Tiny Mix Tapes addresses the ever-growing epidemic of people going to concerts by themselves. This is a topic very near and dear to my heart and I can completely relate to much of it, as I am more often than not one of those very concertgoers flying solo at shows. Case in point – of the fifteen shows currently on the calendar over to the left, I know for certain that I’m going with someone to maybe three or four of them. I expect to run into people I know at a few more, but a lot of them are just going to be me by my lonesome. Why? Am I just naturally anti-social? Well, yes, probably, but mostly I just can’t be arsed to try and convince people to go with me.

In the past I’ve missed shows that I wanted to see on account of not being able to persuade anyone to accompany me, but now I simply don’t care. I’ll usually make some cursory inquiries if something’s coming up that I think one of my friends may like, but I’m not in the business of trying to sell anyone on anything – last thing I want is to feel responsible for someone having a good time. And really, it’s quite liberating. I go when I want, stand where I want, leave when I want. Yeah, there’s not much to do before and between sets, so I mostly just loiter at the front of the stage and fidget with my camera, but there’s worse fates.

Anyway, the article is a fun read and quite accurate in the general experience, particularly that last paragraph. I won’t get into further specifics save to say, “yes”. Ahem. I will, however, do the piece one better – I’m not only going to the American Music Club show in Chicago on my own, I’m flying to a foreign city to do so. That’s like a whole new level of solo concert-going, thanks. I rule the school.

And the title of this post is more appropriate (if less grammatically correct) if you pronounce “live” with a hard “i”. Like “live show”. This, of course, assumes that you read my post titles aloud, in which case I would strongly urge you to seek professional help. Or become my mindless disciple. Whichever.

Thanks to Garry for the tip-off that CBC Radio 3 this week features a lovely interview with The Shins soundtracked by a slew of live tracks. And if you need more Canadian government-sponsored radio goodness, check out this site, featuring downloadable audio from past shows.

Psst – Hey kid, wanna see some Pernice Brothers videos? Sure you do. All the cool kids are doing it.

Rolling Stone tries to prove they’re still hip with the kids by interviewing Interpol. Meanwhile, Miss Melodynelson.com, who IS hip with the kids, directs us here to download the band’s recent shows for France’s Black Sessions and the BBC. Antics is out Tuesday – everyone is all excited about this but I’m just kinda, meh. I’m sure I’ll get it but I’m not running over any old ladies on Tuesday to buy it. I’m doing that just for fun.

Aimee Mann is releasing a live CD/DVD set, Aimee Mann Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse. The DVD documents the show recorded in June of this year in Brooklyn while the CD, presumably, has different live tracks from the same tour. The DVD will also have a variety of bonus features, natch. Tracklisting and pre-order info here.

Billboard gets a sneak preview of the new Stephen Malkmus record, which won’t be out until April or May of next year.

A couple of interesting pieces from LA Weekly – this one looks at how the battle lines that were drawn between what has essentially become the ‘indie vs major’ mentalities and what it may herald for the future and this one debunks three myths about the music industry in this day and age. From Tim O Thompson via Catbirdseat

I Heart Huckabee’s website! From The Big Ticket! Opens October 1!

np – Saturday Looks Good To Me / All Our Summer Songs

The theme for today: Reunions and break-ups.

I guess there is such a thing as karma. Wednesday I was aglow with the news of Son Volt’s revival. Then yesterday comes this horrid, horrid news from camp Luna:

“On October 26, we will release our seventh studio album, Rendezvous, on Jetset Records. This will be Luna’s final record. We will tour the United States and Europe over the next six months, playing our last shows in 2005.”

FINAL RECORD. What the hell what the hell. One of my very favourite bands in the world is calling it quits. Folks on the mailing list are understandably all a-panic and the only response from from bassist Britta Phillips, who acts as band ambassador on the list, is a cryptic yet clear, “I really don’t have anything to say about it right now. There will be interviews, of course”. Sadly, this isn’t a nasty rumour can be debunked – it’s a pretty clear announcement on the band’s official website. Luna is done. Sigh.

In one sense, I’m not that surprised at the news. People have been expecting it for years now – folks were writing band eulogies when they got dropped by Elektra after Pup Tent, when drummer Stanley Demeski left, when bassist Justin Harwood left… But the most recent lineup seemed to have energized the band and they’d undergone something of a creative renaissance with the last few releases – both Romantica and Close Cover Before Striking were some of the best records they’ve put out in ages. I imagine that Dean and Britta from Luna will continue making music as Dean & Britta, but it’s just not the same. Sniff. Alls I can say is those November tour dates damn well better not conflict with anything else on my calendar or my trip to Chicago. I would be inconsolable if I missed their last Toronto show. In-con-freaking-solable. Or really peeved, at the least. I will, however, save the eulogies for later. For now, I will listen to Bewitched on my headphones and weep bitterly.

Does anyone else find it ironic that as all the indie acts of the 80s are reuniting, the big names of the 90s are all splitting up? And somewhere in between, you have the bands that aren’t reuniting but are putting out all sorts of archival material – like Pavement. Billboard talks to SM about the Crooked Rain Crooked Rain: L.A.’s Desert Origins fancy-pants double-disc set coming out October 26 (and yes, that is the formal title). And as for a Pavement reunion? Malkmus says, “It doesn’t feel exactly right yet for me to do it. I mean, it could. I guess you just know when it’s right, just like so many other things in your life. Or, you force it due to financial reasons or someone telling you how much you could make. No one has told us that, so that’s not an issue at all. But we all get along; no one is like a lawyer with a huge caseload or has lost an arm.”

Meanwhile, Paul Westerberg considered reuniting The Replacements for a special concert to benefit cancer-stricken Soul Asylum bassist Karl Meuller, but it didn’t end up happening and now he says, “There’s probably no chance we’ll get back together again… It did bother me for that long because I was secretly excited and some of them weren’t.” But he’s made up for it with a shit-hot lineup for the October 23 show featuring almost every noteworthy Minneapolis native short of Prince. In addition to Westerberg, Bob Mould and some incarnation of Golden Smog will play the benefit. Hmm, Wilco is in town October 25. What do you think the odds are that Jeff is going to be hooking up with the Smog boys? Pretty damn good, I’d say. Pretty damn good.

Still reunion-related (albeit only tangentially), the opening acts for the Toronto Pixies shows have been announced, and neither of them really interest me. At least that means I don’t have to kill myself getting up to the airport after work that day… Oh, it’s New Zealand’s Datsuns and Hamilton’s Marble Index. Whoo.

The Omaha Reader looks at the why Rilo Kiley ditched the rustic charms of Saddle Creek for the bright lights and big city of a major label, or more specifically, their own label with distribution courtesy of Warner Bros. From LHB.

Sondre Lerche, cover boy for the October 2004 issue of Non-Threatening Boys, is at Lee’s Palace October 30 with The Golden Republic as support. Tickets $15 on sale now. Fellow cutie-pie (but opposite gendered) acoustic/chamber/indie/jazzy/Euro-esque/insert-meaningless-adjective-here songstress Keren Ann is at the Drake December 2, tickets $10.

And finally, Jeff Tweedy is really really really sick of George Bush (mp3 link).

np – Luna / Bewitched

I know it’s a bit obvious to anyone who reads this site that I’m a big Wilco booster, but I like to think that I give the other half of Uncle Tupelo props wherever I can. For instance, here’s some of the biggest Jay Farrar news in years: Son Volt is back.

It’s been six years since Wide Swing Tremolo, and it seemed a foregone conclusion that Jay had closed the book on his second band and was going to stick it out as a solo artist. Sebastapol was patchy but I thought Terroir Blues was pretty damn good. Having just gotten the Stone, Steel & Bright Lights live record this weekend, I was pleased to hear Jay sounding more energetic than he has in a while, which I credited to the presence of Canyon as his backing band. I has assumed that in them, he’d found his own personal Crazy Horse and would be making his next record with them. I guess his relationship with them is a little more like Neil Young’s with his off-and-on backing band than I expected as he turned around and went right back to Son Volt. I guess working with the old boys earlier this year on a track for the Alejandro Escovedo tribute album agreed with him.

The party line is that while Trace kicked A.M.‘s ass in the battle of the post-Uncle Tupelo debuts, Jay hasn’t come close to reaching those same heights with any of his subsequent works whereas Jeff Tweedy’s artistry has grown at an almost exponential rate. And I’m not going to dispute this, even for the sake of argument. I will, however, disagree with the notion that Jay’s well has run dry or that he doesn’t have at least another great record in him. I liked all of Son Volt’s albums and no, they weren’t as good as Trace but that was a damn-near perfect record. As I mentioned earlier, his solo stuff had a few more stumbles in it but I attribute that more to him finding his legs in an unfamiliar situation. I don’t see him going back to Son Volt as a step backwards but as a regrouping before taking the next leap forwards – I’d love nothing more than if he came out with something that really surprised everyone who’d written him off. Time will tell, I suppose – time and the webcam. Starting October 1 Jay’s website will be offering a live video feed from their studio covering one day of pre-production and 16 days of recording. I doubt I’ll remember to tune in but that’s because I’m flaky.

And as a footnote, I’m glad to see the number of media outlets, blog or otherwise, who find this newsworthy or are as excited about it as I – see Jay? People do still care. Don’t disappoint us.

And in further ‘trying to find the muse of the mid-90s’ news, Evan Dando is going to re-form the Lemonheads. He’s been spending the last few years doing solo stuff and making an ass of himself on the DKT/MC5 tour. On his departure from that tour, he says “I need to finish writing the next Lemonheads record. The MC5 tour inspired me greatly and I’m now ready to get back to working on my own music,” which is code for “Wayne Kramer threatened to beat the snot out of me if I didn’t get my ass off the stage for good”.

The mainstream is starting to catch a whiff of the Arcade Fire buzz – witness this interview with The Ottawa Sun.

Magnet bids a farewell to Guided By Voices with one more Bob Pollard interview – and Lord knows they’ve had a lot of them over the years.

Neil Young is releasing a greatest hits compilation creatively title Greatest Hits on November 16. Tellingly, it features a grand total of two tracks released after 1979 – Neil’s not kidding anyone, though an argument could be made for including “This Note’s For You” or something from Ragged Glory. Really of interest only to the most casual of music fans, die-hards may still want to pay attention as there will be a deluxe edition that comes with a companion DVD. Undercover has the CD track list and some commentary, but nothing on the DVD. Quit stalling, Neil – give us the Archives.

Gram Parsons fans may want to take note that Safe At Home, the only album from his pre-Byrds outfit The International Submarine Band will be re-released on November 23. I don’t know if it’s out of print – I’m assuming so – but either way, it’ll be out again.

Support for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists’ December 5 show at the Mod Club will be Matt Pond PA and Vague Angels, Chris Leo’s new band, Chris being Ted’s brother. Tickets will be $12 whenever they end up going on sale.

np – Neutral Milk Hotel / In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Happy first day of Fall, y’all. Just bits and pieces, odds and sods today.

Stop the presses – The Buffalo News’ crack investigative reporters have revealed that Nellie McKay is NOT actually a prodigiously gifted teenage singer/songwriter/pianist. She is, in fact, a forty-two year old North Tonowanda construction site foreman named Earl. We are shocked and dismayed, but this means we no longer feel quite so dirty for thinking she was pretty damn cute at her Lee’s Palace show some months back. Uh, I meant that in regards to her apparently being 22 years old and not 19, not for being a big sweaty construction guy. That part was a joke. I’ll shut up now. From Pop (All Love).

Rolling Stone sits down with Elvis Costello about his storied career (“Being the patron saint of a certain kind of woman-hating dweeb is not a great career”), married life, and his latest releases, The Delivery Man and Il Sogno. I just got The Delivery Man yesterday but haven’t had a chance to really listen to it yet, so no preliminary impressions to share. Article from LHB.

Here are the pics from Monday night’s Macha/Mahjongg show at Lee’s.

It’s just come to my attention that the Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter show with The Great Lakes Swimmers at the Rivoli September 26 is free. Sounds like a deal to me.

Pics of the cast of Fantastic Four film, in costume. Nice cleavage, Jessica Alba. And Michael Chilkis doesn’t look as bad in The Thing getup as I feared though odds of hearing him say, “Thing ring do your thing” are not good.

The New York Times presents the story of Brian Michael Bendis, scribe for half the Marvel Universe titles, in comic strip form. Natch.

This Sunday the 26th is the annual Word On The Street book festival here in the T-dot. It’s usually held on Queen West, but this year it’s been moved to Queen’s Park on the north side of the Parliment Buildings. Apparently the logistics of shutting down Queen W for a day were too much to deal with so they’re going to hang out in the park instead. So yeah, it’s no longer technically on a street, but it should be good anyway.

Construction and traffic forced me to cut through the heart of the University of Toronto campus on the way home yesterday. Seeing all the happy young collegiate types coming and going from class, sitting on the grass reading, playing frisbee on a gorgeous September afternoon… MAN sometimes I miss university. Sniff.

np – Elvis Costello & The Imposters / The Delivery Man

So I’m doing it. After a good deal of procrastination, I’m committed to going to Chicago for the weekend of November 13th to see the reunited and rejuvenated American Music Club with Will Johnson. I’ve booked the vacation time, bought the concert ticket online (god bless Scubas) and am booking a flight in a couple days (as soon as my Visa billing period rolls over…). Their Love Songs For Patriots doesn’t come out domestically until October 12 but is already available in the UK – I just ordered a copy, so unwilling am I to wait (and it was cheap!). But Chicago, yeah. Anyone have any suggestions for other things to do/see/partake in while I’m there? I’m planning on flying in on the morning of the 12th and coming back the afternoon of the 14th, so we’re talking about two days or so. I’ve never been – all I know about Chicago is what I saw in the opening credits of Perfect Strangers. Anyway, back to AMC.

Reviews have started coming in from across the Atlantic and they’re very very very very good (Mostly, anyway). BBC 6 has some samples from the record. If you want to check out some older stuff, I can heartily recommend the 1984-1995 compilation available only from shows and through the band’s website. A collection of singles, rarities and alternate takes it functions well as both an introduction for newcomers and an archive for fans. The Guardian also took the time to talk to Mark Eitzel about hats, how the reunion came about and why they split in the first place. Finally, worth watching is this beautifully-shot documentary short on the band by Matt Arnato, circa Mercury (1993). If you’ve never heard American Music Club, you really must – I would put Eitzel up there as one of the best songwriters of the last twenty years, and if you disagree then YOU HAVE NO SOUL. Go eat some babies or something.

In further fence-sitting news, I had an eleventh hour change of heart and went to see Macha and Mahjongg after all – though the offer of 1/2 price admission for 20Hz-ers certainly made it an easier decision. $5 and nothing else to do on a Monday night? Sure. Mahjongg were already onstage when I got to Lee’s, and it took me a few songs to get a handle on what they were doing. What started out sounding just like chaos eventually revealed itself to be something considerably cooler – it was all very dancey/arty with Krautrock rhythms, deep heavy grooves and scratchy/skronky guitars but with definite melodic underpinnings that kept it listenable. Not normally my thing but by the end I was getting into it. Bonus points for decorating the stage with camoflauge netting.

Athens, Georgia’s Macha have some of the most unusual instrumentation you’re going to find in indie rock circles. Xylophones (or are they glockenspiels?), dulcimers, zithers, crazy old synths – hell, I won’t try to identify anything else – Sufficed to say they’ve got some really unusual sounds at their disposal. I’d heard they made some changes to their overall sound in the years between 1999s See It Another Way and this year’s Forget Tomorrow, and indeed they have. It was easy to tell the older material from the newer – their new stuff no longer centers around the unusual instruments, now they act more as accents to the more conventional guitar-based songs with de rigeur disco-beat drums. I definitely preferred their older stuff, with the intricate instrumentation, complex rhythms and mysterious sonic textures. The set was a decent mix of old and new stuff though, so I was satisfied. And if they were put off by the low turnout, they didn’t let it show – they were gracious to the 30 or so people in attendance. A shame, that – more people should have been there. I’m glad I was.

It was also an opportunity to try my camera out yet again, and this time I think I’ve got it. Much much better results this time, though you’ll have to wait a day or two to see – it’s far too late for me to be processing all the pics and getting them online. I know I’ve set a precedent thus far by having my concert pics up within hours of the show ending, but come on – even I need to sleep. Or get my amphetamine prescription refilled.

Badly Drawn Boy teaches bad math at the Phoenix November 26 to promote One Plus One Is One. It’s not, Damon. It’s two. TWO.

The Shortlist short list is out. Of my picks, only Wilco and Nellie McKay made the cut. I guess I’d like Wilco to win (duh) but if I were a betting man, I’d have to put cash on Franz Ferdinand.

The Black Table reviews Art Spiegelman’s In The Shadow Of No Towers, his comic-book meditation on September 11 and life afterwards. I want to read this. Considering how short (and big) it is, I could probably just head over to Chapters and finish it in one loiter session.

Happy 70th, Leonard Cohen.

np – Paul Westerberg / Folker