Lightning round summary of yesterday – beautiful day. Went to look at bikes. Found no bikes. Spilled root beer float in my lap. Disgusted with the Leafs. Had sushi for dinner. Went to an improv comedy tournament. Hilarity ensued. Picked up a couple of Portastatic albums.

Some Cinerama news. There’s a second John Peel Sessions disc coming out on April 28, but near as I can tell there’s only a UK release. Another Cinerama comp that is getting a North American release is Holiday, which collects all the Torino b-sides. Surfing their online store, it also appears that they released a Live In Los Angeles CD last year that I knew nothing about. Shame on me. I’m hearing that they will be touring North America in support of this release over the summer, opening for The New Pornographers, but their July 8 show at The Phoenix lists Vancouver-ites The Organ as support. I hope there is a Cinerama T.O. date in the offing, it would be nice to see The Gedge again.

Some other release dates… the Trembling Blue Stars b-sides and rarities compilation A Certain Evening Light is out on June 16. More deliciously twee songs of heartbreak from ex-Field Mice-er Bob Wratten.

The Luna sideproject from Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham has a release date of June 3. It’s called L’Avventura. A website will be up at www.deanandbritta.com, but not yet. So don’t go there. There’s nothing there. I will tell you when it’s okay to go. Trust me.

np – Portastatic / Slow Note From A Sinking Ship

I think there’s something to be said for “just-in-time-concert-attendance”. Idlewild was scheduled to go on at exactly midnight last night, and my interest in standing around the club waiting for any longer than necessary was pretty much zero. So – I leave here at 11:30, arrive at 11:50, take in the one-hour show, am back home by 1:30 and that includes a stopover at Burger King for some late-night crap food. So my feet don’t hurt from standing for hours, I don’t stink of smoke too badly and I still got to spend most of my night doing other useless stuff. This is a plan.

So how were Idlewild? Good to very good, moments of almost great. Make no mistake – these Scots rock hard. They’ve got the songs (I said it before and I’ll say it again – no one does anthemic rock like the Brits), charisma (There is no name more rock star than Roddy Woomble!) and the energy. From word go, it was great jump-up-and-down rock and roll, with the set split up pretty evenly between The Remote Part, 100 Broken Windows and Hope Is Important material. They even went back to their debut Captain for a number, if just to demonstrate how their songcraft has evolved since then.

Ironically, it was because of the relentless rocking out that I feel the need to deduct some points from the performance. I think a lot of Idlewild’s strength comes from the dynamic nature of the songs. There’s a lot of valuable complexity that just gets lost when you turn the rectifier stack up to 10 and go – I think that’s my main reservation about The Remote Part versus 100 Broken Windows. Remote Part is more in-your-face whereas Windows demonstratted some more restraint. Last night’s encore closer, “In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction”, pretty much drove this home. It should have been elegiac and lovely, but the delivery stripped it of it’s subtlety and it just fell flat.

At any rate, it was my first real “rock” show in a pig’s age and my ears are ringing suitably from the experience. I still maintain Idlewild are one of the best young bands from the UK right now will only get better. All the ingredients are there, they just need the proper balance.

Some pics from the show here. Scroll to the bottom. These shots were me trying out the ‘hold camera over the head and click randomly’ method of concert photography. While it’s good for clearing audience heads, it’s less precise for framing shots, focusing, making sure the band is doing something worth capturing (shots of singer talking to guitarist between songs are not terribly exciting). I will perfect it, though.

See a terrific 2003 riff on “All Your Base” here. Link from Val, who has redesigned nicely yet again.

It’s looking sunny and warm out today. I think I’m supposed to go over to Sudeep’s this afternoon to play Scrabble or something. I will be sure to post a move-by-move synopsis of that tournament of champions.

np – Luna / Penthouse

So the intent of going to see an accountant was to reduce the amount of tax owing, right? The best laid plans. I walked out of there this morning actually owing an extra $600. My accountant, Clive Barker (Bookeeper of Blood!) did his job just fine – tallied up all my business expenses and worked out the deductions properly. But he also noticed that I had neglected to work out how much I owed for CPP (Canada Pension Plan) contributions. Turns out it was a lot. I never did CPP before since it’s usually taken care of by the employer, but since I was technically self-employed most of last year, that made me the employer. I owed CPP to the tune of almost 10% of my gross income. Huzzah. I’m all for paying my fair share, but this still feels like they’re not only bending me over a barrel, but slapping me around and calling me “Shirley”. Oh well, it’s done now and that’s it for taxes for another year. But at least Clive didn’t charge me for the filing – he said he felt bad about me owing more when I left than when I went in. Nice guy. I’d recommend him to anyone in Toronto looking for an accountant.

I also went back to the old homestead this afternoon to visit the folks, try out their crazy new accupressure/heat massage bed. Interesting device. I suppose it was relaxing. I also retrieved about seven years worth of Hellblazer. My mom keeps asking me when I’m going to get rid of those longboxes of comics. Uh, soon mom. Really.

Idlewild tonight! Damn, I’m tired.

np – Steve Earle / Sidetracks

All I wanted was to quietly ride out the short week and slip unnoticed into the long weekend. Instead, I got to work 45 minutes of overtime getting a project finished up. This is what happens when you work with people in other time zones – you get little accomplished in the morning and everything is crammed into the late afternoon. It is consolation, however, that everything went as it needed to and I don’t have to worry about this stuff again till Monday.

It was also of consolation that tonight’s rehearsal was one of the funniest damn nights I’ve had in ages. We were tossing around potential album title names. My contribution – Dorf on Lake Holiday. The added celebrity cachet of Tim Conway posing on our cover would put us over the top to that gilded road to fame and fortune. How could it not? Clay came up with the clever and catchy Lake Holiday Die In A Fiery Car Wreck not long after we were nearly plowed into by a Ryder truck on the drive home. Where he comes up with stuff, I’ll never know. Five Seventeen liked Murder Smells Nice. Don’t ask. My project for this weekend is to get the Lake Holiday blog up and running. Brad demands a soapbox for his insane, syphillis-induced rantings and who am I to deny him?

Web developers who use Mozilla/Netscape 7 (and if you don’t, why the hell not?) are encouraged to download and install this toolbar. It’s got some very handy development tools built in for checking pages.

Live Elliott Smith mp3s. Click and download.

np – Jeff Mangum / Live At Jitter Joes

My friend Nicole is such a funny girl. She finally sends in her and Jim’s money for the hockey pool, and cleverly wraps it in the front page of the Hamilton Spectator sports section from the day after the Flyers smacked around the Leafs last week. Ho ho ho. Was that a taunt? Well Miss Nicole (Mrs, actually), I have some choice headlines for you this morning:

“Ducks sweep defending Stanley Cup champions”

“Ducks fly past Detroit”

“Seeing Red: Wings Fall”

“Wings and Joseph eliminated”

“SO LONG, STANLEY – Anaheim sweeps Cup champions from playoffs”

There is no joy in Motown. People in glass houses, my dear.

ADDENDUM: Apparently Nicole had tickets to game 5. HA HA!

My daytimer states that today is Maundy Thursday. What the hell does ‘Maundy’ mean?

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