Saturday, April 9th, 2005
And So The Talking Stopped
Sad news – Scotland’s best cycling-obsessed band The Delgados are calling it quits. Bassist Stewart Henderson told the band at the start of 2005 that he did not want to make another album and rather than continue on without a founding member, they are amicably disbanding.
In his diary entry addressing the split, Henderson cites a familiar complaint – the lack of success proportional to the amount of work put into it. As much as it sometimes seems it’s a golden age for the indie artist, what with blogs, mp3s, zines, online communities and whatnot making it easier than ever to spread the word and occasionally creating a big breakout success, we need to be reminded that it’s still a fucking hard slog for 99% of the bands out there and we should appreciate and support them (morally, financially, however) whenever we can.
In tribute, a track from The Delgados’ The Great Eastern. If the band ever releases a compilation (or even better, a b-sides comp – hint hint), this is a shoo-in (sorry about the brief login, but Epitonic is your friend).
MP3: The Delgados – “American Trilogy”
Also, pics from a couple Toronto shows over the last couple years. I was a little on the fence about going to their last T.O. appearance in October, but am now really glad I did (October 2004, April 2003).
In the meantime, The BBC says “fuck amicable” – it yearns for the good old days where band break ups had the nastiness of a street fight.
The Decemberists May 21 show at Lee’s Palace has been moved to the Phoenix. It remains 19+, however. But in some good news, the band has recovered some of the instruments that were stolen from them last month. Not all of it, but apparently it was part of a larger criminal organization – their gear was found in the same house as a meth lab. Check out this photo of some of the happy band members with dudes from the hazmat team. Wackiness.
Jeff Tweedy has apparently become the go-to guy for spreading good vibes about file-sharing. He gives good quote to The BBC on the topic (via LHB) and Kottke.org has a conversation with Tweedy about copyrights in this day and age. Wilcoworld has the audio of the talk, entitled “Who Owns Culture?” available to stream, but do not reproduce, distribute, perform or display the materials without first obtaining the written permission of Major League Baseball.
Death Cab For Cutie’s major-label debut will be coming out in September. The band appeared on will appear on The O.C. last night April 21. That is all.
The 33 1/3 series of books has a blog. Neato.
I think I finally heard some Bravery at Miasma last night. Holy moley, I hope they’re sending their royalty cheques plus a written apology to New Order every month.
np – The Radio Dept / Pulling Our Weight
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4/9/05 10:51 am
R.I.P. Delgados, never again will rock the guargantuum Reading festival PA at 10 in the morning to an audience of about 20 ever again (it was truly, truly great).
(at least Chemikal Underground will continue, though its roster seems pretty deflated nowadays)
4/9/05 11:24 am
death cab wasn’t on the o.c. last night. later this month, pal.
4/9/05 11:27 am
you missed Radio Dept.’s ‘Pulling Our Weight’ last night’!! it played the moment you walked out the door — a very OC-ish moment for sure. Then it seemed they went to their Edge 102 A-list by playing Kasabian’s ‘Club Foot’ and Snow Patrol’s ‘Spitting Games’ back-to-back…I’m sure ‘The Used’ was in the mail, but thankfully we left at that point. Great set otherwise!
4/9/05 11:39 am
It was late. I misread this article:
http://…/
Apologies, Mr Walla.
4/9/05 3:06 pm
I wasn’t going to go see Fever Pitch. I loathe baseball. But the title kept bugging me, and a friend found that it’s based on a Nick Hornby book. He actually wrote the screenplay for the original British movie starring Colin Firth, which is quite good. Now, I may have to see Drew and Jimmy reprise those roles. Any thoughts?
4/9/05 3:11 pm
They shot Fever Pitch in Toronto. Some scenes were filmed in a bar next door to my office.
That’s all I have to say about it. Looks to be standard rom-com fare. Not abhorrent, anyway.
4/9/05 6:18 pm
the word ‘amicable’ seems to be used very exclusively for band breakups, no?
4/10/05 6:00 am
I remember you reading the Joe Pernice 33 1/3 book. What did you think? I thought it was a brilliantly written first 100 pages of an actual novel. I felt somewhere along the way Pernice gave up and just ended it and tacked on the really out of place prologue to turn it into a novella (I hate the prologue more than anything because without it you could infer the ending meant the narrator commits suice but with it tacked on you know he lives thru everything). It was frustrating to read something really good that just ended.
4/10/05 9:20 am
yeah, I read it last Summer and had pretty much the same response as you. The writing is unmistakably Pernice and despite being fiction, seems more than a little autobiographical, but after investing all this time in the setup, it seems Joe either couldn’t think of a proper plot or reached his word count. Quite frustrating indeed. I think I read somewhere that he’s writing a proper novel, though, so that’ll be worth keeping an eye out for. I’ll ask him if I run into him at the corner store (assuming he’s still living here) or at his solo show next month.
I’d like to read some of the other 33-1/3 books, particularly Colin Meloy’s "Let It Be" (Mats, not Beatles) or the "Loveless" one, though since those are non-fiction I still wouldn’t know what to expect.