Without a Yard

So for the next 48 hours or so….before checking out the twee brilliance of Camera Obscura at the Phoenix…I’ll be here. Doing this. From an anthropological perspective - a once in a friggin’ lifetime experience. Fun times. (Tho I’m already sick of Rush’s YYZ….)

peace
meegs

yes. yes. yes. Just got back from a run & needed this e-encouragement…now off to go pinata-hunting in the market. Overall - wacky weekend with plenty of downtime & delicious sleep. Still synthesising the brutal PR queef emitted by whoever that-big-faux-Canadian-beer-company-hired with the QOTSA ticket giveaway. Now I really won’t drink their hockey beer - even if it’s in knockoff Red Bull cans. ugh. I hope Josh Homme gets tipped off to the brutal corporate indoctrination rituals forced upon Queen’s ‘real’ fans over the past week - in a word: inhumane. I had flashbacks to the Josie & the Pussycats scene where veggie drumer Melody blurts out ‘I wanna Big Mac’ after hearing the studio mix of their track. There’s a fine line between creating a fun experience and building a ‘cool’ image for your co. (see Scion w/ ScionSpace & Comps, Vice w/ relevant news/interviews on vice.tv, RVCA’s artist network program, etc.) & abusing people’s geniune fandom for a band (& the only apportunity to see such an amazing band in Toronto this year/tour) in an attempt to brainwash them for hours upon hours. Bad scene. Would be interested to hear if any (of the many) other peeps who left disgruntled have either tipped off JH or would consider blogging, writing/reporting to Tiny Mix Tapes or Pitchfork or wherever….i think that if any thoughtful band knew corporations were pushing the boundaries of fans’ goodwill this far, they’d put a stop to it….but hey, I’m just a naive music lover….

Peace
meegs

Free gig alert - Tonight at the Horseshoe Tavern, Arts & Crafts newest signees (all 7 of’em) Los Campesinos are appearing por gratis. Get on that. I’ll be trucking down to Queen Street after attending FacebookCamp at MaRS. Insert geek joke here.

peace
meegs

Forgot to blog about the Handsome Furs gig this week - & when I say forgot, I mean procrastinated and avoided it.

So yeah, Handsome Furs – big tings, big tings. Dan Boeckner succeeds in the whole ‘bring my girlfriend/fiancée/wife on tour’ endeavour…but to be honest, I find the album – for lack of a better word - lacking. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE Wolf Parade – the pre-Modest-Mouse-intervention WP, with all the creaks and cracks that EP captured – I was blown away when I saw WP live opening up for the Arcade Fire in the Danforth Music Hall all those years go….so damned if I didn’t want to really, really like the Furs. There were three contributing factors in my meh-ness about the entire shindig on Tuesday night:

1) The dude standing beside us was smoking (cough*douchebag*cough)
2) The venue was 60 degrees (Hello, Lee’s Palace – Could y’all maybe weigh the cost of installing A/C or at least a fan system of some kind vs. the potential losses incurred after some Mississauga daddy sues y’all’s asses when his precious chile faints & collapses from heat exhaustion like some E’ed out candy raver? Thanks.)
3) 1/3 of the HF catalogue is (to me) interchangeable and indistinguishable from the other tunes on the album

Openers Silver Springs were also meh-riffic. The whole ‘aw shucks, we’ve only been a band for 4 weeks’ shtick doesn’t fly with yours truly. If you want to hole up in a basement and record your song before testing’em on an audience – so be it. But don’t be all detached and ironic and try to insulate your musicianship from objective peeps with brutally aloof banter when you tour.

Another mentionable from this week is that I’ve been a lil’beta guinea pig for two different social networking sites – one street fashion & one (of course) music. As if I needed another music network – after gushing over MOG (& iLike, & MySpace….), but yeah, it’s called Jango & I do quite like it – there’s definitely some potential there – in the personalize-able streaming radio space – I have no idea how to make it more ‘social’, though – I am happy enough trolling around the site solo, sans ‘friends’ and enjoying the wide spectrum of musical choices it spouts out….

This weekend might be less tunes and more films – can’t tell if the city will be a long-weekend ghost town or a cluster#$% (caribana gong show. After much hemming & hawing, did finally shell out & rent Pump Up The Volume in a nostalgia-fest of movie madness last night (meant to be a double header w/ Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio, but I just couldn’t stay up too late – after working late on a variety of timeline-able projects, I can’t stay up past 11 on a weeknight these days…). There is just something so good and trashy about re-screening teenage movies and reliving fantasy high school years. Like all teen-y movies, I’m into it bigtime for the first half – character building (Christian Slater in his mini-Jack star turn), witty lines & soliloquies, bombastic soundtrack picks (Leonard Cohen + Beastie Boys = kickass soundtrack supervisor, IMHO) – then by the time the flick finally churns itself into the denouement, I’ve lost all interest….resolutions are of no interest to me….

So yeah – a low-key long weekend is in the cards & much needed after a busyish vacation & work period….Want some weekend reading, eh? Check out this decent article on the rise of the small & medium venue on the touring & overall live music circuit. Or this from Spin on how records get leaked…don’t trust what you hear from Archie & the Riverdale gang, they’re dead to me now that they’ve drunk the RIAA Kool-Aid.