Wednesday, March 5th, 2003
Damned treacherous out there today. If you absolutely have to leave home, be careful.
Came out of St. Andrew Station this morning, and eastbound on King were eleven – count ’em ELEVEN – streetcars, lined up nose-to-ass into the horizon. Something to see, alright. It of course goes without saying that I had to wait 15 minutes for a westbound.
But here’s a little bit of news to bring a ray of pop-tastic sunshine into your day. Fountains Of Wayne will release Welcome Interstate Managers June 3 on S-Curve Records. Finally! Don’t believe me, go to their website and see for yourself. Go on. I’ll wait here.
New GBV on August 19th, titled Model Prisoner In The Five Senses Realm. Tracklisting available at Large-Hearted Boy.
np – Teenage Fanclub / Thirteen
Tuesday, March 4th, 2003
Postal happiness by way of Phoenix. Robert sent me a stack of hippy-hippy shaking CD-Rs. We got a couple Wilco discs – the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Demos (21 tracks of unreleased YHF goodness! Some of it will probably be on the More Like The Moon EP coming out eventually, but whatever) and a double-disc live set from July 20, 2002. I’ll have to try and figure out exactly where the show is from. Also got Sigur Ros’ debut album, Von, and Gling Glo, a 1990 jazz album from Bjork. And on top of all this, I got the Posies comp I won on eBay. Lots of music. Yeah. I have to go and make faux-artwork for these babies. I have to make him a copy of The Olivia Tremor Control’s Black Foliage, which I will do, happily very soon.
All of this makes up a little for the fact that my guitar neck has been in the mail from Montana for two weeks now, which is about a week longer than it should have taken. We’re getting a little anxious. Or a lot anxious. The seller is going to go harrass the post office tomorrow, but I’m not sure how much recourse we have in this situation. Who loses packages in this day and age? I mean really.
HA! Idlewild finally have a Toronto date! April 18, Lee’s Palace with the French Kicks in tow. Damn, that’s going to be a busy week for me.
Word is the Dismemberment Plan farewell tour will have a Toronto stop sometime in June or July. A shame they’re leaving us, but it’ll be a helluva wake.
Jack Rabid’s year-end lists and musings are finally available on The Big Takeover website.
The LA Times is declaring it time for a shoegazing revival. Ha! And everyone said I was wasting my money on all those distortion pedals.
np – The Posies / Dream All Day – The Best Of The Posies
Tuesday, March 4th, 2003
It would be nice, I think, to be able to come to work once in a while and NOT have my head hurt. Ow.
np – Gram Parsons / GP/Grievous Angel
Monday, March 3rd, 2003
Tangmonkey is a music/culture site introduced to me by Sean, who happened to pass through the chromewaves sphere of influence. It’s a pretty cool site and Canadian, no less. Extra points for having ‘monkey’ in their name. Go visit and say hello. To Sean from Tangmonkey – your email address was getting bounced back to me as undeliverable.
I got my big stack ‘o Wheat EPs today. They’re an online exclusive at the Aware Records store, only $2 a piece. A nice deal till you factor in the $7 shipping to Canada. I won’t mention the fact that the postal meter on the package only said $2.55. I bought 3 for the purpose of spreading the Wheat gospel. Well, one is for Kyle, but the other one I’m saving for someone who needs to see the light. Or eBay, whichever. The EP, Too Much Time is an interesting listen. Wheat’s been essentially out of circulation for about three years now, since Hope & Adams came out on Sugar Free. The new album, Per Second Per Second Every Second has been ready for over a year, but hassles with their old label going belly up and then re-recording tracks for the new one have kept them from releasing it forever. It’s due out this Spring, finally, on Aware – home of John Mayer and Five For Fighting. Curious company for a band that used to have that trademark mid-fi indie pop sound. Operative words, ‘used to’.
The new stuff has a remarkable gloss to it – though the material on the EP is still Fridmann-produced, it’s slick. Like shellacked slick. My first reaction is some disappointment, I’ll admit, because I loved Hope & Adams so much, especially the sonics. By the same token, there’s a re-recorded version of “Don’t I Hold You” on the EP, with the same production as the new material, not to mention additional lyrics and rearrangement. Again, mixed feelings. I don’t like seeing perfection messed with. But – I will give Ricky and the boys the benefit of the doubt. I won’t be one of those who disown a band because they make a grab at that Total Request Live brass ring. The material is still strong, if a lot more ‘pop’. We will see if 2003 is the year of Wheat.
Had one of the best band practices ever tonight. Laura, freshly back from Amsterdam, came out and things really come together when she’s around. Besides the songs actually sounding the way we want with all the keyboard parts, it was good to have some of the raging testosterone of the rest of us diffused a little. Besides having a load of fun playing with the rap/DJ samples on the keyboard, we got a good deal of the arrangements worked out on some of the songs that had been giving us trouble in the past. A few more nights like this and we can seriously start thinking about booking shows.
np – Wheat / Medeiros
Monday, March 3rd, 2003
Paul Simonon has squelched all the speculation about who would replace Joe Strummer at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremonies this month. The Clash are simply not going to perform. Gotta say, I think it’s for the best. Having them up there without Joe would just be wrong. And as we saw at the Grammies, there’s more than a few high-profile folks who’d be happy to step in for all of them. So instead of picking out dream team replacements for Joe, now the punters can replace all of them! Let’s hear some proposed Clash lineups…
np – Mojave 3 / Out Of Tune
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