So my list of music I want to get has gotten mighty small. Any sane person would take this opportunity to re-allocate that portion of their budget to cover other niggly little costs of living, like socks, clothes, food. Me? I’m downloading stuff from Epitonic like mad.

Last night’s Wavelength show was fantastic. First off, the new El Mocambo is unrecognizable from it’s previous incarnation. Well, that structural support beam right in front of the stage is still there, but everything else is unrecognizable. There’s a quite nice and well-lit front cafe area, and the main live music room is considerably larger, or at least the available space is. The stage is much wider and deeper… All in all, it’s an impressive facelift. Sound was pretty good as well. My only complaint would be the concrete floor. Unforgiving on the tootsies.

Anyway – the acts. First was Lederhosen Lucil, still as funny, quirky and adorable as ever. It remains to be seen how much mileage she can get from her schtick, but she’s definitely talented and a great performer. And she had trading cards at the merch table. How can you not love that?

+/- was ostensibly the reason I came to the show, Five Seventeen having berated me for missing them the first time through a couple months ago. Their main claim to fame is being half of New York City indie rock legends Versus, but they deserve to be known as an utterly brilliant live act in their own right. I deserve an Artie Fufkin-style ass-kicking for taking this long to come around. In my defence, their recorded material (I bought the CD there, duh) is more sedate and textured than the live readings – more electronics, samples and production – and while good, didn’t floor me the way they did last night. DAMN.

The Dirty Hearts were alright, mining a sort of cowpunk vibe, though they were undermined by some overly-harsh guitar tones and an unbalanced mix. My main impression was that I think the one guitarist bought his Telecaster from Songbird about three years ago. I know this because I saw that exact axe on their website at work one afternoon and actually took off early to try and snag it. But alas.

Atomic 7 is the new outfit from former Shadowy Man On A Shadowy Planet Brian Connelly. To my non-discriminating ears, the new band sounds a lot like the old one, which is awe-inspriring surf/rockabilly instrumental rock. The man is a six-string demigod.

I didn’t stick around for this week’s NOW cover stars Lullabye Arkestra, as my ears were sufficiently ringing and my feet hurt. Overall, that was probably the best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had. I am definitely going to be attending more Wavelength shows, the sense of enthusiasm and hipster-yet-not-there-to-be-cool was contagious and refreshing. But as for us playing there… I realize these acts were the cream of the crop, trotted out for the anniversary show, but the level of musicianship on display was muy daunting. We’re nowhere near ready to play up to that sort of standard. But someday – soon, maybe even. Alls I know is I need to practice…

np – +/- / Self-Titled Long-Titled Debut Album

Okay, this is exciting. The always entertaining Excellent Online has compiled a collection of mp3s for Valentine’s day, here. There is some choice stuff here, including a track from ex-Ride frontman Mark Gardener and – get ready for it – a track from a NEWLY REUNITED VELOCITY GIRL. If Excellent are to be believed, and I so want to believe them, the band reunited and the track they have on offer was recorded this year. And I’m listening to it now… it’s fizzy, fuzzy and jangly pop-tacular goodness. The gloss of Gilded Stars and Zealous Hearts is mostly gone, at least from this song. Man oh man. It’s probably worth mentioning I’ve had the biggest crush on frontwoman Sarah Shannon for, like, a decade…

The new Mojave 3 album is tenatively titled Moons And Pastures. With a name like that, it’s likely to be their head-first foray into the rap-rock/nu-metal arena, a direction first hinted at on Neal Halstead’s solo record.

I picked up my Yo La Tengo ticket today, as well as my freshly-cut new Tele pickguard. Now I just need the guitar…

Going to the Wavelength anniversary show tonight at the all-new El Mocambo. Haven’t been there in years, we’ll have to see what they’ve done to the old girl.

I just got an email from freelobster@alotoffreelobster.com. What a great domain name, even for spam.

np – Wheat / Hope & Adams

Okay, THIS is unbelievably creepy. And expensive. My God, you could import a dozen women from Siberia at those prices.

ADDENDUM : And it’s a hoax, thanks to Debunker Kyle. Here’s an article on it all.

Now what this means, of course, is that no one is actually using this business model right now…

np – The Magnetic Fields / 69 Love Songs, Volume 2

There was a Valentine’s Day tradition started about five years ago where the single and lovelorn amongst my university friends would get together on the 14th and play road hockey. It was fun. It started out as some pick-up with three of us and some kids who lived on Sudeep’s street, but one year it was a full-on tourney in the parking lot with subs and everything (okay, not everyone was single or lovelorn, but the more the merrier and a lot of us knew why we were there). We only actually did this for two or three years… after university, getting together to play road hockey wasn’t really practical and another consideration was that there were fewer and fewer of us who qualified for the event. This year, we may get as far as me bouncing a tennis ball on my stick. Certainly makes getting things organized a lot easier, anyway.

Somewhere between point A and point B, a whole mess of people got married or engaged or otherwise in some sort of long-term arrangement with someone lacking a Y-chromosone. Which is cool, really. I’m not the sort of person who begrudges others happiness because misery loves company or whatever. I guess I’m just a little envious. Or a lot, depending on the measuring stick you’re using.

Valentine’s Day seems to split people into two camps – those who embrace it, in all its crass commercialism and manufactured sentimentality, and those who reject it for those very reasons. The latter camp absolutely have a point. Why the hell should someone feel obliged to express their feelings for a significant other in some materialistic manner just because the greeting card industry needs some revenue stream in February? Well you’ll either care because you want to, or not care. Do people get all glum on Secretary’s Day if they don’t have a personal assistant? Yeah, I recognize that philosophy is a little at odds with my posting this particular entry on this particular day, but whatever. I don’t hate Valentine’s Day. It means nothing to me, it’s just another day like every other day, but I do wish that didn’t always have to be the case.

np – The Magnetic Fields / 69 Love Songs, Volume 1

In happy news, Beulah have decided NOT to split after the next record and tour. In their own words, “We just read an online article that said we’re gonna be breaking up after the release of our next record. This news made all of us so sad that we’ve decided to stay together until each of us die.” No mention that the online article took the announcement directly from their own website… but anyway. Long live Beulah!

I installed Soulseek last night, as it appears to be the new P2P music-downloading software du jour. It’s small and seems to work well – I just couldn’t think of a damn thing I wanted to download. In fact, I went in and deleted a whack of mp3s I never listen to. But hopefully it’ll be better than Kazaa, which is pretty much poop for finding the music I want to hear.

So happy Valentine’s Day. More on that later.

np – Superchunk / Foolish