I have no idea where it was, but I was reading a piece on The Comas wherein they reveal that a lot of the material from their debut album Conductor was written whilst front-Coma Andy Herrod was dating Dawson’s Creek starlet Michelle Williams (the blonde one who apparently died after I stopped watching. Yes, I watched Dawson’s Creek. Shut up.) and that relationship informs a lot of the material (like the not-so-subtle song title that makes up this post title). What’s the point of that? No idea. But it was hard to completely put that little bit of trivia out of my head at their show at Lee’s Palace last night.

Openers and tourmates VietNam looked like they hadn’t bathed in weeks but used the time saved effectively by smoking up as much as possible. Dirty hippies would probably look at these guys and say, “hey, dirty hippies”. They played a set of drawn-out noodly jams that occasionally got interesting but for the most part would have benefitted if the band had decided to pass the bong around instead of keeping it for themselves.

I knew very little of The Comas before last night – I’d downloaded a couple tracks, listened to some clips, read some good reviews (they made Magnet’s year-end list for 2004) and read the aforementioned little bit of gossip. Just enough to know that I liked their sound and a free show would be worth my time. In the live setting, they were considerably less sonically quirky and more straight up earnest indie rock than I was expecting, but they still put on a good show. Andy Herrod was fairly restrained for most of the night but his bandmates were pretty bopping through the set. I got a copy of the CD at the show and it’s remarkable how different the songs are presented on it – there’s a lot more delicacy and detail, attributes which were traded for a fuller live rock attack.

Full batch of photos tomorrow. In the meantime, there’s a crapload of media available on the Yep Roc website as well as the band’s site.

And, uh, out of curiosity – how did Dawson’s Creek girl die? Was it something dull and melodramatic like cancer? Or something cool and interesting like her losing control of her mutant powers?

Though their new album There’s A Fire won’t be out for another month, New York’s Longwave will be back in town at Lee’s Palace on March 16, tickets $10.50. Hmm, is it very smart to plan on going to a show the night before I have to get up at 5:30 AM the next morning to fly down to Texas and spend the next three days going to twelve hours of concerts each day? Probably not, but like Bon Jovi says – “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. Which at this pace should be about early June. Well, I’ll keep it on my calendar for now but I wouldn’t be surprised if I totally wimped out. And they’ll be back.

Also – Adam Green is at Lee’s on May 3.

And back to the topic of SxSW, it’s not the schedule but they’ve posted a much more useful band list, some with MP3s. The official sched should be out soon, though. Thanks to Joyce for the link.

Prefix talks to Rogue Wave, whose Out Of The Shadow was beloved by many though only moderately liked by me. Hey, you can’t please everyone.

The Magnolia Electric Co finally has an offical website, and they’ve got goodies galore – namely a new video and three complete live shows available for download. Their proper full-length studio debut What Comes After The Blues is due out in April.

Billboard finds out why Gary Louris and Marc Olsen’s tour together isn’t actually a Jayhawks reunion.

Shivaree (finally) gets some local media love. Check out pieces from The Varsity (bugmenot: pissoff@ijustwanttoread.com) and The Toronto Star (bugmenot: jimbojones@mailinator.com / password) . Again, I advise you to see their final show at the Lula Lounge tonight, but get there early – it’s damn close to sold out if it isn’t already.

The trailer for Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is online… and Amazon.com has it? It looks good – interesting approach to Zaphod’s two heads, I’m sure the purists will be crying foul, but who cares about purists? Movie is out April 29. Why that’s practically tomorrow. Or sixty tomorrows.

Okay everyone, once more with feeling – “Fuck you, NHL and NHLPA!”. Dickwads.

np – The Comas / Conductor

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