Sunday, August 10th, 2003

Attack El Robot! Attack!

Steve Earle will be releaseing a double live album on the 23rd of September as a companion to the forthcoming documentary on the man. Just An American Boy, The Audio Documentary will feature “some of Steve’s best loved songs along with some new favorites”.

As they promised in the Spring, Calexico are coming back to Toronto for a two-night stand at Lee’s Palace October 3 and 4 with Ireland’s The Frames as support. Feast Of Wire has become one of my favorite albums of 2003 and they’re supposed to put on a fantastic show, so I’ll be going to that… Did I say a little while back that my concert sked was awful sparse? Yeah, never mind.

Beggars USA has a track off the new Mojave 3 album for download. Listen to “Billoddity” here. Spoon And Rafter is out September 9.

The secret life of movie trailers. Interesting reading.

RIP to Gregory Hines. Running Scared was a great movie, and 57 is too young.

Since I donated my Traynor home guitar amp to the Lake Holiday cause, I’ve been amp-less at home. While I’m sure my brother and neighbours have been thankful, it’s been a little annoying for me, having to play through the amp simulator on my BR-532 multitracker using headphones. I’ve been resisting the temptation to go out and just buy another amp, since I still don’t have a bead on how much moving next month is going to cost me and I’d rather postpone any unnecessary purchases. Turns out a decent temporary solution had been staring me in the face all along. My BR-532 sits atop a little Fender bass amp, which doesn’t really do much of anything besides act as a stand. Well it just dawned on me that the Boss has a line out, and the bass amp has an input jack and pretty flat frequency response – wouldn’t that be just the thing for a fully-emulated guitar signal? Why yes it would. One cable hook up later, I’m audible again, at reasonable volumes! It doesn’t sound *great* – it doesn’t have much depth and is definitely not a tube amp, but it sounds pretty reasonable considering how jury-rigged it is, and it’s certainly good enough to get me through the next couple months until I can sort out my finances. Yeah, I know no one cares, but I’m pretty pleased with myself.

np – Metric / Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?