The “indie yuppie” phenomenon continues to not go away. This feature in New York Magazine is the latest salvo in the media’s attempt to understand some of today’s thirtysomethings, and it manages to coin an impressively gross new term in the process – “Grups”, taken from an old Star Trek episode. Yeah, THAT’S the road to cool. Cribbing terms from Star Trek. My thoughts on the topic haven’t changed too much since the last time the topic reared its unkempt yet fashionably-coiffed head – I don’t understand it. Are there really people as vacuous and fashion-victim-y as the article makes them out to be? Does anyone really think that consciously and objectively about what their lifestyle is or what they want it to be? I always thought that life was one of those things that just sort of happened… But either way, dig the unquestionably stylish photo of Ivy’s Andy Chase and Dominique Durand (and their spawn). If they’re the prototypical grup-couple, does that make Adam Schlesinger the wacky neighbour?

CBS offers some commentary on the piece and The Albequerque Tribune has already embraced the term with their own “I’m a grup and I love it!” column and The Globe & Mail has also bought in while The Orgeonian still clings to the apparently now-passes “indie yuppie” label. My rule of thumb – anyone who actually uses a (stupid) media-created term to reference themselves needs to be taken out back and stabbed to death with a 1″ Strokes pin.

I Like Music has an interview with Chris Walla and The Gateway with Nick Harmer of grups-fave Death Cab For Cutie The Anchorage Daily News talks to grups-faves-in-waiting Matt Pond PA.

The AV Club gets a look at Janet Weiss of Quasi and Sleater-Kinney’s iPod. Quasi’s new one, When The Going Gets Dark, came out March 21.

Manchester Online talks to Patterson Hood about Drive-By Truckers’ new album A Blessing And A Curse, out April 18.

Elf Power are at the Horseshoe on May 3.

The Varsity (Bugmenot) has run an interview I conducted with Matt Brown of Trespassers William. It was/is my first-ever interview and I was mildly surprised to find the hardest part wasn’t the interview itself, but meeting the word count.

Entertainment Weekly confirms, via interview with creator Mitchell Hurvitz, that Arrested Development is dead. But at least season 3 will be out on DVD June 13, and since it was a truncated season, it’ll be a cheap 2-disc set. Via The Big Ticket.

24: Why do they keep sending people to CTU medical? No one makes it out of there alive except the bad guys. And at least they’ve replaced Chloe with someone hotter. Which means, of course, that she’ll be crazy and/or a traitor. Okay, this clumsy “Jack has to rescue a little girl” detour has time-filler written all over it. Next, someone will tell Jack they absolutely need a pint of Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry’s, even with the curfew. Only Jack can do it. And the big bad reveal is… huh. I repeat: Huh. Good luck selling that one.

Note – there’s basically three new posts up in the past 24 hours. Do check them all out.

np – Crooked Fingers / Red Devil Dawn

So while tonight’s Flaming Lips show at the Phoenix is obviously the hot ticket of the early Spring (mandatory media coverage courtesy of The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun and AP), one of the hot shows of last Summer (which I didn’t attend but was told was great), the Broken Social Scene fete at Olympic Island, is getting a second go-around.

This year’s edition, which will take place on June 24, will again feature some BSS family acts, in this case Feist and Raising The Fawn, and some impressive imported talent – Bloc Party and J Mascis – with more to be announced. Interesting to note that J is being billed simply as J, not Dinosaur Jr or Witch. Will he be doing Fog material? Or maybe he hasn’t decided exactly who he’s going to anger the Toronto Islands residents with.

Tickets for the to-do will go on sale on Thursday for the CFNY presale price of $38.50, plus $6 for the ferry to and from the islands. After that the price goes up, though I don’t know by how much. BSS also made some news backstage at the Juno awards after taking home a Best Alternative Album paperweight for Broken Social Scene, slagging off the Canadian Idol machine. JAM! and Chart dish dirt. Damn you, Kevin Drew. Damn you for making Kalan Porter cry.

Some other just-announced shows meriting varying degrees of excitedness: The Guillemots return to Toronto for a show at the Mod Club on May 4, SF shoegazers Film School have a date at the ‘Shoe on May 19, Greg Dulli brings his Twilight Singers to Lee’s Palace on May 27, the same night Imogen Heap returns to the Mod Club. Snow Patrol are at the Kool Haus June 7 and Vancouver’s Pink Mountaintops, who were such a hit that SxSW that I had to stand on the street for two hours to get into the venue, are at the Horseshoe June 11.

After being delayed for, uh, 7 years, the Big Star tribute album Big Star Small World will finally be seeing a release on May 23. More than a quarter of the contributing artists are now defunct, one broke up for an extended period of time only to actually become half the band they’re saluting (who also themselves appear), several are a decade or so removed from their heyday and one is Wilco. I’ve already posted three of these tracks in the past, but this should still be worth possessing since I don’t actually have any more of them.

Chart and NOW stir some interest for Centro-Matic’s show at the Horseshoe tomorrow night.

The CBC has named me one of Canada’s best arts and entertainment blogs. Well thank you, Ceeb. You’re my second favourite crown corporation. Canada Post still wins because they bring me things.

np – Neko Case / Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

…And back to music. Most of this will be old to you if you’ve been tromping about the blogospher whilst I’ve been tromping about Nippon. But what can I say – I may be 12 hours in the future, but media remains 12 hours in the past. Or something.

Billy Bragg’s recent travels in America seem to have inspired his creative muse – there’s a couple new tracks circulating that are decidedly political and pointed in their content. Both are reworkings of classic tunes – “Bush War Blues” is an update of Leadbelly’s “Bourgeois Blues” and probably requires no further explanation, though Bragg’s new label Anti Records will tell you about it anyway. The other track is based off Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” and concerns the death of Rachel Corrie, an activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting in the Gaza Strip and comes to us via The Guardian. Salon has some commentary on both tracks and an exclusive of their own, his seminal tune “A New England”, which you’ve surely heard before but can also stand to hear again. And for more free Billy Bragg downloads, including his still sadly topical “The Price Of Oil”, go here.

MP3: Billy Bragg – “Bush War Blues”
MP3: Billy Bragg – “The Lonesome Death Of Rachel Corrie”
MP3: Billy Bragg – “A New England”

As I hoped, Zoilus has expanded on the interview he conducted with Bragg for The Globe & Mail Bugmenot) a little while back, publishing the full text of it on his own website (and to which I’m happy to provide visuals for, taken at his recent Toronto gig. And finally, Exclam! has an interview of their own with him. Billy, not Carl. His Volume 1 box set came out last month, his Volume 2 box set will be out in October. Again, Billy. Not Carl.

Pitchfork has an interview with Calexico brain trust John Covertino and Joey Burns about their new album Garden Ruin, which will be out next Tuesday. There’s now a video for the first single “Cruel”, which you can view via Prefix.

Neko Case was in town last night. How was it? All I’ve got are features on the fox confessor from The Chicago Sun-Times, The Toronto Sun, City Pages, The Boston Globe and NOW.

In what must be one of the odder bills to come through town in recent memory, Eels will be at the Mod Club on June 17 with Smoosh. I’d like to see Smoosh, but have never been a fan of Eels. What to do what to do. Furthermore. Mary Timony will be at the Music Gallery on May 30. And in town tomorrow night? The Flaming Lips. NOW features these unknown Okies.

So what, I go away for a week and hell freezes over? No, I guess this is only the sixth sign. Armageddon will truly come when Bob Mould calls up Grant Hart and suggests some coffee house Husker Du action. The Replacements’ new song-sporting best-of comp Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was? will be out June 13 and the box set out next year sometime.

24 (last week’s): You know, when you go a couple weeks between episodes and get some perspective, you start to realize what a truly ridiculous show this is sometimes. Just saying. Anyway, so two high-ranking government officials in Walt and Audrey were having an illicit affair in a hotel and they used their own names? I like Edgar’s replacement. Yes I do… And it looks like SHE’S hot for Chloe too. Too bad she’s crazy. “The first rule of engagement is that you have a contingency plan”. Or six. Or seven. Thousand. Jack gets tasered and then some sweet Audrey action in the span of what, 15 minutes? And finally – the Kiefer Sutherland/Julian Sands showdown! Their steely gazes said it all – “You were terrible in The Cowboy Way!” “Two words, bitch! Boxing Helena!”

PS – this was set to go up yesterday, but I mis-entered the publish date… whoops.

np – Okkervil River / Black Sheep Boy

This trip started in not a rural setting, but a decidedly less metropolitan one but as it progressed, we were spending more and more time in cities. The final day was in Osaka, and we got a taste of urban Japan as we headed into downtown for a couple hours of shopping. I wouldn’t say I was on any sort of a mission, but I was definitely keen to check out at least one Japanese electronics store to see if they were indeed all that I’d imagined. I was directed to Yobodashi Electronics, just behind the Osaka tram station, and wasn’t disappointed.

With something like five or six floors, the store is like Engadget and Gizmodo made retail. Okay, maybe not quite so cutting edge, but it was still a sensory overload for even a moderate tech toy geek like myself. Computers, cameras, stereos, cellphones, appliances, televisions, etc etc, if it had a circuit, speaker or lens, these guys had it and garishly labeled. It was awesome. What I liked best was that there was no distinction between high end and low end the way there is in North America. Whether you were looking for a $10 clock radio or $10,000 phono cartridge, they had it. Pocket point-and-shoot digicam or professional-quality Hasselblad photographic system, they’d hook you up. It was nice to be able to gawk at the really fancy stuff unmolested by staff (not that I’d have understood them anyway) before walking out with some cheap camera accessories. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t have more time to browse or else I’d have certainly spent more money than I really should have.

We had to abbreviate the shopping trip since there was one more stop in town before heading back to Taiwan – Osaka-jo Castle. Situated in the centre of town and rather toweringly so, it’s a reconstruction of a 17th century fortress complete with moats, gates and very impressive central stronghold. I liked that the castle grounds were completely open to the public and used as a city park. With the cherry trees finally blooming and it being Saturday, the grounds were filled with both tourists and locals enjoying a break in the lousy weather. It was a nice vibe. From atop the main tower, you had a terrific view of the city on all sides, a single bastion of the Middle Ages in a sea of modernity.

That was actually one of the pervailing themes of the trip, though far more evident in Kyoto than in Osaka – the proud history of the country sitting quite harmoniously with its ultra forward-looking character, and no one thinking it’s very odd at all. I found it all quite wonderful – if you couldn’t tell by now, I was very much won over by Japan. I felt a real sort of contentment in the places I went, the people seemed quite happy and all exceedingly polite and nice and apparently very much into dachshunds right now. Everyone had one). Everything about their gadget-y culture, from the ubiquitous vending machines to heated toilet seats and ultra-efficient hand dryers really appealed to the latent engineer in me. Things seem strange and gimmicky at first, but if you think about it they’re unbelievably logical and practical. If I was disappointed in anything, it’s that the Japanese cultural quirks weren’t nearly as over the top as I’d hoped. There was some charmingly butchered English on their Pachinko halls and in the airport, but otherwise it wasn’t like cruising Engrish.com in real time. But that’s actually probably for the best as well.

The choice to take a tour wasn’t mine, and it proabably wasn’t a bad one. I usually prefer to travel by skulking around a city and trying to play local, but I certainly got to see more, eat better and sleep better on this trip than I would have left to my own devices. It probably would have been better if I’d been able to understand more than every fourth word out of the tour guide’s mouth (note – tours booked from Taiwan will almost certainly be conducted in Chinese) but making do with a guide book and taking notes of where I was to look up what I was seeing later wasn’t the worst way to go either. Language was an interesting experience, though – I would instinctively spend a few minutes trying to compose my question or request in Chinese, and then realize that they wouldn’t understand that either. So most

But I will most certainly return to Japan one day to explore Tokyo – I suspect that’s where the giant robots are concentrated.

I am continuing to slowly upload my trip photos to Flickr, though it’s taking a little longer than I’d like since all the file dates are fubar-ed for some reason and I want them to display in something resembling chronological order. But they will be getting up there eventually.

For now, I’ve got another week in Taiwan that’ll be split between some tourist-y stuff and some sitting around complaining about the humidity. Should be a good time.

np – Maximo Park / A Certain Trigger

Dear Japan – it’s called WiFi. It’s great. You should look into it. That is all. Another unbelievably fancy hotel last night and again, their idea of internet connectivity is a second phone jack.

More snow greeted us on the morning of our last full day in Japan, but thankfully the weather would only improve from that point on. First stop would be Arashiyama, at the southwest end of Kyoto, and a very brief and brisk rickshaw ride around a few blocks of the town. Then it was a leisurely stroll through some towering bamboo forests to the station for the Sagano sightseeing train, a quaint little engine that trundled through the Hozu River gorge, eventually depositing us in Kameoka City.

The ride would have been a lot more impressive if the cherry blossoms were in full bloom as opposed to full bud – while some of them were finally beginning to emerge, the trees as a whole were still more bare than bloomed. With things finally warming up, I expect they’ll be busting right out within another day or two. On one hand, it’s a shame we’re missing that but on the other hand, with the cherry blossoms come huge crowds so maybe we’re lucky after all.

Then it was back into Kyoto proper for a quick stop and lunch in Maruyama Park, home to the rather imposing Chion-in Temple. There wasn’t time to actually go in but I did get a moment to contemplate the busker in the park singing the theme from “Rawhide”.

A little ways north was the Path Of Philosophy, a picturesque little pathway along a ravine that was favoured as a site of contemplation for Zen philosopher Nishida Kitaro in the early 1900s. Again, if the cherry blossoms had been in bloom, this would have been stunning. As it was, it was merely pretty. That was another quick stop as our lightning tour of Kyoto continued on to Okazaki Park and the dazzling vermillion structures and broad gravel courtyards of the Heian Shrine. It was a setting tailor made for epic martial arts showdowns but sadly, none were in the offing that day.

The final stop of Kyoto was easily the most dazzling and certainly one of the city’s finest attractions, the towering Kiyomizudera Temple. Dating back to the 17th century and built in honour of the deity Kannon, it sits high up on a hill overtop Kyoto and offers a magnificent view of the city from its observation platforms. I’m told that the massive system of wooden supports that holds the whole thing up is built entirely without nails or fasteners. You have to see this thing. It’s cr-aaaazzzy.

That was it for Kyoto – the rest of the night was spent driving down to Osaka with a pit stop for dinner at a bizarre Korean BBQ/all-you-can-eat buffet.

It occurs to me that without the pictures to accompany the text, these posts are reading like a bit of a laundry list of places around central Honshu. Sorry about that, but my brain was stuck mainly in observe and absorb mode, rather than analyze and critique, which is just as well since I’d look like a bit of a damn fool trying to analyze Japan. I’ll have photos up on Flickr over the next few days.

Tomorrow – Osaka and a wrap up.