Wednesday, May 19th, 2004
Well, reports of my convalesence were greatly exagerrated. I managed to be productive for the first bit of yesterday at work, but my condition deteriorated enough that going home again at lunch and sleeping was a pretty good idea. I’m irritated, because I usually don’t get sick to the point of incapacitation. I’m feeling a little better today but think I’m going to give myself one more full day of rest before forcing myself back to work again.
One of the pluses of being laid up at home is I’ve been watching movies. Since I’ve gone into work for a little while the last couple days, I’ve been able to stop in at the video shop before heading home. First, I saw the original The Italian Job. I liked last year’s remake but for some reason, I thought the original was more serious. How wrong I was – the Michael Caine-starring original was a seriously lightweight caper. It was fun and had a lot more ineffable coolness, but the remake (a very loose term – it basically borrowed some names, the traffic jam heist and the mini coopers and that’s it) was actually much more solid in terms of plot and characters. Think about that for a minute. It also had Charlize Theron in a nightie. That counts for a lot as well.
Next up was The Cooler, also pretty lightweight. By its very premise – William H Macy is bad luck incarnate and is hired to “cool” off customers winning too much in a Vegas casino – it can’t be taken very seriously. Macy is good in the ultimate sad-sack role that seems custom-written for him, as is Maria Bello as the woman who changes his luck and Alec Baldwin as the casino boss who needs to keep him unlucky. The film falls a little short in the execution, however, and I thought everything could have been a little more fleshed out. It gets by on its peculiar sort of charm despite multiple William H Macy bare-ass shots (ugh), but could have been a little better.
The Toronto Star finds that Jeff Tweedy is feeling much better now, thanks for asking. And Doctors Without Borders would like to thank the JustAFan.org movement for raising over $10,000 USD from Wilco fans. That’s bloody impressive – if you donated, give yourself a hand.
Old 97’s have some songs from Drag It Up available for you sampling pleasure on their website right now to tide you over till July 27, when the record is released. You can also get a gander of the album artwork.
Hayden fans may be interested to know that he’s playing an exclusive and intimate little show at the Gladstone May 25 and you can win tickets or other prizes by entering this contest. To enter, you have to complete the following statement in 50 words or less: “My favourite Hayden song from Elk-Lake Serenade is ____________, because …” Thanks to Chris from Waste Your Days Away for the tip.
Metric have finally redone their God-awful website. Much better now. From For The Records.
Have I really already done 23 of these silly 24 commentaries? Sweet fancy Moses. Okay, who else cheered when Sherry got punched out? And who cheered when she got plugged? Sickos. I guess she won’t be back in season four. All she ever wanted was to be Mrs David Palmer again. And really, isn’t that what we all want? Jack was pretty badass in threatening to put Saunders’ daughter in the hotel – I think it’s a testament to Keifer Sutherland and the writers in general for having written and portrayed Jack Bauer so well to this point that you really believed he’d do it. That’s impressive. However, with one hour left to go I think season three will be staggering to the finish line. There’s really not much left in the way of surprises they can throw at us with just an hour left to go without it coming off as a desperate last-minute curveball (not without precedent – see last season). I won’t close the book on season three just yet, but I don’t have great anticipation for the season finale next week.
np – Sea Ray / Stars At Noon
Tuesday, May 18th, 2004
Feeling better today, which is good becaues another day sitting at home would have been pretty dull – I’m out of DVDs to watch. You would not believe how hard it’s been to find the first episode of Alias season two on Kazaa or Bit Torrent. Anyway.
The Metacritic reviews for Graham Coxon’s new album Happiness In Magazines has me intrigued. Phrases like “riddled with glorious pop songs”, “album of straight-up, dazzlingly well-realised British pop” and “A great lost Blur album” are not what I would have expected. Coxon’s contributions in Blur were easily my favorite songs in their ouvre, but his solo material has been decidedly more experimental and difficult and certainly reactions against what he was doing in Blur – I had his first couple solo records but sold them recently in a CD collection cull. But still, curious from the reviews and the fact that the new record was produced by Stephen Street (who guided Blur through their best albums), I grabbed the new record off Soulseek to give a listen (it’s import-only in North America so odds of finding it any other way to sample are slim to none). Initial impression? It’s pretty good. Certainly not as painfully introverted as The Sky Is Too High nor as spastically aggreessive as The Golden D, it sits pretty well in the middle of the only two reference points I have. There’s a lot of bashy rockers that hearken back to old Kinks but with a stronger pop sensibility than Coxon has seemed willing to allow into his work before. There’s even stuff in the vein of his Blur tunes – lead single “Bittersweet Bundle Of Joy” is definitely cut from the same mould as “You’re So Great” and “Coffee & TV” and “Don’t Be A Stranger” is delightfully loopy. It may have taken five albums for Coxon to find the right balance between all his disparate muses, but it seems like it’s finally happened and that bodes well for his future musical output.
The New York Times has more pop music commentary from Stephin Merritt. Interesting comments on Morrissey – “You Are the Quarry (Sanctuary), demonstrates more than ever that the best lyricist in rock, Morrissey, still surrounds himself with dull musicians incapable of properly filling out his introspective kitchen-sink dramas”. While I would debate (though not that vigorously) calling the Moz the best lyricist in rock, Merritt is spot-on in his criticism of every band Morrissey has worked with since the Smiths. They’ve all been horribly bland rock outfits, right down to the beer commercial guitar tones. Maybe if he ever had the vision to work with musicians he didn’t find down at the local pub I could get excited about his work. As it is, I’ll continue ignore anything post-Strangeways and not feel any poorer for it. From Stereogum.
I’m not the only one befuddled by the ongoing Moz revival – the BBC is also wondering if Morrissey is still relevant. From Largehearted Boy.
Also from Stereogum – Jon Stewart’s commencement address to William & Mary University’s graduation class of 2004.
Fans of the late, lamented Wonderfalls may be interested to know there are at least three unaired episodes circulating around the internet in bit torrent form. You can find them on Suprnova.org, but there’s a catch – at least two of them are at a frame rate that Windows Media Player doesn’t like. So while they’re DVD-quality, they’re also all weird and jittery. Anyone who can tell me how to fix that will get my undying gratitude. Well, that’s not entirely true – I’m pretty sure that my gratitude will die with me, but you know what I mean.
The Beach Boys’ long-lost album Smile will finally be coming out this Fall on Nonesuch. NME reports a September 27 release date for the UK, which should mean a September 28 release date for North America. I’ve never heard any of the bootlegged versions of this record, so it’ll be all new to me. Is it possible that it can live up to the legend? We’ll see.
Some out-of-town concert news for my neighbours up the St Lawrence – Wilco is making the most of their Lollapalooza days off with shows in Ottawa on August 4th (Capital Music Hall) and Montreal (St Denis Theatre) on the 5th before coming back down to T.O. for their Lollapalooza show on the 6th. I’m envious – I’d obviously rather see them do their own show in a good venue than an outdoor festival.
A couple quick notes – the “Chicks With Attitude” tour (shudder) coming through the Kool Haus August 28 will indeed feature The Cardigans as a whole band on the tour – not just Nina Persson. There was some confusion about that.
It’s come to my attention that the Ben Kweller show that had been scheduled for June 10 at the ‘Shoe has mysteriously vanished from all listings. Laika & The Cosmonauts are now pencilled in on that date.
Also, it is indeed NYC’s Ambulance NYC playing Lee’s Palace June 11 for NXNE. That doesn’t mean anything to you? Chart has a profile on the band.
np – The Sundays / Blind
Monday, May 17th, 2004
Sick today. Back tomorrow.
Sunday, May 16th, 2004
I haven’t actually gone fishing, but there’s not much going on today and I’m not going to knock myself out looking for something to post. I’m spending the weekend mostly reading (finished Shakey, the Neil Young biography. about to start Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay), watching DVDs (halfway through season one of Alias – great show, but there’s something ineffable about Jennifer Garner that just doesn’t do it for me. Very fit girl, though) and just otherwise puttering around. And lots of napping. A great deal of napping. Went out last night for the first time in a while and I think I’m catching a cold. My throat hurts, anyway.
So yeah, there are your dispatches from the home front. Come back tomorrow if you’re looking for something interesting. Not that I’m promising anything interesting, but relatively speaking, it’s got to be an improvement from today.
np – American Music Club / Mercury
Saturday, May 15th, 2004
The Austin Chronicle looks at another trend in pop music, this one not so new – the hip cover version. Obviously, I am a big fan of cover songs though at the same time, I’m absolutely infuriated by the number of cookie-cutter pop-punk/nu-crapola bands who are making a career, brief as they’ll be, out of doing incredibly dull or ironic covers of former hits. Like whoever those fuckheads who did “Boys Of Summer” are, or the other fuckheads who did Madonna’s “Music”. Yeah, that’s good. Figure out the power chords and scream it angsty-like. Fuckwits. The kids’ll eat it up. So what’s the difference between these guys and the tracks I champion every week? If you have to ask… Let me put it this way – Cover song because you love the song? Fine. Cover songs as a calculated career move run by focus groups? You deserve to be fed leeches and have them eat you from the inside out. From The Global Pop Conspiracy.
I don’t know if ever linked it, but the Covers Project is a terrific resource for tracking down cover song information.
Also from the GPC – The San Diego CityBEAT consults with Adam Schlesinger of Fountains Of Wayne about the best ever songs about hot moms. Just for the record, it was more than eight months ago that I coined the phrase “MILF-rock”. It hasn’t quite taken the world by storm yet, but it will. Just wait.
And speaking of MILF-rock, the horribly named “Maybelline Chicks With Attitude” tour comes to the Kool Haus August 28. That’s the show with Liz Phair, Charlotte Martin, Katy Rose and Nina Persson. After Thursday’s glorious Cardigans show, all I can say is, “Why, Nina, why?!?”
In more Cardies news, it seems the US release of Long Gone Before Daylight on the 25th will be including enough bonuses to make me buy the damn thing again. It will “..include all 13 tracks from the European releases including a new track, entitled “For The Boys” exclusive to the US release. The Bonus DVD will include the videos for the first two singles, “For What It’s Worth” and “You’re The Storm” as well as a segment containing an interview, band documentary and three live performances from the recent Quart Festival in Europe.” I hate buying stuff twice. But I like DVDs. Hrmm.
Spookihaus (née Blogna) has the tracklisting for the Low box set A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief, in stores July 20.
The teaser trailer for the Constantine film is now available. I dunno – on a very superficial level, they seem to have gotten the tone of the visuals right for being set in Los Angeles rather than Londong. Things look a lot more new and modern rather than old and historic. Still not accepting Keanu as someone with knowledge of his own phone number let alone the secrets of Heaven and Hell. I’m beginning to be glad they decided to not call it Hellblazer after all. Maybe some distance between the film and the source material is a good thing.
Ever wonder what the X-Men movie would have been like with Michael Chabon doing the screenplay? Wonder no longer.
np – Neil Young / Decade
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