Wednesday, August 25th, 2004
I Am An Internet Pre-Sale Ninja
Update: Oh yeah – happy birthday to Jeff Tweedy. This is the best present I could have asked for.
np – Wilco / Summerteeth
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facebookWednesday, August 25th, 2004
Black Postcards
If this is legitimately Luna’s official bio for Rendezvous… well it’s pretty damn clever. And if not, and it’s actually an interview request, well then it’s just weird – though if they’re willing to answer questions from any old schlub with a website, I should probably get cracking on questions for my own exclusive Luna interview! (Dean – how much time do you spend in the morning perfecting your bedhead?) Rendezvous is out October 26. The lovely new promo pic is by Stefano Giovannini. Check out his work – there’s some real nice stuff there. Sonic Youth and Cat Power are favoured subjects.
And speaking of Ms Chan Marshall, Matador is trumpeting something called Speaking For Trees: A Film By Mark Borthwick, out October 26, on the Cat Power section of their message boards. There doesn’t seem to be any further information available, but my awesome powers of deduction lead me to believe that it’s a documentary of some sort about Cat Power, maybe trees, certainly directed by one Mark Borthwick, and it’ll be in stores on the 26th of October.
The new Stars album Set Yourself On Fire is coming out October 12. According to the press release, “Set Yourself On Fire sees Stars build upon their already acclaimed catalogue of songs about life, love, death, heartbreak. and the need to set yourself on fire when there’s nothing left to burn”. Sounds grandiose. Curiously, there’s been no word about Amy Millan’s solo record in a long time. What gives? Tidbits from Pop (All Love).
The excessively long list of nominees for the 2004 Shortlist of Music prize is out. I’m looking over this list, and honestly I’m having trouble coming up with a short list of my own – not even a top 10. There’s records on there I like but don’t think are necessarily the artistic achievements that winning the Shortlist prize would imply as well as records that I expect WILL make the short list simply by virtue of their popularity. I mean, I like the Franz Ferdinand album alright, but it’s really not much more than a dance/party record, y’know? Not really one for the ages. The Shortlist mission statement says the prize seeks to honour the “most adventurous and creative albums of the year across all genres of music, focusing on emerging artists rather than established hitmakers”, but that should mean more than just an indie/new artist whose managed to find some commercial success. If we’re going to give weight to artistic ambition/pretention, then I’d have to give the nod to The Wrens’ The Meadowlands, Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, Nellie McKay’s Get Away From Me and maybe The Sleepy Jackson’s Lovers, though that’s a dark horse on account of the fact that very few people have heard it (a damn shame, it’s a brilliant record). Granted, there’s lots of nominees I haven’t heard, either because I haven’t gotten around to it or I simply have no interest, so I’m hardly laying odds on a winner. Just talking. Y’know.
Introducing DualDisc, coming October 2004. So let me get this straight – the Big Four (Three? Two?) record companies are actually doing something technologically-forward thinking that’s NOT going to screw over existing technology and make us buy the same albums for the umpteenth time in a different format? What’s the catch? Oh, I see – it’ll be years before they come out with anything besides Don Henley and Celine Dion discs and they’ll cost over $30 a piece. Nice. However, it has the Five For Fighting seal of approval, so it must be good. But here’s a question – if there’s redbook data on one side and DVD data on the other, just how careful are we going to have to be in handling these things?!?
As I mentioned yesterday, the film list (if not schedule or descriptions) for the 2004 TIFF came out yesterday. I believe I can submit my choices for the ticket lottery next week, so that gives me a little time to figure out what I want to see. Of course, short of Googling every title/director on the list, I don’t have much idea of what any of these films are save for a few of the high profile ones. Film buffs – care to offer some guidance? I’m going to do as suggested and avoid the bigger films that will be coming out theatrically in the next couple months anyway and try to target the stuff that’s a little further off the beaten path. At first glance, though, the list is just overwhelming. I may just throw caution to the wind, pick some flicks at random and hope for the best… Nah. Someone plan my festival itinerary for me.
np – Rilo Kiley / More Adventurous
Tuesday, August 24th, 2004
PDA
So I went out and got myself a Palm. A Zire 21, the cheapest one out there, sure, but I now have myself one of these fancy-shmantzy personal digital assistants. Here’s why: I got a camera last week, remember? And it’s not small. And I want to keep it with me at all times for spontaneous picture-taking. But my bag is only so big, and I’d rather not get a new bag (not that I can find a suitable one, I’ve looked). I had been using a Day-Timer (note use of caps denoting a proper name – it was a full-on zip-up binder-clasp personal organizer) which was kinda big and kinda heavy and kinda underutilized and cost over $20 a year to refill with pages. So why not ditch the Day Timer and get a nice little Palm for under $100?
Why not indeed – so that’s what I did. All I really need it for is a calendar, address book and notepad – the games are just gravy (anyone know where I can get stuff like chess and euchre, gratis?). I’ve also got a couple eBooks (Last Of The Mohicans and Wizard Of Oz) installed which I’ll probably never read. The thing arrived in the mail yesterday and now I’ve begun the not-so-exciting process of typing all my addresses and phone numbers into the Windows app before syncing it up with the Palm. I think now is a good time to decide who I wish the keep in contact with in the future and who should just be conveniently lost in the data move… You’re dead to me. And you. You… you can stay. But you are definitely gone.
What, you thought from the entry title there’d be some Interpol content? Well they do have a fancy new website, rejigged to match the album art for Antics, out September 28. Go play with that.
Doug Martsch of Built To Spill mentioned at a recent live show that their new album would be coming out in September. That might be a little optimistic since last I checked they were still on Warner Bros and their release schedule was finalized a while ago, and BTS ain’t on it. However, it at least augers well that we’ll see a new BTS record in Fall of this year. At least they’re doing something.
Gawker has a five-question interview with Ted Leo that’s fairly pithy until Ted gets started on file sharing – then it gets interesting. And for the record, I’m completely onside with Ted’s thoughts on the subject…
…But not so much that I wouldn’t post more than a half-dozen unauthorized mp3s for the week, which have netted me over 1000 hits in a day for the first time ever thanks to Largehearted Boy linking to my GBV post yesterday. Whoo. I’m a-waiting for my webhosting provider to come a-knocking.
Guess it’ll be a shorter one today, not finding much of note to talk about (if the mailman hadn’t brought my Palm it would have been even shorter!). Tomorrow should be good though, as the schedule for the Toronto International Film Festival is supposed to come out this afternoon at 12:30 PM. I’ll need help picking out the films I’m going to try and get tickets to, so I’m going to open it up to you, the reader, to offer suggestions! It’ll be just like that time in Batman when DC allowed the readers to vote whether to kill off Robin II or not. Except you’re picking films and not playing God over a fictional comic book character whom no one liked anyway (Jason Todd was a twerp). But besides that, it’s exactly the same thing.
np – The Replacements / Pleased To Meet Me
Monday, August 23rd, 2004
Made To Be Broken
Nintendo hot pants. Push up- up- down- down- left- right- left- right- A- B- start and you can go all night.
Mother Jones hung out with Steve Earle during the recording of his new record and have a feature-length piece to show for it. The Revolution Starts tomorrow. From Thrasher’s Blog.
The Decemberists have almost finished work on their new album and were so excited, they had to call up Pitchfork and tell them all about it. With a working title of The Infanta and scheduled to come out next March, they say, “this record may be the closest we have come to making the record we really have always wanted to make”. And no band has ever said that about a forthcoming record. Not ever. To celebrate the end of the recording sessions, they’ll be hitting the road again in September for what is at least their third major tour of the year. But they’re not coming to Toronto so it’s of little interest to me.
Mogwai are putting out a sorta-kinda live-album-but-not-really this Fall featuring BBC sessions from the band inception through last year. Pitchfork has more details on Government Commisions: BBC Session 1996-2003. According to the band’s website, “All songs are studio versions apart from the first and last songs which were broadcast live from Maida Vale”. So there you go.
Take a look at the characters from the upcoming The Batman animated series (yes, another one, but this one has the definite article so it’s different). They have some decent voice talent lined up for this one. And by “decent”, I mean “I’ve heard of them”. I don’t know how Adam West does it – mayor of Gotham City AND Quahog, Rhode Island? The man is a workaholic. Some more shots from the show here
And speaking of Seth McFarlane (we were, indirectly), the man looks to be all over Fox next year with both the resurrected Family Guy and his other animated show, American Dad, which looks to be almost exactly the same as, um, Family Guy. But with more gunplay.
You know what’s nice? When large glass bottles of extra-virgin olive oil are on sale at the grocery store. Know what’s not so nice? When the strap on the knapsack in which you carry your groceries home in gives out. Know what’s really not nice? The aforementioned glass bottle shattering and depositing extra-virgin olive-oil all over the inside of the aforementioned knapsack (to say nothing of depositing glass shards in my hand when I reached in there). And you know what’s least nice of all? When the ice weasel that was hiding in the shrubbery, driven mad by the scent of blood, leapt out and bit off my hand. THAT was the worst part.
Okay, that last bit didn’t actually happen, but it could have and I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.
np – The Wedding Present / Seamonsters
Sunday, August 22nd, 2004
A Salty Salute
So you may notice the format of today’s post and the mp3 of the week are a little different – I’m trying out a way to do periodic special occasion mp3s of the week, mainly when I don’t feel like dragging out a theme over the span of many weeks (and won’t I feel stupid for doing this when I inevitable run out of material to post!). But anyway. This week’s special expanded version of the mp3 of the week is in tribute to Guided By Voices, who have opted to call it quits at the end of the year and are releasing their final album Half-Smiles Of The Decomposed this week. These tracks will stay up for a week and then that’s it, back to regularly scheduled programming.
I only got into GBV around Isolation Drills, after their ‘golden’ period of Bee Thousand through Under The Bushes, Under The Stars – you know, when they sold out and went mainstream (joke!). I go through periodic Pollard-intensive phases where I plow through everything of theirs/his I have (all the albums, a bunch of EPs, the Suitcase set, a few solo records) though even when I’m in the zone, I find the sheer amount of material, some of it quite throwaway, let’s be honest, pretty tough to wade through When you hit mother lode though, hoo boy. When the Human Amusement At Hourly Rates best-of came out last year, I thought, “Hey – alright, I can finally get a disc with all the best stuff on it for when I don’t feel like going through the entire album”. Then it was pointed out to me that I already own all this material on the albums and could just burn my own compilation CD. Um, right. I’m still a little peeved that they’re not coming back to T.O. for a date on the farewell tour, but I did get to seem them a couple years ago for UTAC at the Horseshoe (tiny club of capacity around 200) so I shouldn’t complain.
Anyway, y’all aren’t here to hear me prattle on so here’s the music:
 We’ll start with GBV tour mates and drinking buddies (and Chromewaves whipping boys) The Strokes actually doing a good live version of “A Salty Salute”, Alien Lanes’ opening cut. |
 Scotland’s Delgados performed this super-quickie version of “Indian Fables” from the Fast Japanese Spin Cycle EP during a BBC session early on in their career. |
 Vancouver’s Salteens offer up a bubblegummed-up version of “Motor Away”, again from Alien Lanes… |
 …while Knoxville’s Superdrag (again, GBV tourmates) do a rocking live version of the same tune. |
 Another Alien Lanes double-shot, “Game Of Pricks”, this one less great all around. England’s My Vitriol do an overly angsty version of this great tune (a b-side from their Always Your Way single… |
 …While Jimmy Eat World go too straight rock on their version, which just appeared on the Future Soundtrack For America compilation. How hard is it to do a good cover of this tune? |
 And we’ll finish off with some fellow indie rock legends – As Portastatic, long-time GBV buddy and collaborator Mac McCaughan tackles Bee Thousand nugget “Echos Myron” live. |
 Fellow Ohian Kim Deal’s Breeders cover the super-brief but super-rocking “Shocker In Gloomtown”, taken from their Head To Toe 10″. The original appeared on The Grand Hour EP. |
Guided By Voices are dead. Long live Guided By Voices.
Update: MP3s are gone now. Thank you, come again.
There is talk of re-releasing David O’Rusell’s Three Kings on the eve of the US election with additional documentary footage tying it in with the current Gulf War. Three Kings is easily one of the best war movies of the last decade (if not THE best) – if you haven’t seen it, you really should, whether it’s the new version or the old one. I’ve been meaning to get it on DVD for a while now, but since it looks like it’ll be coming out on DVD regardless of what happens with the theatrical release, I guess I’ll just wait a little bit.
Someone has stolen Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” from a gallery in Oslo. Now THAT is brazen. The London News Review lauds the crack security measures at the gallery.
Okay, comics in bit torrent format? Why haven’t I been downloading these before? Cuz I’m an idiot, that’s why. I’m currently raiding the Suprnova archives, and spent yesterday reading the entire run of Ultimate Spider-Man. CReader is a really nice reader program for the .cbr files and the image quality is really quite excellent. You get used to the scrolling, too. Any other good BT sites with a wide selection of digitized comic goodness?
The Canadian National (Comic Book) Expo hits town next weekend at the Metro Convention Centre, and The Toronto Star has some interviews with some of the higher-profile guest attendees. I used to go to scads of comiccons when I was a kid, back in the boom of the early 90s when there was a con almost every month somewhere in T.O. Admission was cheap and it was great fun raiding all the dealer tables for deals and back issues (the same back issues which clutter my room back at my parents’ house this very day). Now I look at the $20 admission fee and can’t imagine that I’d get that sort of value out of attending besides watching all the other attendees and thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I”. So I guess I’ll just comfort myself in the knowledge that both Patrick Stewart and George Takei are enjoying the hospitality of my town at the same time and continue downloading comics from the internet.
np – Wilco / Being There
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