Tuesday, April 20th, 2004

Welcome To My Wigwam

I’m very disappointed in you, Toronto. In a truly rare occurrance, the juxtoposition of touring calendars gave us the opportunity to see two top musical talents, Elf Power and Tobin Sprout, on the same night on the same bill, and you don’t show up. Shame. Granted, it was a Monday night, but surely a few hours of pure pop bliss is worth being a little sleepy-eyed at work this morning? I’d be surprised if there were more than 100 of us at the Horseshoe last night, but thankfully, what we lacked in size we made up for with enthusiasm.

I missed the first openers, Elf Power tourmates Zumm Zumm, but from seeing them running around the club after their set, I can imagine they played a pretty energetic and likely chaotic set. Call it a hunch. Elf Power took the stage next with a different lineup than when I saw them last, but they still sounded pretty much the same (that’s a good thing). As expected, the set drew heavily from their new record, Walking With The Beggar Boys, which I hadn’t heard yet – I only bought a copy last night at the show – but really, despite making a number of stylistic shifts over the course of their career, you can still tell an Elf Power tune when you hear it. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t touch on much material from When The Red King Comes or A Dream In Sound, but the set was altogether very enjoyable if a little short – they were technically opening, after all.

And it was only proper that they deferred the headlining slot to Tobin Sprout. After all, the man is a legend – at least in the eyes of those who regard him as legendary. His main claim to fame is as a member and songwriter of Guided By Voices during their prime Bee Thousand through Under The Bushes period, but he’s also been a fairly prolific solo artist and painter, releasing work and touring when he feels like it. Like last night, for example – the tour wasn’t really meant to promote anything. It was just him and the band out playing selections from his extensive catalog of material, and what an embaressment of riches that catalog is. While the GBV material got the best response, obviously, there were enough die-hards in attendance that even his more obscure solo or Airport 5 material elicited cheering from the audience. It was especially nice to see all of Elf Power in the audience, dancing and bopping like enormous fans. Tobin’s stage demeanor was laid back to the point of almost being non-existant, but the glory of his jangly pop anthems were enough to keep the crowd enraptured for the nearly two hours of his set. Musically, his songs are pretty simply constructed, but his melodies and vocals just put them in a different orbit. With all respect to Bob Pollard and his talents, GBV hasn’t been quite the same since Tobin left. Who knows how long it’ll be before he comes back to town – I’m glad I was in attendance and got photos of the event.

I’ve decided that the Decemberists/Long Winters show on the 6th of June isn’t going to happen for me – that’s the same day I’ll be once again taking part in the Canadian Heart & Stroke Foundation’s Ride For Heart and biking 50 km along the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway in the morning. Last year, I tried to go to see Brendan Benson the evening after the ride, and I was pretty much asleep through the whole thing. I’m just not as indestructible as I once was, I guess.

The littlest Ben of all, Ben Kweller, is on his way to the Horseshoe June 10 to support his new album, On My Way, which came out at the start of the month.

Because shopping for a little Zimmerman these days isn’t confusing enough – Those Bob Dylan remasters which flooded the used CD market last year, and then dried up as soon as I put them on my shopping list, will be re-released on June 1 as remasters but without the SACD version. What does this mean? Hopefully it means that they’ll be cheaper and clearly marked – I believe this means this will maks three editions of each Dylan album in-print and in-stores. Madness.

Ever wonder where bands get their names? This site has solicited the origin stories of many many band names and put them online for your perusal. No guarantees of accuracy, of course. From Over Anything.

np – Elf Power / Walking With The Beggar Boys

Monday, June 2nd, 2003

I (Don't) Feel Alright

You ever get the stupid idea in your head that you’ve left a stove element on, and even though you KNOW that you turned it off before you left the house, that nagging little voice in the back of your head insists you go back and make sure that you did, and when you visually confirm that you did, you feel like a paranoid chump? Yeah.

Okay, net long-term damage from yesterday? Doesn’t seem to be too bad. My left knee is feeling a little wonky but we’ll see if that goes away in a little time. But stairs should be avoided for the next little while, I think. I barely made it up the three flights to work this morning.

I aniticipate today’s net output at work will be pretty much zero. A sensible person would have gone home after the ride yesterday and slept. Recuperated. Recovered. Etc. Instead, I was back out barely an hour after getting home, catching Brendan Benson’s very brief but impressive in-store at Soundscapes. I enjoyed it enough to decide I would go to the show at the ‘Shoe that night. We will call that a gross overestimation of my energy levels, but anyway.

There was some time to kill, so Kyle and I met up with Sarah and went to see The Italian Job. I was concerned going in that after seeing the trailer, I’d already seen the whole film but thankfully, that’s not the case. There’s no shocking twists, but it’s just a good, fun summer film. I realize I love a good caper film. It didn’t aspire to too much, but delivered on every note it intended. It’s like a roller-coaster – you know where you’re going to end up as soon as you get on, but it’s fun anyway. And Charlize Theron. Um, yes. Ahem.

The gravy was for one reel, the projecter went out of sync so the top and bottom of the film was cut off for about four minutes. It wasn’t a crucial scene or anything, just a little annoying, but once the problem was corrected, you forgot all about it. However, at the end of the film, a couple of Paramount droogs were at the exit handing out free passes and apologizing profusely. Good stuff – free movie and I didn’t even feel I should have been entitled to one because of the technical SNAFU. I will instead pretend that this pass comes from them apologizing for The Matrix sucking so hard.

Brendan Benson’s show at the ‘Shoe was quite good, a much stronger turnout than I’d expected for a Sunday night. He and his outfit, the Wellfed Boys, put on a very tight and entertaining set, even if by their own admission they were a little sloppy. I’d only heard Lapalco once previously, so I was basing my judgement of them almost entirely on the performance, and I was impressed. There was definitely some Robyn Hitchcock influence going on, confirmed when they covered “Listening to the Higson’s” in the encore. At first I thought it was Elf Power, but I realized after a bit that EP had covered the same song on Nothing’s Going To Happen. Anyway, it was a relatively short set – maybe 1h10m including encore, but that suited me fine since I had been dead on my feet since around 9pm anyway.

np – Steve Earle / I Feel Alright

Sunday, June 1st, 2003

Bucky's House For Wayward Monkeys

There are not the words to accurately describe how my legs feel right now. I have just ridden approximately 60 km along the freeways on the south and east side of Toronto for the Becel Ride For Heart. That’s almost 40 miles for our American readers. And I should qualify this by mentioning that I AM NOT IN SHAPE. Exercise for me is something that happens incidentally, not intentionally.

But, I did manage to not only complete the entire 50 km course, but cycle from home down to the Exhibition grounds (the starting point) and back. My thighs are just killing me, and my ass feels like I just finished a five-year sentence at Oz. Note to self – investigate new bike saddles. But I did get the best workout I’ve probably ever had, and honestly, my cardio held up a lot better than I expected. The killer was the steep hills up the DVP and the intense headwind taking away any momentum I gained on the downhill portions. There was some serious agony in first gear trying to get up those hills, but I am proud of the fact that not once did I get off my bike and walk any of it. There were some breaks at the rest areas, but those are acceptable. In total, my time was 3:10, including around half an hour of the rest areas waiting for people to catch up.

So now I am bushed, but at least showered and cleaned up. And I am waiting for Kyle to show up so we can go to the Brendan Benson instore at Soundscapes. Probably see a movie to kill time between that and the show at the Horseshoe. I am going to be so dead tomorrow… I don’t know if I even want to ride my bike to work. I don’t know if I’ll be able to.

I love Get Fuzzy – today’s strip is hysterical. There is an interview with creator Darby Conley here.

np – Low / Trust

Wednesday, May 14th, 2003

Like Foxes Through Fences

Some pros for taking the first week of July off. One – it seems we will be taking the Tuesday off, not the Monday. So if I take that week off, it’s just 4 days of holiday and not five. Two – American Analog Set is coming to the Horseshoe on June 25th.

Kyle is recommending to me Brendan Benson, who is doing an instore at Soundscapes the afternoon of June 1 and a show at the Horseshoe that night.

np – various artists / The Amos House Collection Volume 1