guess I’ve spent too much time in the insular little world of indie… or not enough. Since it turned out I was no longer needed for the silent auction, I was assigned to gather signatures for a giant petition. Didn’t do a terrific job of it either, I confess, though it wasn’t really my fault. It’s tough to get peoples’ attention when you’re standing in a dark doorway (some light would have been nice…) and they’re looking really hard for the bar. What got me the most was the people who looked at the petition (which basically said “These men are working to end men’s violence against women”, the raison d’etre of the organization) and said, “no thanks”. What, you disagree with the cause? Anyway, I got bored with that and went to help hand out white ribbons at the front door for a while. All in all, I wasn’t really needed there after all but it was nice to help out where I could. If ineffectively.

np – Cinerama / Torino

Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Lightning for winning their first Stanley Cup. I was obviously pulling for Calgary, but Tampa certainly earned this and I’m thrilled for Dave Andreychuk (ex-Leaf!) – 22 seasons is a helluva long time to wait for your first championship. And while there’s going to be naysayers who will huff that the Stanley Cup doesn’t belong in Florida, I liked what Martin St. Louis said in response to them last night after the game – “I don’t care what they think”. You’re not going to tell me that those 25 guys on the ice or the 20,000 fans in stands were any less ecstatic than they would have been here. Maybe I’m just a little touchy after hearing the same sort of criticism 10 years ago when my Jays won two World Series – how could a Canadian team win the championship of America’s pastime? Easy – we kicked Atlanta and Philadelphia’s asses. It happened, deal with it. (I was kidding with my, “that’s just not right” comment a couple days ago, by the by). Cheers to the Bolts.

Lowculture has a touching eulogy for Ronald Reagan from one of his most famous co-stars.

The Finn Brothers will be in Toronto at Massey Hall July 26 to promote their new album Everyone Is Here, out August 24. Full details at Filter.

More information, reliable or not, is coming to light about the death of Robert Quine. At first they were saying it was a suicide, then that became a heroin overdose – not to say that they can’t be the same thing. The Billboard link has some kind words about Robert from Lou Reed. Pitchfork also has an obituary.

A fond farewell to Glamorama – another blogger bites the dust. Now, as prescribed by ancient tradition, remaining bloggers will cut apart his source code and insert it into our own, thus granting us the strength of the fallen.

You may note the presence of a new retro-styled banner up in the corner plugging a couple of upcoming Lake Holiday shows. After almost three months of hiding out, we’ve got two shows in the span of a week – the first on the 17th at Sneaky Dee’s is our own, with Code Name Laurentians and Pine Music (it’s a whole cottage-country theme) and the second opening for the “President of indie rock”, Wax Mannequin at the Rivoli on the 23rd. Dan Gorman also performs that night. Extra incentive, if you need it, is that these could be Five Seventeen’s final shows with the band as frankly, we’re sick of his shit and intend to tie him in a gunnysack and toss him over the Bloor viaduct sooner rather than later. Actually, he’s moving to BC at the end of the Summer so we’re looking for a replacement bassist. Know anyone? Funny name and veganism are not prerequisites.

I have somehow been hornswaggled into volunteering at the White Ribbon Campaign Concert/NXNE kickoff tonight at the Phoenix. Well, hornswaggled probably isn’t the right word if it’s even a word at all. More like Clay asked if anyone could help out and I said “sure”. Apparently I will be sitting around in the silent auction room making sure no one steals anything – you know that signed Bacon Brothers CD/DVD will be a hot item. Meanwhile, The Tea Party and other perpetrators of crimes against music will be rocking out in the next room. At least it’s for a good cause.

np – Bettie Serveert / Dust Bunnies

Signs of the Apocalypse #5301: Could Neil Young’s Archives finally be coming out? MusicTap has been getting multiple reports that Neil has made a deal with Sanctuary Records to release the gargantuan Archives collection, which has been under construction for nigh on twenty years now, in four installments of 8 CDs and 2 DVDs each. That’s a total of 32 CDs and 8 DVDs, for those of you without calculators handy. That’s right – never one to do things in half measures, Neil will be putting out a box set of box sets. And if that’s not enough Neil, they’ll also be releasing a live CD taken from a 1971 show at Massey Hall in Toronto. Note that none of this is confirmed and as with all things Neil, it can change at the drop of a hat, but any news is good news, I think.

Some sad news – Robert Quine has passed away. No details right now, but his website has confirmed it. Quine was a sideman nonpareil, starting out with Richard Hell and the Voidoids in the late 70s NYC-CBGBs punk scene, and later working with Lou Reed, John Zorn, Tom Waits, Lloyd Cole and Matthew Sweet. It’s Sweet’s records that I know his work best from – the guitar work on Girlfriend, Altered Beast and 100% Fun is phenomenal (it’s mostly Quine and Richard Lloyd). Condolences to friends and family, RIP. Update: The webmaster at Richard Hell’s website has posted the following message: “It was suicide. He never recovered from his wife’s sudden, completely unexpected death ten months ago. I don’t know much more except that it’s going to mess up many many people’s minds. There was no one like him.” So sad.

As we inch closer towards the June 22 release of A Ghost Is Born, you know the Wilco press clippings are going to increase exponentially, and like any proper devoted fanboy blogger, I’ll be presenting the ones I find and deem worthwhile, like this Chicago Sun-Times piece by Jim DeRogatis or this one from the Chicago Tribune by Greg Kot (free registration required).

Shortwavemedia interviews Camera Obscura on the eve of their first North American tour. Or really, about twenty eves before the start of their first North American tour. they play the Horseshoe in Toronto July 23.

Pitchfork has complete details on the Low box set, A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief, out on July 20. Most of this info has been previously reported, but here’s the 411 all in one place. They also mention the band is working with Dave Fridmann on their new album.

Retrocrush presents an interesting twist on the best-of list: 50 Coolest Song Parts. It’s nice every once in a while to see a list that’s not trying to be ironic or post-modern, but is just excited to be talking about good music. From Burned By The Sun.

Coolfer has compiled a best of 2004 list, thus far at least. I had thought about doing something similar for the end of June at the midway point of 2004, but the truth is is that of the 2004 releases that I’ve acquired to this point, there’s not really any that have blown me away. There’s some that will certainly grow on me as I listen to them more and could well earn its way onto the year-end list, but to assign them that status at this point is premature. The second half of the year has some key releases scheduled though, so I’m not saying 2004 is a bust yet, not at all. It just hasn’t been particularly spectacular… though I will investigate some of the stuff on Coolfer’s list.

I’ve finished watching season two of The Office and think I actually enjoyed it more than season one, heresy as that might seem. Partly because it took me a few episodes to get into the rhythm of season one whereas for the second series I was right in there from the get go, but also because while it might be less all-out funny, it has a more compelling storyline running through it. While season one focused on establishing the characters and their dynamic, season two actually takes it and runs with it. David Brent shows himself to be less the bumbling idiot and more the nasty, deluded little man while the Tim-Dawn plotline is executed quite realistically (maybe a little too much so?). I particularly liked the ambiguity of the final episode. Now I guess I’ll can either go dig up the Christmas special online or wait for it to come out DVD as season three.

12,000 participants in yesterday’s Ride For Heart, over $1.55 million raised. Not a bad day’s work, and you know what? Today my legs don’t even hurt!

Found this in my referer log – someone got to my blog by searching for “milky sexy nude naked girls photos”. Sorry dude, you want my other website.

np – Buffalo Tom / Big Red Letter Day

PS – Buffalo Tom are writing a new album for release in 2005! Yay for the early 90s Beantown-rock revival!