Live Diary of the two hour American Idol finale! The winners! The losers! Find out how they can possibly stretch a foregone conclusion into a two hour snoozefest!

8:01. Fantasia's fans are in the Greensboro Coliseum, but Diana's are in the Georgia Dome. Well that settles it, Diana is the bigger draw, so she should win.

8:02. Big stars are there, and a WAY too thin Jennifer Love Hewitt. I'm glad I'm over her, she's well on her way to a permanent heroin addict face.

8:04. LaToya Blandon with her usual vocal gynmastics and trills in place of, you know, carrying a tune. Sometimes it's OK to just sing the words kids. A two syllable word doesn't always have to turn into a twelve syllable one.

8:06. Diana and her cleavage are interviewed by Seacrest. In the next few months, expect her to lose 30 pounds by record label executive decree and return as a Britney-esque teen vamp. The naive hick vermeer will obviously generate horny old man money, it's working for Hilary Duff.

8:16. How does George Huff sing and smile at the same time?

8:24. As we continue to check in with every conceivable person connected with the show, we talk with Randy and Paula about absolutely nothing, then with Ray Romano about a car ride with 13 year old girls, and then the usual mediocre performance by the adorable Jasmine Trias. On the heels of last nights gems, not to mention LaToya and George's performances, it's never been more obvious that she has no stage prescence. Her voice blends right into her backing tape and gives me little reason to look up from my keyboard.

8:30. In an ongoing effort to fill this one-hour pre-game show with anything resembling content, it's an interview with Simon, who claims he's the only judge who knows what he's talking about. It's hard to argue with that one -- his comments have been totally on point all season.

8:35. Since nothing is going on, I might as well espouse some conspiracy theories. It's quite clear that the Idol juggernaut has been doing the hard sell for a Fantasia win ever since LaToya got the boot. I wish they didn't have to be so blatant about it. About six weeks ago, Clive Davis sat down with the show's producers and made pointed remarks about who was considered marketable and who was not. Once the final three was set, there was only one person left who fit the bill of "potential star our company can get behind". And thus the word was passed down, to the producers, judges, Seacrest, and so on.

8:42. Simon looked well-assembled a few minutes ago, and now he's dishevelled, without a tie and his collar unbuttoned. Hey, I take what little material they give me.

8:44. A great performance by Kelly, Ruben, Diana and Fantasia sees the latter two women (particularly Diana) completely drown out the increasingly sluttier-dressing Kelly. Remember, I said months ago (I think it was during the MTV awards) that Kelly had to be half naked in Maxim by the end of the spring or her career was toast. I stand by that statement. Every new AI season makes each previous winner fade further into memory, and each finalist exponentially more so. Except for Tamyra, who seems to be bigger than ever. How did she score this songwriting gig with the new AI single (which is a subpar song, btw)?

8:55. More ado about nothing, as we visit the home states again, and zzzzzz ...

9:02. Kelly Clarkson's album went 2x platinum, but Clay's is already 3x platinum. Kelly, meet Maxim.

9:06. None of these AI Ford commercials even approach the brilliance of the one from last season with Ruben as the pimp daddy.

9:10. This show is more tedious than listening to music for 168 straight hours. That's how long it feels like this show has gone on. There's only one way to relieve the boredom now ... that's right, alcohol.

9:12. "And now, for some of the fantastic ensemble numbers you can expect to see when the American Idol finalists tour to a city near you" ... if every week had been Motown week, George would be still be competing ... how did we end up with such a useless male competitor as JPL, I want to punch him every time the camera flashes by his mug ... John gets the belated chance to sing some big band, if only for one line ...

9:20. Barry Manilow is none too enthused about the makeup artist not knowing who he is. 99.9 % of us will never be so famous that we can relate, so all we can do is laugh. Bwaahahahahaha.

9:27. Ruben sings a charming song that ponders the pressing question of where his career would be if he wasn't a fat fuck.

9:34. It looks like we're in for another run through the bland AI single. The more I hear this song, the more it reminds me of a 5th generation photocopy of "A Moment Like This". Nice try, Tamyra, but the original was waaay better, as was Pop Idol's "This Time".

Diana shouts and screams her way through "I Believe". Fantasia is so much better at showing restraint with her voice. And as I type that, she comes on stage and sleepwalks her way through a similarly slushy power ballad called "Dreams", showing *too much* restraint.

9:42. Yes, Ryan, who will get the record deal and who will get the consolation prize (which is also surely a record deal)? I don't hold this against Ryan, since he's obviously just saying what he's told to say. In this way, he's also forced to say "it's ALL up to YOU America, YOU decide who goes on in this competition, NOT the judges, it's all up to YOU, so VOTE for your favourites, if you don't VOTE, then they can't WIN, so vote early, vote OFTEN, right AFTER the show!!!". Then, when the wrong person gets eliminated (see: Hudson, Jennifer, or London, LaToya), he has to say "America, it's not a popularity contest, it's a talent contest, and you can't let talent like this slip through the cracks".

9:49. Fantasia smiled and joked her way through the whole season, but she's been overusing her intense face the last two nights. It's her "I want to win bad" face. Perhaps Diana is too young to possess such a face. This is certainly not a bad thing.

9:54. In Season One, they made it clear that there was a 2 to 1 voting margin. Last year was the famous two hundred thousand vote difference. This time, there are 65 million votes, and they don't announce the results. Can we read anything into this? Anyhow, the rightful winner takes her crown, and can hardly sing through the streams of tears.

10:00. It was a horrifically boring show at times, but the right person won and the ending was certainly dramatic and touching, so we all go home happy. And I can go back to flipping between baseball and basketball.

The End.

Justin Berkovi -- Transit.
SLEEP: Talk Talk -- Spirit of Eden, Sturm -- Sturmgesten, Prick Decay -- Mic Gravy for Freek, The Cure -- Disintegration, Spectrum -- Highs, Lows, and Heavenly Blows. It was mostly Sturm and Spectrum as I tried to fall asleep. Two completely different portraits of loneliness, the first is menacing and uninviting, the second is warm and soulful.
Supersilent -- 6
Death in Vegas -- The Contino Sessions
Drugstore -- Songs for the Jetset (heard twice while eating lunch and walking around to score a ticket for The Ex and Han Bennink).
M83 -- M83. Boy, did they improve by leaps and bounds with their second album.
PJ Harvey -- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Pulse Programming -- s/t.
Ae + Hafler Trio -- ae3o & h3ae. I must hear this again in a quieter environment than the workplace.
John Cale -- Hobosapiens. This was my first listen -- the electronic tracks are really strong ("Zen" = wow), the rest didn't grab me, but "American Idol" did come on halfway through the record.
Junior Boys -- Birthday ep. The problem with getting Fennesz to remix your stuff is that everything else you've done will pale in comparison.
Hallucinator -- Red Angel ep. Because "Red Angel" is god, as you must already know.
Suede -- Live at Astoria, London 13/12/2003. It would be easier to be teary around the subject of the "final" Suede gig if it'd had time to sink in before the speedy follow-up news of Brett and Bernard's renewed partnership. Expect the first video to be directed by Michel Gondry and each show to be punctuated by 15 minute versions of "The Ashphalt Life" accompanied by a string quartet and b&w film of flower-filled meadows awaiting the nuclear holocaust.
The set list was chill-inducing -- 27 songs, two hours, and heavily loaded toward the first three albums. As I hit play, I attempted to wipe my mind clean of horrid video and audio images I'd recently seen of live Suede on German TV. But it took under a minute for them to recall them. The first track "The Next Life", with Brett's voice laid bare over piano, was breathy, raspy, and winded. He couldn't hit the high notes with the gusto he once had. The momentum continued to sag with "She", as I began to contemplate the possibility of a retroactive dislike for Suede on the assumption of a similar plundering of the entire back catalogue.
But about five or six songs in, Brett hit his stride. Or the crowd hit their stride first, shouting along with every lyric (the sensical and the non-sensical). Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Suddenly, Brett sounded fantastic. He still sounded somewhat strained, but he was back on form from sheer force of willpower. Meanwhile, the audience was in a frenzy, and I was bopping around the apartment singing along as well. Near the end, he promised that there would be another Suede album -- I wonder if he thought at the time that Bernard could/would/should be on it?

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And that is that. A great ending to a great experiment. Conclusions? As I type this, I'm sitting in silence for the first time in seven days. It's a relief that I now have the option of having peace and quiet sometimes (particularly when trying to work) but the silence is starting to itch at me a bit so "Spirit of Eden" (still in the carosel from last night) will likely be played once I am done typing this.

Toward the end, playing music became less of a chore and more of a natural fact. That is, I didn't have to "remember" to play music, or take the discman out in the hall with me, I just did it. It was as natural as needing to "remember" to put on shoes when walking outside.

When I glance over the playlists, all I can think of is how I've barely scratched the surface. One week of music, and it only covers a small corner of the whole of the collection. Some albums were heard more than once (and not noted as such unless they were played at separate sittings) but that still leaves some 130-odd distinct hours of music. But there's a closet full of vinyl that was only used for three hours of playing time. There are CD's that I purchased at the hellmouth at the time I conceived of this "experiment" that I still haven't gotten around to hearing.

It was not hard to do this. In fact, it was far easier than I expected. I never found myself clamouring for a niche of quiet. It disrupted my normal life in minimal fashion. I was never in danger of losing my marbles. I would do it again. Maybe it should be an annual event.

I suppose I have no grandiose conclusions to make. I've been transparent with my thoughts, and the grand statements, if you could call them that, were mainly made in the first couple of days as I adjusted to my new routine. Once it became routine, i.e. a natural fact as termed above, there were fewer conclusions to make, because who makes life-summing statements about normal everyday activities like washing the dishes and making the bed?

"Spirit of Eden" is waiting.

It's almost MAY 19. It's five to midnight, and it's dark in this room except for the glow of the computer screen. I've used a too perfect lead-in -- TEF's "Semtex" -- to the near-annual late night "Unknown Pleasure" listening session on this 24th anniversary of Ian Curtis' suicide. (seriously, try playing "Semtex" before "UP", it's an incredible fit). It's the vinyl version, of course, because vinyl is ideal for playing in the dark while sitting on the floor at home, but also because the CD version is one of the worst mastering jobs in the history of music, and I want to *hear* one of my favourite albums ever, thank you.
Kevin Saunderson -- Faces & Phases Disc 1.
Ganger -- Hammock Style
As One -- 21st Century Soul
Joni Mitchell -- Blue
Green Velvet -- s/t. Best lyrics in techno history, and there's really no competition.
PWOG -- Kraak (remixes)
Carl Lekebusch -- Fever ep
Black Dice -- Creature Comforts
Joy Division -- Live at the Factory 13/7/79.
John Coltrane -- Live at the Village Vanguard Disc 2. Unfortunately, May 18 will now be a day of remembrance times two ... for today, drummer Elvin Jones died after a long illness. I'm no jazz expert, so I will leave the proper obits to others, but I must state that the version of "India" on this CD is the greatest jazz recording ever heard by my ears. The playing is stellar, of course, you've got the buzzing oud, the looping and intertwined basses, the bass clarinet and horns leaping all over their registers, but the biggest star is Elvin. At the start of the song, he's doing the work of three drummers and his playing only gets more forceful and more dense as it progresses. By the end, my entire body is nodding along with his ride cymbal, until the final stratospheric solo by Trane, which lasts an all-too short minute before the main theme is repeated one final time. I've always thought that song had another twenty left in it. And the final chord of "India" segues straight into "Spiritual" ... that transition kills me every time because I'll be thinking "how can they go on after something so flawless?" and then they do it, straight into "Spiritual". Any lesser band would have collapsed after "India", and walked off on the impossibly high note, but this is the TRANE CLASSIC QUARTET so they move along like the awesomely cool mofos they were and continue to rock NYC without breaking a sweat.
These have been my feelings ever since I bought the box set upon its release six years ago, unfortunately it's taken a man's death for me to put fingers on keys. RIP Elvin.
Stravinsky -- Petrushka, The Rite of Spring. My backing soundtrack for my tape of "American Idol". Operation Hypersell Fantasia was in full force tonight.
Third Eye Foundation -- Semtex. --> Joy Division -- Unknown Pleasures. There's nothing more to say tonight. I'm listening now.

It was a bit of a hectic day, music-wise, as I wouldn't have minded a bit of quiet at work while fixing our problems and messes. Nevertheless, there's a second job to do. Picking up after Decaying Silence :

Brinkmann -- Click
GYBE -- Opera House 27/09/01 (continued in several sections throughout the day)
SLEEP: Higher Intelligence Agency -- Colourform, DVOA -- Piss Frond (disc 2), Hood -- Cold House, Billie Holliday -- Greatest Hits, The Cranes -- Wings of Joy. Waking up in the morning to Billie Holliday is a wonderful thing. Her music is one of the few types that makes you think "why can't all music sound like this". As I write this, it's nearly bedtime again, and DVOA and The Cranes will be inhabiting the CD tray again. "Piss Frond" is one of my all time favourite albums for drifting off to sleep. It's warm and swirling and droning and spooky.
Mogwai -- Happy Songs (by myself this time, hence more listening gets done and volume is turned way up).
John Cale -- Fragments of a Rainy Season
Vainqueur -- Elevations. Again? Because it owns you and it owns me. Since last Friday, it has bought and sold you at least four times.
DJ Spooky -- Viral Sonata
Minmae -- Microcassette Quatrains
Hollowphonic -- Majestic. Surprise.
Wire -- Pink Flag. All these years have gone by and I'm finally hearing this album. It's a blast. Call the Sheriff, Barry's discovered Wire.
Velvet Acid Christ -- Hex Angel. The beginning leaves me somewhat nonplussed, but it rocks harder and harder as it goes along. I think I'm finally getting this album after several listens.
Low -- SF 26/02/04. Downloaded mainly for the heavenly version of "Lullaby" that closes the show.
DNA -- DNA on DNA. I'd make a witty comment about how this predates the Rapture and their ilk by years and manages to outfunk them all by miles while screaming obscenities in their ears, but I've got nothing.

(cont.) ... Wavelength ... starts with a surprise showing from Jim Guthrie and his band, who are just back from touring with the Constantines. I've got a hardened heart when it comes to Guthrie, because I saw Royal City open for Arab Strap three years ago, and it was one of the worst live sets I've ever seen. Here's what I wrote at the time

Aside from the odd sweet ballad, they're a tuneless mess of alt-country with a Blink 182 sense of humour, that is, childish and not one-tenth as funny as they think they are.

Arab Strap were awesome, by the way.

Dozens of accolades later, I started giving Guthrie another chance. A flip through his most recent solo disc revealed a more focused approach in a classic singer-songwriter mode, so if Guthrie wants to be president of Toronto's Young Springsteen club, I say give him the job. Tonight, his band is polished but unremarkable, much like the songs they play. Maybe it's me. But I've come a long way -- at least I don't hate the guy's music anymore.

{hyperbole alert} Here's where you stop skimming over all the harebrained crap I've been writing and start paying close attention, because unless Orbital bring their farewell gig to Toronto along with a fifteen piece orchestra accompanient on twelve minute versions of "Belfast", there won't be a better gig this year than what In Support of Living pull off tonight. Brad Ketchen, who doesn't need to prove anything thanks to his outstanding work with Hollowphonic, assembles a small army of people and instruments for a project of staggering beauty and ambition. Performing in collaboration with the films of Rob Tyler (recurring animated theme : pastel-coloured shapes ressembling eyeballs swell and contract like a constantly refocusing lens filmed in fast-forward), it's Hollowphonic's latter-day Slowdive approach with a motorik-in-molasses groove, shards of guitar noise, simultaneous xylophone and glockenspiel solos (!!), and the finest flute drones this side of Bardo Pond's border. The whole band acts like a trance-inducing machine, and the hypnotic films round out the lulling effect. They claim to have mistakenly run overtime, but time has been standing still for over seventy minutes. More. An album. Something else. Now.

It's now well past midnight, the crowd is looking a bit weary. Junior Boys fight fire with water. Their minimal instrumentation and personnel are a drastic contrast to the full sensory overload of their predecessor, and they achieve a lot with so few toys. This is not your older brother's electro revival, it's your older brother's New Order 1983 scrapbook. It's a great period of NO's history, with the italo-disco running roughshod over the goth-rock, with a lo-fi "touch" and sparse instrumentation. Despite the firm intent toward a dance sound, Junior Boys aren't ready to let the laptop era swarm them, in fact, they're striking back with guitars, cheap keyboards and beatboxes, and even vocals. And also like 1983 NO, they make succinct statements -- 40 minutes and out. I sense a future worth following.

A huge grab bag of music went down today. On Tuesday, we have the 24th anniversary of Ian Curtis' death, so I'll certainly think of something special to tie in with this listening marathon. Besides the near-annual "Unknown Pleasures" (on vinyl, of course) listening session in the dark.

The story for Sunday:
Sigur Ros -- Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do. It sounds nothing like their last album, it's like they packed up shop and moved over to Morr Music to join the Mums and Lali Punas in the Battle of Twee Electronica. Except they've already won, judging by this single.
Add N To X -- Add Insult to Injury. N+X are great as long as you take them in 30-40 minute doses. After that, you're just begging for them to use a new synth sound or something.
Ebn e Sync -- s/t (Wordsound)
SLEEP: Van Morrisson -- Astral Weeks, V/A -- A Brief History of Ambient Vol 3 Disc 2, Christof Migone -- South Winds, V/A -- Future Mutations (Lo-Fi Recordings), Rhythm and Sound -- The Versions. "Astral Weeks" is wonderful music for drifting off to sleep and waking up bleary-eyed. I never noticed that until now. Christof Migone supplied the freak outs with his succession of uneasy rumblings he calls an album, and the Virgin comp was its more pleasant and inviting twin. Eno's 2/2 really is one of the most gorgeous pieces of music ever written.
And after several months and many listens, I still can't remember much about the Future Mutations disc, but I certainly don't hate it.
Notorious B.I.G. -- Ready to Die. I was certainly awake after this.
Xiu Xiu -- Fabulous Muscles. There's been a lot of "greatest ____ ever" babbling these last few days, which I am very much aware of but am powerless to stop at this time. I believe it all, you see. Perhaps it's a side effect of all this music saturation. Anyhow, get ready, because there's more of this (hyperbole?) (ludicrousness?) on its way today.
The title track is one of the finest lyrics I have ever heard. It's touching, sickening, defeating, and anodyne. All at once. The key word, of course, is "lips". For instance, if that line read "come on my face" then the actions it depicts would be vulgar, or perhaps even abusive. As it stands, the line is rather sexy (the way it's sung certainly helps).
Album of the Year thus far, too.
RJD2 -- Since We Last Spoke. Very funky, very 70's. Considerably less bonkers than "Deadringer".
Orbital -- Blue Album. OK, I've decided it's better than "Middle of Nowhere". It's their fourth best after the holy trinity. It's a classic.
Throbbing Gristle -- Mutant Throbbing Gristle (remixes). Who are Carter Tutti? They steal the show -- twice.
Death in Vegas -- Dead Elvis
X-Press 2 -- Muzikizum. Shoulda been a worldwide megahit.
(mix CD while drinking beer in Amit's office, featuring KMFDM, Ministry, Sloan, Green Day, and many other songs that were the toast of the alternative club scene in 1994)
Love Spirals Downwards -- Idylls
Mogwai -- Happy Songs for Happy People
[Wavelength 213 ... to be continued in the morning once I sleep]

It's good to get out of the house. Maybe that's why things could get a little trying at work -- it's not so much about the music as it is about being in one place for a long time. And rifling through so much music makes you ultra-conscious about how much time has passed. Fortunately, Junior Boys play at Wavelength tomorrow, and this should chop up the evening nicely.

Orbital -- The Saint
Brighter Death Now -- Live Leipzig, Aug 6, 2003
Broken Social Scene -- Beehives
SLEEP: Glenn Branca -- Symphony No. 2, Comsat Angels -- Sleep No More, GYBE -- Live Amsterdam April 18, 2002; Stephan Matthieu and Ekkehard Ehlers -- Heroin. That's about five and a half hours of stuff on Winamp's random play. There was a lot of Comsat Angels as I was going to sleep, and live MFer=redeemer as I was waking up (read : forcefully woken up). "Heroin" is the best thing either man has done.
Bochum Welt -- Module 2
Depeche Mode -- Live in Paris 1993. This may be the show where "Devotional" concert film was taken (DM seem to like using Paris concerts for commercial release). I still feel guilty about not seeing them on this tour, and hearing incredible concerts like this only enforces that. While rocking my ass, of course.
Landing -- Centrefuge ep
Doldrums -- Desk Trickery
Neil Landstrumm -- Live at Tonic (Toronto). Taken from the radio. How did I miss this (the performance and the broadcast)?
Spacemen 3 -- For All the Fucked Up Children of the World, We Give You Spacemen 3. I thought I had some of these demos on other CD's, but I was wrong! These versions are vastly different from what was recorded and performed live later on. And that's no complaint.
Scott Walker -- Tilt.
Black Dice -- Miles of Smiles
Masonna -- Noksl in Ana
(two hours of me spinning techno, with the occasional dose of noise)
At this point, my brain was melting from all the wierdness and loudness of the previous four hours, not to mention the musical cabin fever I mentioned at the beginning. Strange, there was no such feeling while spinning, but as soon as I stopped and continued with the end of Masonna, it came back, and I craved an interlude of relative quiet, however small. Which let to:
Sigur Ros -- Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do

Fourty-eight hours in. All's clear. I used to have little music fantasies (stop the guffaws, all music nerds have them) about a dream world where the music was piped directly into my ears, either that, or the far more disrupting situation (to others, not to me) where music plays through speakers in every room and every hallway no matter where I walk. And I've made this dream come true! Er, sort of, because I have to change music players when on the move. Otherwise, wow!!

It's fading into the background, it's always there, I'm always aware of it yet it is rarely disruptive. I even had dinner with my parents tonight and had no trouble convincing them to put on background music of my choice. And I didn't even get strange looks when I informed them about the reasons why. Fortunately, I had old cassette tapes stashed (since upgraded to CD and left in the basement when I moved out) which meant Tindersticks and Orbital set the dinner mood.

Movietone -- The Blossom Filled Streets
Mark Burgess and the Sons of God -- Zima Junction. He sounds just like Marc Almond on the last track. I'll say it again -- Clay Aiken is the new Marc Almond if he wants to be.
Xiu Xiu -- Live at Tonic, NYC (March 20, 2004)
SLEEP: V/A -- Isolationism Disc 1, Stephan Matthieu -- Frequency Lib, Nurse With Wound -- Chance Meeting, Mum -- Summer Make Good, Lustmord vs Hectate -- Law of the Battle of Conquest, Yann Tiersen -- L'absente. I drifted off to sleep with the caustic "Chance Meeting", and heard little else until morning. This was a collection of stuff that I didn't quite "get" on the first listen. I was far more keen on the delights of "Absente" and the noisy crush of "Conquest" this time around. "Summer Make Good" remains horribly boring, however, albeit about 20 % less so.
Vainqueur -- Elevations. Still my fave summer album ever.
(at Amato's during lunch, they played something that sounded like a Morcheeba/DJ Krush hybrid, and I can't have been too far off because they were playing DJ Shadow -- Entroducing as well. I made a point of going there since they've got some new guys working there who have good taste in music. A couple of weeks ago, I sat in the back reading the paper for a second time just so I could hear the first half of "Daydream Nation")
Nico -- Chelsea Girls
Talk Talk -- Colour of Spring
The Smiths -- Live Derby Dec 9, 1983
Jesus and Mary Chain -- Live Hacienda, Manchester, Aug 26, 1985. Twenty minutes long, and "You Trip Me Up" is played twice.
Mistress Barbara -- MB 02 (TrusttheDJ.com). A nice little steal from the hellmouth of music retail, Sonic Boom. I heard it for the first time today in the library and the subway, and I am SO spinning for like four hours at some point this weekend. The best mix of hard techno I've heard in a long time.
Tindersticks -- Tindersticks, Orbital -- Snivilisation. Klassiques of the highest order.
Low -- Live in SF, Nov 13, 2002. Classic of the quietest order.
Can -- Mother Sky (Live 1971). Near the end of the 20-minute "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" (barely ressembling the original, 90% of it is improvised), there's a part which sounds exactly like Joy Division's "Passover".
Th' Faith Healers -- Lido. A cruelly ignored great 90's album. Every time I hear "Spin 1/2", I'm convinced it is the greatest song ever.

So far, it's a bit of a slog. When I proposed this, it was the weekend, and there are few things better than curling up with music for large portions of the day while relaxing at home. But while working, sometimes I want quiet. And I'm happy to report that there have been no embarrassing run-ins in bathrooms around the building at work (so far). Fortunately, the radio was playing in the bank today so I was able to avoid a potentially awkward situation there. Once home, work, tunes, and the finales of three TV meshed with ease. I'm in good spirits. There are loads of things on my hard drive that I still want to hear. Listening ideas are in abundance, which will be a vital element in motivating me to see ths through.

The story so far: Bardo Pond -- Live Dec 9, 1999
Explosions in the Sky -- The Earth is Not a Cead Cold Place
SLEEP : Nurse With Wound -- Homotopy to Mary, Philip Jeck -- 7, V/A -- Dark Treasures : A Tribute to the Cocteau Twins, Yo La Tengo -- Sounds of the Sounds of Silence, Drugstore -- Various b-sides.
Tindersticks -- Waiting for the Moon
Bo Diddley -- His Best. Bo doesn't get enough credit for his awesomeness, does he? Two chord mantras, street boasting, the Bo Diddley beat, it's the best parts of Stereolab and Jay-Z rolled into one.
V/A -- Lux Nigra Allstars
Galaxie 500 -- Today
Bob Dylan -- Bootleg Series vol 6 (1964). The "Royal Albert Hall" show is a five-star affair. This all-acoustic show is too. I have not yet heard Vol 5, but I have no doubt that it's yet another five star album (and yet another completely different side of Dylan -- that much I know). Moral : Dylan is awesome. I heard a gig from last fall in Toronto, and he sounded horrid, and the band arrangements bored me as well. OK, so Dylan *was* awesome.
Galaxie 500 -- Live London Feb 1990
M83 -- Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts. Do these guys ever play live? If not, they really should.
V/A -- Isolationism disc 2
Tony Conrad with Faust -- Outside the Dream Syndicate. Rhythmic and violin droning. A couple of hours worth. Oh yeah.
Gas -- Konigsforst. Still one of the ten or so finest techno albums I've heard.
Friday starts with Movietone ...

11:04. Last night's sleep was disturbed a few times, most jarringly by the noises in Nurse With Wound's "Homotopy to Mary". It's clear why it's considered to be such a frightening recording, because it's one hour of extreme quiet punctuated by bursts of horrible scraping and clanging. Still, I prefer cold dark drones to "ambient" music that contains so many quiet passages.

But the word "disturbed" is likely too harsh, since I didn't mind having a multi-stage sleep. Regular sleep interreption leads to light sleeping, it really keeps you on your toes. And it makes waking up in the morning so much easier. Now I'm decompressing to Drugstore and Tindersticks.

"Enjoy the Silence" is bound to make an appearance this week, I should start thinking up ironic comments now. Suggestions are welcome.

The weekend in music:
I caught about half of one of those All Request Live shows that air on A&E, featuring Blondie. As you'd expect, the requests were predictable, amid caller after caller prefacing their request with fawning praise and stories about hearing a Blondie song with their cousins in 1981. Such over-the-top praise sounds embarrassing when watching the show, but you can't lay blame on the hardcore fans, they're allowed to gush. The hostess had no such excuse, she was dropping names such as CBGB's and asking about the NY punk scene. It had all the makings of a person reciting what they could remember from crib sheets written out for her an hour before the show.

The band sounded great, but Debbie Harry's voice (or perhaps her stamina) has significantly faded in the five years since the last record. It's not that she can't hit the notes anymore, it's that she always sounds out of breath and therefore can't belt out the songs with the sort of energy that she once did. Maybe it was an off-night (although I fear it wasn't), she's still beautiful and remains the coolest 58-year old woman in rock.

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While flipping through CD's at Sonic Boom today (that place is more addictive than crack), I thought, who am I kidding? I hold out these dreams of somehow making it to MUTEK, but I know it's not going to happen. Even if I had the time and/or the money, I don't think I'm in the state of mind to spend five days (unfortunately by myself for the second year in a row) in Montreal running around to gigs. I've seen very few gigs over the last year, in part due to geographical uprooting (six months spent away from home in one year can really mess up your regular extra-curricular habits), and partly due to being in an extended homebody phase where I prefer to be at home taking it easy and listening to music (which may or may not be partly due to the off-putting effects of the geographical issues). I rarely spin or stir shit up with my sampler either, it's a profound laziness which has taken over, as I prefer to take no active role in music making other than pressing play. I'm sure this is all temporary, perhaps a by-product of the effort put forth to dig myself of the jewel cases that entrap me when at home (and the digital ones on my hard drive).

I've said before that I have more music than I know what to do with, except that it's now become more of a permanent state of being rather than a temporary period of catch-up listening. This is what was going through my head at Sonic Boom -- even though everything is dirt cheap there, it does add up after a while, and maybe, I thought, if I wasn't so enamoured with being able to buy seven CD's for $45 every week then I'd have money lying around to go to MUTEK and not feel guilty about it. Wrong state of mind or not, if an anonymous benefactor were to set me up, "Great Expectations" style, I'd be in Montreal in a minute (barring an unexpected work deadline). If I don't go this year, and who knows where I'll be next year, then the final section of last year's MUTEK report will read like a eulogy, as if I'd given up on the festival and didn't want to tarnish the good memory of 2003, even though that is NOT the case, I do want to go back, I do. But it's the webcasts for me this year, which is a sorry facsmile, but the only possible one.

Finally getting to the point, I was in Sonic Boom (that crack den of hell) and thinking the usual about having too much music and not being able to hear it all, even if I listened to music 24 hours a day. Why just that day, I'd took a spin through some of the previous night's downloads, and kept winamp fully stocked while I killed time around the apartment, capping off the midafternoon with a rousing run through most of Spiritualized's second show at the Opera House last October. I've been on a kick lately, downloading gigs I've seen (stuff from Verve in 1995 to Kraftwerk in 2004), which of course means I'm rolling the dice because you can only hope that these gigs come off as well on tape, years after the fact, as they did when I heard them the first time. I'm happy to say that I've not ruined any memories yet, in particular, that Spiritualized gig was every bit as killer as I remembered it -- far better than the night before or any other live show I've heard from that tour (although I haven't heard the first Opera House show, but I don't really need to now, because I've confirmed the greatness of the second show was not due to familiarity or the smoky substances in the air that night).

Oh yeah, so I walked out the door of my apartment but the music didn't stop as I walked around and did some shopping while Arab Strap's "Monday at the Hug and Pint" played for me, which sufficed quite well until I eventually reached Sonic Boom and my music was no longer required because they had Flaming Lips "Fight Test e.p." on random play. A whole day, to that point, with nearly every action soundtracked to music. Overwhelmed, yet enthralled with music was I. Not enough hours in the day, only twenty-four ...

... hey, wait a minute. It would be an interesting little psychological experiment, to say the least. Music, twenty four hours a day. Sure, it's possible. Is it safe? People who work as reviewers or in shops hear a lot more music than I do, and they seem to live healthy lives.

It would have to be for a meaningful length of time, say one week. Then, it encompasses everything that is regularly scheduled in my life, both work and home, family and friends. It would disrupt a little bit of everything, and it would be impossible to hide from any of my regular contacts. Some rules are in order, of course.

1. Music, 24 hours a day. No breaks. Music plays all the time. If I go to the bathroom, the discman comes with. If I have a meeting, there's an earphone in one ear. If I go out to eat, it's the same. If I go out to a music store, a bar, or any other place where music plays continuously, that is of course acceptable.
2. Background music at work, during every hour at work. If the TV is on at home, music must also play in the background (I already do this frequently).
3. Music plays while sleeping, just load up a bunch of hours onto winamp and let it play. This is not as silly as it may sound. I often go to bed listening to music. Last week, for instance, I was woken up, terrified and confused, by awful scraping noises -- only to discover that it was a live Flying Saucer Attack recording. So we should not assume that no listening takes place while sleeping. Rather than queue enough music to put me to sleep, I must queue enough to last until the next morning.
4. For posterity and scientific purposes, everything must be logged. Regular webpage updates are another obvious requirement.

I may start this on Wednesday night (since I have a meeting that morning where I *really* can't get away with a bud in my ear), and the experiment would run from midnight on the 12th to midnight on the 19th.

As documentaries go, I doubt I've ever finished watching one and felt I knew less about the subject than I did when I started. But that seems to be the case after watching Nick Broomfield's "Kurt and Courtney".

A character study of the filmmaker -- a dogged and determined fan intent on understanding its subject and unearthing some new tidbits of his life, all while fighting against difficult odds (Courtney, his skeptical sponsors) -- could have worked. Instead, Broomfield wants to play both Mulder and Scully, searching desperately for the conspiracy theory as well as asking the tough questions that any skeptic would undoubtedly ask. This doc is to Kurt, Courtney, and Kurt's death/suicide/murder as the Kramer Reality Tour is to Seinfeld. Yes, there are revealing portraits of friends and family, but also so much worthless conjecture and idle speculation as he fruitlessly looks to unravel the web of facts from the weave of fiction. No "witnesses" come across as credible and no follow-up research is presented to attempt to corroborate anything that anyone says. I found myself feeling sorry for Broomfield -- he tried to speak seriously with anyone who would speak to him, only to have each of his prospective Deep Throats fail in some way or another.

There's Kurt's friend Dylan Carlson, whose segment is led-in by two of his songs (which are quite decent, actually) in a blatantly obvious "I'll talk if you promote my music in your film" act of selfishness. Carlson then turns out to be an incoherent boob who can't put together a single sentence without first stumbling over his words for thirty seconds. He has shockingly little opinion on anything Kurt was feeling or thinking during the last few weeks of his life, yet despite not knowing his ass from his elbow, concludes that Kurt couldn't have killed himself (despite flubbing on any and all follow-up questions that question his logic).

There's the nutjob El Duce (can't believe that guy was only 35, he looked at least twenty years older) who claimed he was offered 50 G's to kill Cobain. He also cannot answer follow-up questions about his story (or chooses not to). There's the lady who leaves a note on Broomfield's car, asking him to meet her in a basement where he will be introduced to K&C's former nanny. Neither of these characters knows anything concrete either, but they think that Kurt must have been murdered. They are speculating, but at least they say so.

At worst, people with loose connections to K&C heard there was a documentary filmmaker and appeared from the woodwork looking for notoriety, money, attention, or some combination thereof. At best, all the subjects had noble intentions but their stories are so disjointed that no sensible conclusions about Kurt's final days can be constructed even vaguely. Broomfield's no idiot -- he remains skeptical about everyone's accounts throughout the film -- which makes him the most credible and likeable person for much of this doc (save Kurt's aunt). But at the end of the day, he knows he's got nothing, hence he goes for broke trying to humiliate Courtney at a charity function (a carbon copy of the finale of Michael Moore's "Roger and Me"). Which again accomplishes nothing.

[note: I read some reviews on Amazon after writing this post, and of course, my interpretations are nothing new. But these were my feelings right after watching the film for the first time, and these thoughts were fresh during and immediately after seeing the film. And it's my diary for my thoughts -- no matter now far behind the times they may be. Remember, I didn't even know what a blog was until a year ago. I'd like to think that my blissful ignorance is part of my appeal, if indeed I have any].