I think days where I don’t go home after work take an abnormal amount out of me. I am way bushed. After work, I was going to meet Kyle and Fran for dinner before they went to the home show (!), so I picked up Sleater-Kinney tickets and also found East River Pipe’s Poor Fricky. I had never actually heard any ERP before, and bought it on a hunch. Good instincts – very cool and lush pop songs with a charming lo-fi edge.

I handed off another stack of CDs to Kyle, the last of his Boxing Day purchases (made by proxy – me), and got to borrow the first season DVDs of 24. Just have to find myself a day-long block of time to sit down and watch television!

After dinner, went straight to band practice – we sounded much better than on Monday, I’m glad to see that last rehearsal was an aberration. Went through the five or six songs we did with Clay before and they were sounding much better so we tried out a new one. “Radial Tires” will be our big breakthrough hit, you heard it here first. That, or we’ll be sued by Syd Barrett. Either way, noteriety, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

np – The Pernice Brothers / Australia 2002

It’s a penguin uprising! Run! Run for the hills!

np – The Scud Mountain Boys / Massachusetts

The new Harry Potter book is 768 pages. That’s madness. I like Don McKellar’s analysis of J.K. Rowling’s next magnum opus.

“What could Harry possibly be doing? Does he turn out to be the Messiah battling the Antichrist?”

NME is reporting that there will two double-disc collections of Spiritualized rarities coming out this year, the first in March. I like Spiritualized as much as the next orch-rock obsessed indie boy, but that’s a LOT of material. If it’s actual new songs, I would probably get em. If it’s remixes remixes remixes… err.

np – Dinosaur Jr. / Whatever’s Cool With Me

The post office did not fail me after all. My Scud Mountain Boys disc showed up today – the postmark read Jan 9, so the guy selling it didn’t put it in the mail for more than two weeks after he got my payment. Grounds for minor grumpiness, I’d say, but I will be magnanimous and forgive him. It’s a lovely record – more Joe Pernice is always a good thing.

The 2003 NAMM Winter Session starts tomorrow. Which means I’ll be glued to Harmony Central’s show coverage all weekend, basking in the deluge of new and cool musical instrument product announcements. Never mind the fact that there’s nothing more exiciting than a new tuner and power supply on my music gear shopping list right now… there’s no reason I can’t at least lust for a fancy-ass $4000 semi-hollowbody guitar or the like. No reason at all.

NAMM is loads of fun – I got to go to Los Angeles for the 2000 show, helping man the booth of one of my old co-op employers. It’s a veritable orgy of gear. Guitars, amps, keyboards, drums, recording equipment… acres and acres of the stuff. I think I hurt my back trying to haul back all the free swag I picked up that weekend. That was actually the last time I was on a commercial flight, too. Three years. Sheesh.

Kevin has consented to go to see Sleater-Kinney with me next month. I would have gone alone, but it’ll be better with at least one person to go with. Still, I wish some more interesting shows would roll through town.

It’s cold out. Damn cold. I think I must be part small woodland mammal, because I have an overwhelming urge to just crawl into bed and hide for the next two months.

np – The Scud Mountain Boys / Massachusetts

Finally got to sit down and watch Monsters, Inc. tonight. What a tremendously fun movie. I didn’t quite find it laugh-out-loud funny, but it did keep a smile on my face pretty much the whole time. Everyone else in the universe has already seen this, so I won’t spend any more time talking about it, except to say that the bonus materials on the DVD are worth the time it takes to sift through them all.

Got my copy of For Against’s Shelf Life in the mail today… I had bought this pretty much sound unheard based on the glowing recommendation Jack Rabid gave for their newest one, Coalesced, in the latest issue of The Big Takeover. And after a couple listens, I can’t say Lincoln, Nebraska’s only indie rock band has made much of an impression on me. It sounds a lot like Kitchens Of Distinction. Like A LOT. I like KOD alright, though they never grabbed me the way that some of their stylistic cousins like the Chameleons or House Of Love did. I will give Shelf Life some time to grow on me, concentrate more on the songs themselves, but I admit I was disappointed by the fact that this album didn’t take me anywhere new, sonically. I’ve heard this before. Considering how difficult it is to find their stuff locally, I’ve taken Coalesced off my “to get” list for now.

np – Wheat / Hope & Adams