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

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.