Rob Dickinson, who put on quite a stellar show at The Horseshoe last October will be back for a show at Lee’s Palace on March 7 in support of Fresh Wine For The Horses, which is turning out to having a surprisingly long shelf life for me. I wonder if he’s still doing the acoustic with band configuration or if he’s amping it up for the larger venues? Considering some jackass stole all his gear and personal belongings in Portland a few weeks ago, maybe not (though if you want to donate some money or deodorant, you can contatct him via MySpace for a mailing address).

The Los Angeles Times talks to Rob about life post-Wheel and So Much Silence saw Rob in Scottsdale a few nights ago and recorded the show. He’s got about half the show up right now, and more are coming. Nice to see “Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck” make it into the set list – Happy Days is the one album I almost never listen to (yes, even less than Wishville) on account of it straying a little too close to metal-ish territory for my tastes, but I forget there are some great tunes on there as well. I should revisit.

And some more shows – The Two Koreas, Final Fantasy and Gentleman Reg will be at Lee’s Palace February 15 for an Images Festival party and The Stills will be at the Berkeley Church (I think that’s a church on Berkeley) with current love-em/hate-ems-du-jour Morningwood and Interpol’s Carlos D will also be along for the ride providing… moral support? That’s on March 8. Old 97 gone solo Rhett Miller will be at the Horseshoe on March 14 and Jamie Lidell’s Motown-tronica is at Lee’s on April 21 ($15.00). And in bad news/good news, Field Music have postponed their March 11 show at Sneaky Dee’s – bad because, well, they’ve postponed, but good because they might reschedule on a night that I can go!

Soulshine pays tribute to one of Canada’s unofficial poet laureates, Leonard Cohen. Not that you need a reason to salute the man. He’s Leonard Cohen. And The Calgary Sun and Canada.com catch up with another of our national treasures, Neil Young, at Sundance where his new documentary Heart Of Gold debuted. I’ve been lucky enough to get passes to a sneak preview of the film so I’ll be reporting back on it in a couple weeks.

The Fader reprints their recent cover story on Cat Power. Via For The Records. I just picked up The Greatest yesterday – my first new album purchase of 2006, if you can believe it. And it’s a good start. The digipack is shiiiiiiny.

Lou Barlow announced on his website that he’s going into the studio very soon to work on a new Dinosaur Jr album. I really have no idea what to expect from that.

Stylus takes another desperate and unfortunate step towards becoming Pitchfork Jr with their Worst Albums Of The Week feature. Satire is fine, but not if it’s not funny. And this just isn’t funny.

Emory Wheel looks at the persistant appeal of vinyl in the digital age. Via Coolfer.

np – Maryrose Crook with The Renderers / Ghosts Of Our Vegas Lives

Harp solicits some words of wisdom from the Barking Bard, Billy Bragg. Many bon mots to be found there, but I particularly like this one:

“I think cynicism is the enemy of anyone who wants to make the world a better place. In the end I think the most corrosive thing for the human spirit is cynicism. And you can’t argue with a cynic. They have all the fucking answers.”

His “Hope Not Hate Tour” comes through Toronto on March 11 at the Opera House, his first time back in Toronto since his Talking Woody show at the El Mocambo in 2003. This show won’t be nearly as intimate as that one, but it will be cozier than his 2001 appearance at the Molson Amphitheatre, at least. While the ElMo show was (almost) exclusively Woody Guthrie material, this show should cover all eras from Bragg’s illustrious career since it will be in support of the nine-disc Volume 1 box set being released on February 21 (and which you can preorder now from Yep Roc). Incidentally, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry was declared the 51st greatest British album of all time by the NME. Of course, any list that would put the Arct!c M0nkeys at #5 is dubious beyond words, but it’s still nice to see the props.

Billy recently appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered to promote the set’s release – you can hear the archived show here and they’ve also got a track from the Internationale/Live and Dubious disc. After the Toronto show, he’ll wind his way down to Austin for SxSW, for which he’ll be a keynote speaker. Then it’s a handful more US dates before returning back home to the UK.

And a fellow often compared to Billy, Ted Leo, talks gear in his latest news update. Of limited interest to most, but great interest to me. It seems that every time I see him play live, something of his is blowing up, be it his amp or Echoplex or whatever. You Ain’t No Picasso, up for “Dreamiest Teen” in the Bloggies, has a couple of Ted covers up for grabs – done acoustic because, presumably, all his electric gear blew up again.

Grandaddy will pass away quietly on May 9, leaving Just Like the Fambly Cat as their last will and testament. Pitchfork runs the obituary.

Rainer Maria have named their new album – Catastrophe Keeps Us Together – but still no release date I can find. They’ve got a new teaser track streaming on their website and it sounds just as good as “Burn”, the last sample they put up. This record is very quickly moving up the ranks of stuff I’m looking forward to hearing this year.

Glide talks to Rogue Wave.

Aquarium Drunk has an MP3-ed version of Kathleen Edwards’ long out-of-print debut EP Building 55 available for download.

Popmatters gets way too pedantic about the definition of “indie”. DIY is great, but if a SubPop or Matador is willing to do the heavy lifting of promotion, distribution, recording, etc, without demanding an artistic compromise, why in god’s name would anyone want to do it themselves? My take on “indie” is more abstract – to my mind, it means “independently minded” in terms of creativity and artistry (yeah, I’m probably being overly idealistic on this point but bear with me) and has nothing to do with the business end of things. The fact that bands that pursue this sort of direction happen to exist almost exclusively on independent labels is pure coincidence. Okay, not PURE coincidence, but it’s a consequence, not a reason, and the fact that so many acts that often have little to do their peers, stylistically, has s become a genre unto itself is just plain curious. So while those who argue the point that as a label it’s meaningless are technically correct, I find it simply makes for a much shorter conversation when people ask “so what kind of music do you like?'”. Rock = Zeppelin, alternative = Korn, indie = Magnetic Fields. Simple.

Thanks to Bradley of Almanac fame for the shout-out in his Get To Know Your Blogger feature over at Muzzle Of Bees. Brad has just posted one of his epically long posts if you got a minute or thousand to kill.

np – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists / Shake The Sheets

I declared over the weekend that it was time for musicians to stop fetishising the 80s post-punk/new-wave scene and start playing re-animator with the early 90s shoegazers. I’d now like to nominate an act to help music fans with that painful and awkward transition from one overdone scene into another – Film School.

The band is aptly named, as they strive for a big, cinematic sound that reminds me a bit of Bright Lights-era Interpol in the vocals and guitars (more than a few shades of The Chameleons and Bunnymen here), though overall there’s more groove and less tension, not to mention a healthy dollop of ‘gaze-approved fuzz and atmosphere. I’d also liken them to a less sleepy Calla. They’re obviously of a certain style, but are diverse and hooky enough to have a good shot at a wider audience. The San Francisco Chronicle are boosters, and have a piece talking up their local boys.

Film School’s eponymous new album came out this past Tuesday on Beggars Banquet, who have put together one of those E-Card dealies with some streaming music on it, or you can hit up their MySpace page to hear more. The Dark Stuff gives them a thumbs-up and has some streaming audio, and you can grab this preview MP3 to keep for your very own:

MP3: Film School – “Pitfalls”

One of the bands Film School get compared to in the Chronicle piece is New York’s Ambulance LTD, who have been quiet of late but will be releasing the New English EP in the near future, which will collect some rarities for a stopgap release before their next album. You can hear a couple tracks from the EP on their MySpace page.

You may recall that The American Analog Set was releasing a demo version of every track from Set Free last year – well they’re finally done, and for those of you (like me) who lost track and missed a few, they’ve conveniently compiled the whole batch into a .zip file for you to grab. That’s basically a free album they’re giving away, kids. Can’t beat that with a stick.

Harp gets a number of artists to bear witness to how the Iron & Wine and Calexico collaboration came about and bore fruit.

About.com rattles off a list of what it calls “seminal alternative albums”, their definition of alternative apparently referring to the early-mid 90s post-Nirvana period when anything and everything was being scooped up from college radio and thrown into the mainstream in hopes of scoring a left-field hit (which most of these records did, to some extent). This list could be subtitled “mandatory albums in everyone’s collection during my college years”, or “albums found en masse in the every used CD shop across the country two years later”. Via Largehearted Boy.

Some shows – Scout Niblett, who had to cancel her last scheduled show in town last year, will make it up on March 26 at the Horseshoe. The Brunettes will be opening Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s sold-out April 8 show at Lee’s Palace, though For The Records speculates a venue change may be in the offing. And the lineups for Wavelength 300 has been announced, and is as follows:

February 9 @ The Speakeasy – Anagram, Republic Of Safety, Kickers, Feuermusik
February 10 @ The Boat – LAND (Lullabye Arkestra + No Dynamics), Lenin I Shumov, The Bicycles, Castlemusic
February 11 @ The Music Gallery – The Hylozoists, Picastro, Ohbijou, Woodhands
February 12 @ Sneaky Dee’s – Henri Faberge And The Adorables, Ninja High School, The Secret Handshake, The Phonemes

Note the new contest banner up in the corner – this one’s a pretty cool promotion for online label/shop Zunior.com. Check it out check it out check it out.

And oh yeah, I’m going to Amsterdam next month. IYou can follow along via the blog or you can wait for the film.

np – The American Analog Set / Set Free Demos

I was a big fan of Buffy and think Astonishing X-Men is one of the very best mainstream comics out there right now, so I think I can say that I’m well-acquainted with the appeal of Joss Whedon and his works (but not Angel. Boo). So I’m not speaking as an outsider when I say I never understood the devout following Firefly garnered during its brief life. I saw a couple episodes and while I found it reasonably enjoyable, it didn’t rope me into making an effort to catch or tape it and before I knew it, poof. Gone. I didn’t think too much of its departure till I saw the unprecedented grassroots movement that led to the film Serenity last Fall and the raves the show (and film) got from folks whose opinion I generally trusted – maybe I had missed out? Well, I got the Firefly DVD set for Christmas and after getting through that I rented Serenity this weekend. And y’know what? I still don’t get it. Let me expound.

I enjoyed Firefly and I enjoyed Serenity and after getting through the series, I was certainly glad the film existed if for nothing else than to tie up some loose plot threads, but based on the fifteen episodes of the show (only a dozen of which actually aired), I’m surprised that the show managed to garner the fanbase it did. I liked the premise, the execution, the characters, the writing, all of it – but none of the ongoing plotlines really caught my interest. The secret history of Shepherd Book would have been interesting, and the whole Mal-Inara/Sam-Diane thing appeals to the sap in me, but they didn’t get played out much. The one major story with the mysterious River Tam totally did not strike a chord, maybe I’m just burned out on crazy-talking prophet girls, so when the show was over, I didn’t have any overwhelming outrage at remaining dangling story threads. But apparently others did, and so we got a film. Which, naturally, focuses on crazy girl River.

Usually when a TV show makes the jump to the big screen, it’s an opportunity to let the characters cuss – and the language is a little bluer – but since most swearing is conducted in Chinese, they didn’t really need to ramp up the language. Being moderately comprehensive in Mandarin, it was amusing to me to actually understand the swears they used in the show, but wonder what it’s like for the non-Chinese-speaking audience. Anyway, the film was quite satisfying whether I was hungry for what it was offering or not – it wraps things up in a pretty satisfactory manner, though, taking care to off a couple cast members for good measure. The secret origin of the Reavers was pretty cool, and the requisite big space shoot-em-up also offered some visceral thrills and I’m sure overall it was a treat for hardcore fans. Me, I liked it but the primary feeling that stuck with me was that there was a lot of unrealized potential in the show, and that’s a shame. Now Whedon is working on the film adaptation of Wonder Woman, and some have speculated that he’d be casting Summer Glau, who played River Tam, as Diana of the Amazons. I dunno, besides the fact that she looks MAYBE 15 years old (okay, probably more like 18 now), she’s kinda short.

Harp has posted their new issue online, and the cover story belongs to one Cat Power, who released her latest and Greatest yesterday.

Billboard gets the lowdown on the upcoming year in Feist, starting with more American touring, recording in Europe and culminating in the release of her follow-up to Let It Die before the year’s end.

There’s now an official MP3 from the new Neko Case album to preview – check it out and get excited for Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, out March 7.

MP3: Neko Case – “Star Witness”

Buddyhead offers up their unique look at the best and worst albums of 2005. And Harp has a list too, but not nearly as snotty.

We established yesterday that I’m a fan of physical music packaging, but why oh why do digipacks always break JUST enough spindles to not hold onto the freaking CD? Does anyone have a decent way of replacing digipack trays? I have glue. I just need the plastic bits. The CD in question is Belle & Sebastian’s Funny Little Frog single, which arrived from the UK yesterday a little worse for wear. Alas. Oh, speaking of B&S – the Put The Book Back On The Shelf release party that was scheduled for February 8 at Andy Poolhall in Toronto has been postponed on account of the comic not actually being released till the end of the month. The Beguiling are hoping to reschedule, though, so I’ll keep you posted.

And if you liked yesterday’s post (which many of you seemed to, thanks, and to which I will carry on the very interesting discussion in the comments when I have a chance to form some coherent thoughts), check out the follow-up from Zolius, who picks up the baton and carries it from my community cable access show into highbrow PBS territory.

Joe Sacco, the cartoonist who made his name reporting (via comics) on his experiences in Bosnia and Palestine has put together a new 8-page strip (PDF) The Guardian about his interviews with a pair of former Iraqi prisoners who are accusing Rumsfeld and the US military of torture. This is a follow-up to a piece he did last year (PDF) when he was actually in Iraq, embedded with some US troops. I recommend a) reading these because Sacco’s war commentary is always excellent and thought-provoking but b) downloading them first, because the files are big and could well crash your browser. Via The Great Curve.

np – The Mountain Goats / The Coroner’s Gambit

I finally found an image from that American Analog set t-shirt I’ve gone on about in the past. And it’s topical!

The University of Leicster in the UK reports something that I’ve believed for some time now – music downloading creates listener apathy. It can’t be any surprise that the ease with which people can constantly access and download new music without any real effort has devalued, at least for many, music. If something doesn’t cost you anything, be it money or energy, why should you ascribe any real value to it? Combine that with the fact that we’re mainly now talking about something without any tangible, physical form and you’ve got a recipe for who gives a fuck. This isn’t to suggest that the advent of digital music has been a negative thing – no, it’s hard to argue that the great decline of the major labels is anything but a plus, but nothing comes without a price, and in this case that price is the commoditization commodification of music. There’s a generation of kids growing up now who have no concept of ever paying for music, and I have to wonder what it will mean when they become the primary consumer demographic. Will artists still find a way to get paid? One of The Big Takeover’s blog-columnists offers his thoughts.

I’ve rounded up a few more links of late that address some facet or consequences of the increasing insubstantiation of music. PopMatters ponders what it means to completists now that pretty much everything – rarities, demos, live shows – is essentially available to everyone, everywhere. I for one have basically stopped caring about live show recordings, unless it’s one that I was actually at. In the distant early days of the internet, I remember hunting down and treasuring every live recording, no matter how poor, as precious and rare. Now I could care less, to be honest. Though I can’t really explain why, even though every live Wilco show is seemingly available on bit torrent 24 hours after the curtains come down, I still felt compelled to buy the live album…

And more – Angry Robot wonders if the increasing popularity of downloads might somehow spark a reaction/revolution in interesting packaging to renew interest in the physical product, while Canada.com wonders the same thing, but in regards to album artwork. Sterophile eulogizes the independent record store (done in by the internet, natch), and you may recall my own personal reaction to today’s download culture – vinyl.

And a final iPod question – while mine no longer does the refuse-to-play thing (yay for reinstalling the whole OS), for whatever reason it refuses to play certain songs. Maybe three out of a few thousand on the iPod so not a great percentage, but annoying nonetheless. If I play the album, it just sits on that song for a second, then skips ahead to the next track. Reimporting the tracks don’t work. I haven’t tried re-ripping or re-naming to try and fool it, but that seems dumb. Any ideas?

Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene tells PopMatters that he thinks the digital music revolution is great, but that Pitchfork is silly.

B(oot)log has rounded up a slew of Feist’s radio performances in MP3 form for your listening pleasure, but unfortunately doesn’t have the Red Demos, from which much of Let It Die sprung forth from. They’re worth hunting down – they sound great and “Intuition” is still one of her best songs ever while the version of “Leisure Suite” is almost sinister-sounding.

The Scotsman talks to Scotswoman Isobel Campbell about her new album Ballad Of The Broken Seas. She’s at Revival on March 4 and while Mark Lanegan won’t be touring with her, her band will include some heavyweights including Eugene Kelly (of The Vaselines and Eugenius), who will handle Lanegan’s parts. Now THAT should be interesting.

Some more shows – Stars will be performing at The Docks on March 1 as part of CMW’s Indie Awards. Admission gets you into the awards ceremony to see all the artists not show up to accept their awards, followed by a full set from Stars. And quietly buzzy UK popsters Field Music will be at Sneaky Dee’s on March 11 for a show before heading down to Texas for SxSW. That night will be a mini British invasion in Toronto shows – in addition to The Subways at The Mod Club that night, Billy Bragg will finally be making good on his promise to come back and sing for us at the Opera House. I’m gonna have to go with the old guy.

Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s expansive Jenny Lewis roundup – a couple more interviews with Paste and Chart. There’s also a video for “Rise Up With Fists”, but it’s a MySpace exclusive and apparently that means exclusive territorially too – I can’t see it since I’m in Canada, and I think the rest of the world (and some parts of America) are shut out as well. Can you say “bullshit”?

24: I want to punch the President. Oh surprise, the baddies have someone “on the inside” at CTU. It’s nice to see that they’re maintaining their high standards of employee screening and are placing a greater emphasis on interpersonal skills and overall professionalism. And evidently they’re grooming Chloe to take over from Curtis as chief interrogator – that woman is ice cold! And there’s nothing like a good old fashioned infirmary knockdown scissor-fight to liven up an otherwise talky episode. That final scene? That;s Walt’s spider-sense tingling.

np – Metal Hearts / Socialize