Monday, April 5th, 2004
I saw Hellboy this weekend, and have nothing bad to say. Visually, it’s nearly perfect – everyone and everything looks terrific, with Ron Perlman perfectly cast as the titular demon. Visuals are apparently director Guillermo del Toro’s strong point and he doesn’t do anything to contradict that reputation. There’s a lot of humour and good frenetic energy. What there isn’t a lot of is plot or exposition – the main storyline with Rasputin trying to destroy the world is pretty patchy. It doesn’t really get into more detail than what I just said – Rasputin tries to destroy the world. Because he’s the bad guy and that’s the sort of thing that bad guys do. Hellboy excepted, most of the rest of the characters are left pretty underdeveloped, but they get away with by using pretty time-tested archetypes (stereotypes?). You know what the deal is with each character because you’ve seen them dozens of other times in other films in other incarnations. Not great storytelling, but sufficient for a popcorn flick. I’ve never really read the comic – just some short stories or online comics – but I’ve been advised that the film was very faithful to the source material, which seems a little like damning it with faint praise. Visually impressive and thin on the storytelling, but fun enough overall to let the shortcomings slide. I could pick it apart if I felt so inclined, but I enjoyed it so I’ll leave it be.
Fox has cancelled Wonderfalls. Why? Because they’re stupidheads. And they suck ass. Cancelled after four episodes… what’s the point? Why invest in it in the first place? So you can replace it with some other ass-sucking feces-spewing craptacular reality show about people willing to utterly degrade themselves so they can be mocked in the pages of US Weekly? How do they calculate viewership, anyway? Is it still with those ridiculous Neilson family boxes that purports to provide an accurate sampling of viewership numbers? It saddens me to think that all the hours I spent watching television as a child didn’t make a difference for the shows I liked one way or another. I can only hope it finds life on another network or on DVD. Or else I’ll… stew quietly, for the most part. Dumbasses. To help ease you through these troubled times, The Big Ticket has an mp3 of the Andy Partridge-penned theme song for you to download and play ad nauseum while sobbing uncontrollably.
This pic of Alanis Morrissette in a naked suit at last night’s Juno awards is far more disturbing to me than a million Janet Jackson nip slips. What the hell is that coming out of her crotch? It looks like Prince’s head.
An American English teacher in Japan assigns his students The Penny Arcade Remix Project. They’re practically zen.
Epic will be re-releasing Franz Ferdinand’s self-title debut domestically in the US on April 20. It’s already been available in Canada at domestic prices for the past month, on account of the fact that we’re much more hip and forward-looking than our dear American cousins…
Ellipses = joke. No hate mail, please.
np – Old 97’s / Too Far To Care
Sunday, April 4th, 2004
What an amazing show.
I don’t remember ever seeing a show advertised so emphatically as ‘sold out’ before. No tickets in stores, no tickets at Ticketmaster, no tickets at the door, no room on industry guest lists. If you have no ducats, GO HOME. I didn’t even see scalpers outside of Lee’s Palace. The show, of course, was the first night of Neko Case and Sadies’ five-night sort-of-residency in the city for the month of April. The shows weren’t to promote an album, as is usually the case, but to create one – Neko & co. were travelling with a full mobile recording van with the intention of creating an album of new material recorded live as opposed to a typical live album which would double as a greatest-hits collection (NOW talked to Neko about her intentions for the live album). What this meant was that the audience would be treated to a pretty unconventional set list and performance.
I got there well before the advertised start time for the openers, and was surprised to see them already onstage when I walked in the door. It turned out that Carolyn Mark had recruited Jim & Jennie & The Pinetops as her backing band and was belting out a few country numbers to start things off. When she was done, Jim & Jennie came back out to do a full set of their own – How anyone could not get their feet tapping when confronted with expertly played, high-energy bluegrass is beyond me. They get extra points from me for daring to tell the notoriously chatty Toronto crowd to shut up. They didn’t oblige, of course, but it was worth a shot.
Neko took the stage just after midnight and the next two hours were an almost non-stop set of unbelievably good music. Neko has a voice like a force of nature and with the Sadies offering a rock-solid although slightly more restrained perfomance than usual (they were backing after all) and Carolyn Mark and Kelly Hogan along as backup singers, she had all the ingredients for an amazing performance. Requests for old favorites were greeted with an apologetic, “We have to play what the van tells us” – there would be no deviation from the predetermined set list on this evening. What the audience got was an ecletic mix of covers and new material ranging in style from country (natch), gospel, pop and folk. Despite having a voice steeped in twang and put on this earth to sing songs of yearning, Case is an amazingly versitile talent (see The New Pornographers for proof). The highlight of the show for me was their performance of the traditional “This Little Light Of Mine” with Jim & Jennie, centered around jaw-dropping seven-part roundabout vocal harmonies. It’s nigh-impossible to describe in words, you’ll just have to hear it when the record comes out. The encore was quite literally an encore – for the purposes of the live recording, they reprised a good portion of the set to get alternate takes to even more rapturous applause. Sure, they encouraged the crowd to pretend they hadn’t heard the material just an hour previous, but I think they’d have gotten the same response even without cajoling. The band, with Case as the gregarious and engaging frontperson, had the audience eating out of the palm of their hands.
I don’t know if it’s because it was a live recording or if the renovations to Lee’s Palace were just that effective, but the sound was the best I’ve ever heard in the venue – perfect levels and clarity. I hope to God that it’s Lee’s – I would love it if everything there sounded this good in the future. The other renovations I’m a little more lukewarm about. The stage is pretty high now – I’m sure it’s greatly improved sightlines for everyone else, but if you’re one of those up front, you have to be prepared to crane your neck a little. Overall it feels much more like a proper concert venue a la the Phoenix as opposed to a bar or club. I also hope the lighting will always be as good as it was last night, though I suspect things were better lit to accommodate those videotaping the show though I was perfectly happy to take advantage of the lighting to get some choice pics.
With four more shows over the next few weeks, I’d certainly love to catch at least one more, maybe the Horseshoe show on the 28th if I turn out to be too old and creaky to make the 2AM after-hours gigs at the Matador next weekend. But even if I don’t, having been to this one will be enough to keep me going for some time. Amazing.
Hot damn, it’s been a great week for live music.
New Old 97s album! Drag It Up is in stores June 29.
Some new goodies from American Music Club – visit their website for photos from the recent tour, a live video of “Ladies and Gentlemen It’s Time” and an mp3 of another track from the new record – “Another Morning”.
Cardigans tickets for the May 13 show at Lee’s Palace will run a reasonable $18.50 and be on sale April 10 at Ticketmaster and Rotate This.
Daylight savings time is fucking me up. Well, so is being up till 3:30 – sorry, 4:30 AM – but farmer time certainly isn’t helping.
np – Neko Case / Canadian Amp
Saturday, April 3rd, 2004
Yeah, they’re just long American Express commercials, and no, I’ve never really been a Seinfeld fan or a Superman fan… but together? Directed by Barry Levinson? GOLD. Check it out. And yeah, that’s Patrick Warburton doing Supes’ voice. From The Big Ticket.
VH1 talks to Joseph Alberto Santiago about the Pixies reunion tour. Rock me, Joe. From Burned By The Sun.
Sarah Harmer’s Live At The Rehearsal Hall airs tonight at 8pm on Bravo!. How much do you want to be that even with this reminder, I’ll still forget to tape it? The Toronto Star has a piece on Sarah and her new album.
Wow, short post today. Well come on – it’s Saturday, I did nothing last night except sleep. Today will be a little more eventful – going to see Hellboy this afternoon, then Neko Case and Sadies tonight.
np – Nellie McKay / Get Away From Me
Friday, April 2nd, 2004
I swear, I should just move into the Horseshoe and be done with it. I wash the hand stamp from last time off just in time to get another one. Lather, rinse, repeat. My third night there in the past eight days was to see Preston School Of Industry support their new album, Monsoon. I admit that I’d been getting worn out with all the shows and activites and whatnot, so I made a point of not going down until right before the headliner was scheduled in order to minimize standing around time and maximize sitting at home time. And apparently I missed out as Carla gave the second openers The Frontier Index a solid thumbs up. Next time, perhaps.
PSOI is now and will probably always be known as ‘the band of that other guy from Pavement‘. For good or for ill, Spiral Stairs will never fully escape the legacy of his old band but it doesn’t really sound like he’s trying. For the most part, the PSOI material sounds like his Pavement contributions with angularly anthemic guitar pop songs and yelp-y laid back vocals. The man just keeps doing what he’s doing. He did, however, score a moral victory over the folks inevitably calling out requests for “Two States” by playing a very good set without including a single Pavement song. I was pleasantly surprised by how good their show was – lots and lots of energy and songs that were stronger in live presentation than on record. Their secret weapon was the second guitarist (whose name I don’t seem to be able to find) who bopped around manically from guitar to pedal steel to keyboards. He’s also taken on the role of sonic anarchist, sporting a pedalboard just barely on the right side of excess (my hero!) and creating the whacked out sonic textures that his boss was largely responsible for in Pavement. Kannberg mostly stuck to rhythm last night, but did throw off a number of his trademark solos just to remind everyone who was in charge. Overall I was glad to have hauled my ass out on this drizzley evening to catch the just-long enough set. Photos here.
File under things that suck: The release of Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born has been pushed back a fortnight to June 22. No reason given, and this is not an April Fool’s joke. Bastards. I’m going to go figure out how Soulseek works.
Longwave will be releasing a new EP, Life Of The Party, on June 8.
The current edition of Stylus’ “Ask A Girl” column features a woman’s guide to picking up indie boys. Interesting reading, but overlong – here’s my condensed version: “Show up. If they don’t keel over from a heartattack (think chinchillas), you’re in”.
np – Rhett Miller / The Instigator
Thursday, April 1st, 2004
The Batman Begins-mobile. Do not flip this guy off in traffic.
New Wilco touring guitarist Nels Cline feels the need to justify to his fans why he’s joining a ‘mainstream’ band. He sounds a little defensive… He also calls A Ghost Is Born a double-CD, but that’s probably an error on his part – it’d be a double-LP if on vinyl, but it fits quite comfortably on a single CD. Unless they’re doing the ‘split it onto two discs anyway’ thing to give it a more ‘old-timey’ feel. Meanwhile, The Riverfront Times has a piece on how Ghost was leaked and spread like ebola, and whether you should feel guilty about partaking in the leak. And if you are, check out JustAFan.org – it’s been set up by Wilco fans to allow folks to donate money to Doctors Without Borders as a gesture of good faith for downloading the leaked album. Apparently the recipient organization was chosen in consultation with the band, but this should not be intepreted as them officially sanctioning the downloading of copywrited material – they are not, this is entirely fan-initiated. Either way, it’s a fine gesture, and may be enough to appease my conscience when I inevitably give in and get my own copy of the leak. I’m amazed I’ve resisted this long. From Via Chicago.
Oh, and that Ghost stream that some internet yokel alleged was going to be available on the band’s website today? No idea what he was talking about. Must’ve been on crack or something… (Translation: nothing on the website yet but we’ll check in periodically to see if that changes).
Matador has a little April Fool’s fun with their news update for today. Very crafty including real items with their fake ones. A little too crafty. What is real, though, are the mp3s for A.C. Newman and Mission Of Burma… Or are they?!?
To everyone who isn’t getting their Neko Case/Sadies fill at the two sold-out shows at Lee’s this weekend or the two shows at the Matador next week, there’ll be yet another show April 28 at the Horseshoe, tickets on sale next week. Damn – they keep playing in cool little venues, I’ll be smashing my former record of number of times seeing a single band in a month. Which is, uh, one. I think.
Carina Round has been added as support on the Snow Patrol North American tour (Toronto show April 22 at Lee’s). Yeah, I don’t know who she is either, but to tell from her video she seems angry about something.
The Canadian Federal court has ruled that music downloading in Canada is legal. Justice Konrad von Finckenstein said, “No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings… They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service.” While not a fatal blow to the CRIA’s (RIAA jr) bid to stop file sharing, it is a setback. The decision comes as further evidence that Canada is indeed the promised land – not because file-sharing is illegal (my personal feelings on the subject aren’t terribly pro-file-sharing), nor because milk and honey flows from our taps and the weather forecast calls for 4 mm of manna this weekend. But where else can a man with a last name like von Finckenstein become a Federal judge? Fantastic.
For those interested in planning way ahead, Three Gut Records’ celebrates four years of being one of the coolest labels on the block with a weekend-long shindig at the ‘Shoe May 28 and 29. So far the festivities will feature Guelph’s Royal City the first night and Brookyln’s Oneida the second, but expect more well-wishers and hangers-ons to be added to tbe bills.
Homestar Runner has a special April Fool’s toon! Stinkoman vs Stickman! When titans clash!
Bluetoothagainstbush.com has a lovely tribute to the short-lived, ill-advised but damned funny Sloganator. The Green Day soundtrack gives it a lovely graduation day sort of feel. From Old Hag.
So Mother Nature thought she’d pull the ol’ “Wet and cold on the first day Frank’s going to ride his bike to work” April Fool’s gag… Well it’ll take a more than a little rain and negative wind chill temperatures to get me to pony up for a couple tokens to get to work! ‘Twas a bracing ride, but felt pretty damn good. Point, me. Fuck you, nature!
Oh, and I got my tax return in the amount of every penny my calculations said I’d get, not even two weeks after I sent them in. That’s service. Blintzes for everyone!
np – Pavement / Slanted & Enchanted – Luxe & Reduxe
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