Godspeed You Black Emperor! might be the smartest people in this country. They know that if (when?) the world goes to hell, it won't be because people like Bill Clinton are getting their dicks sucked by interns. It's because the prevailing attitude down south is one of blind patriotism, a place where people carry guns like they were pocket change, a place where figures of authority are given no respect, and every man believes he is both above the law and an island unto itself.

Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works II" got a bit of a bum deal. "SAW I" got a great deal more attention, likely because Aphex's material was so hard to come by at the time. SAW I makes for a great listen, but it's MOR Aphex Twin, not too abrasive, not too experimental, not too ambient, not too bonkers, and not too intense. SAW II is all of those things in spades, which makes it far less accessible. Not too many folks enjoy the feeling of "standing in a power station for two hours on acid". Still, that exact feeling, enacted so powerfully on SAW II, is far stronger than anything evoked on SAW I.

While walking to Tower Records, I was thinking about how the Smiths and New Order each released several singles in the '80's that were not on albums. Why doesn't anyone do this anymore? True, the market is very album-based now, but it was in the 80's as well. The discrepancy between the prices of albums and singles is small on our side of the Atlantic, and is large on their side. This explains, for example, why bands in the UK will release many singles before finally delivering the album. It doesn't explain why all the singles eventually turn up on albums.

Irony was all over Much Music on Saturday. A fourteen year old girl in 2000 would hardly blink at the sight of a Take That video. When those videos came out (1992-3), MM wouldn't have touched them with a ten foot pole. Back in those days, the catchy melodies of TT would have broken the monotony of the continuous loop of Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots videos, and anyone who remembers those days knows that the slightest bit of cheeriness in music was commercial suicide akin to sticking by your boyfriend after he's arrested for firearms possession. Now, TT clones The Backstreet Boys are MM's flagship band. In fact, without BSB, the name of a certain MM VJ might forever have carried the suffix "the Temp". He fits right in with the Britney Spears generation today, but somehow I can't imagine him selling the world on the supposed merits of Mudhoney.