NYLPM No More

I lost a post sometime last week. This wasn't Blogger's fault, it was mine. It was in my head and I lost it. I was walking home with an armful of records and CDs, fresh from the Rotate This Boxing Day sale and pondered the notion that this was probably my ninth or tenth straight year that I'd shopped at that sale -- a streak that is in danger of ending once I finally graduate. Shops opened and/or closed during that time, others have been around the entire time but I don't bother with their sales anymore, but Rotate stayed constant. I returned from Berlin on Boxing Day 2003 and hit the sale the next day. This year I returned from the much closer and less exotic locale of Hamilton, Ontario and went straight from the train to Rotate This, making it my first stop ahead of the Yonge/Dundas corridor and avoiding being on those streets around the same time as a tragic fatal shooting. Or, I might have been thinking about how I had thought, back on the 15th, that my favourite albums of 2005 would be more in line with critical consensus than they had been in years (maybe ever?), only to watch year-end lists with little ressemblance to my own roll out for the past two weeks. Like I said, I don't know what I was thinking about. I lost that post. Oh yeah, I returned from California on 3 Jan, 2003 and missed all Toronto Boxing Day sales entirely. Not much of a streak then.

New York London Paris Munich is calling it a day. It's a low-key finale, coming on the final day of 2005 when few people are reading blogs, but ending something on New Years Eve Day does feel like the most appropriate way to end something. It'll be easy to remember the date, if nothing else. I don't really know him, but Tom's readers and friends are likely none too surprised at this. Over the past couple of years, Tom's done a lot of reflecting on the role music plays (or should play?) in his life. Likewise for NYLPM. Tom has written about how others used to want their blogs to be like NYLPM, whereas now they're more likely to emulate something like Fluxblog. He's not dissillusioned about music by any means (for instance, his UK#1 project Popular isn't going anywhere, thankfully), but there's been a "blogs and/or lording over message boards has passed me by" attitude in his writing for some time now, and when that happens, motivation vanishes rather quickly.

I've been a Freaky Trigger reader for many years now, back to the days of Tom and Ned's famous 90's lists, but strangely enough, I didn't read NYLPM very often. It was (proudly!) more POP and UK-centric than my typical tastes over the past six years, and when comparing more recent posts to those in the archives, the dwindling energy was instantly noticeable in everything from the lack of unbridled enthusiasm to the decreased frequency of posts.

The abrupt cessation of one of the longest-running blogs on the internet (in any discipline) makes me think about the status of this blog. Actually, this subject has been on my mind for a few months now. I started this in January 2000, two months before NYLPM started up. There really is no comparison between their massive 3500-post excursion (and dozens of regular contributors) and my one-man operation.

This was the first year that I felt the quality of writing and content here didn't improve from the year before. Not because I'm no longer improving as a writer, because I am, but my best writing of 2005 turned up on another blog in a different discipline and I'm immensely proud of that. I thought just as much about music this year as I have in past years, but I wrote about it less often. This resulted in fewer think pieces, and more instant reactions to gigs I'd seen or ecstatic rants about albums I'd heard.

However, unlike 99% of bloggers out there, I don't care if I jump the shark. Unless I completely lose my interest in music at some point, I can't envision an appropriate reason to stop writing the Diary of Musical Thoughts. I never kept a "proper" diary. I was never interested in that. If I want to know what was happening in my life from Jan 2000 onward, reading these archives helps me vividly reconstruct what I was doing at that time. I might only write about music here, but the music that occupied my mind is the gateway to whatever else was happening in my life.

I might have been less attentive to the "craft" of music writing lately, but the more visceral, less polished nature of these posts is probably closer to the real, unhinged, electronic apparition of me. Lots of blogs wrap up because the authors don't have their hearts in them anymore. Maybe my writing was sloppier this year, but it was closer to the real me, rather than the real me trying to convince people that he is a competant music writer.

I'm terrible at predicting the future, but it seems certain that blogs will evolve from their current form and eventually we'll all be listening to podcast feeds beamed directly into your wireless handheld (or the chip in your brain)(or whatever). Until then, this is my "proper" diary. It ends when I die.

See you next year!

It's December 15 ...

... and that's too close to the winter solstice for my liking. There's too much snow piling up outside my door. There's also the matter of my

TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2005


Silly preamble: This quality of music on this list obliterates that of my 2004 list. Even in that post from one year ago, I was complaining about having an uncomfortably high ambivalence about that list. This year's top three (and perhaps as many as the top six) are all better than last year's number one, Xiu Xiu's "Fabulous Muscles", although I should say that I still stand behind the amazing quality of that album and continue to listen to it regularly (a lot more so than anything else on the 2004 list, which is exactly how it should be, right?).

In most years, I find myself buried under a mountain of new music in October/November. I dig myself out from under that pile and try to absorb as much music as possible in a massive rush to put together these year-end lists by my self-imposed deadline. This year, the rush happened at the start of the year and I was struggling to keep up. The summer was quiet, as usual, and the fall seemed to crawl along without too many musical bombshells being dropped. At least that's what it felt like to me. Then the year-end chin-stroking began, and the general mood was one of disappointment -- this wasn't such a great year for music, they said. Nah, the calendar was front-loaded and memories fade, said I, noting that eight out of the twenty albums here were released (or leaked, same difference for me) during the first three months of the year.

I hate making overly general "This was the year of [X]" statements, but I'll throw out a bone by mentioning that there were very few disappointments for me this year. Established, 10/20/30+ year-old acts (Depeche Mode, New Order, Saint Etienne, John Cale, Madonna) made great records that comfortably slot in next to their best work. Bands that I had been lukewarm about in the past blew me away with the best music of their careers (Animal Collective, Caribou, Sigur Rós). Kelly Clarkson had a classic single. Ciara had a handful of them. "Trapped In the Closet" was damn enjoyable, and so was the album it came from. I was finally sold on the magic of Superpitcher and Jacques Lu Cont remixes. Yep, I was pretty happy this year.

(Can Con note: just two out of twenty this year, which is the least amount of Canadian representation I've had since 2000. I'm certainly not down on Canadian music these days, so I'll chalk it up to stiffer competition.)

(Decision-making note: my top two album basically blew away the rest (this happens almost every year), but trying to break the tie between them might have been the toughest bout of year-end hair-splitting I've ever done. I'll probably swap their positions in my mind about 238 times during 2006, but for now, the tiebreaker is simple: one of them is making me smile a lot more than the other these days.)

20a. Madonna, "Confessions On a Dancefloor". It starts like gangbusters with the spectacular "Hung Up" and the equally outstanding "Get Together". Once the cooldown phase begins in the second half, it fizzles faster than a lit match in a snowstorm, culminating (so to speak) with a perfunctory/sorry attempt at schaffel. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a Verve Release (in a year where there weren't many of them).

20. Roots Manuva, "Awfully Deep". He manages to imbibe his beats with a cavernous, thumping quality that you just don't hear with other artists, but what do you expect from (arguably) hip-hop's biggest Basic Channel fan?

Yes, I just copped out. Sorry.

19. Xiu Xiu, "La Foret". Stepping back from the more immediate, poppier sound of "Fabulous Muscles", this more improvisational album felt like a different kind of pain entirely -- less crafted, more reckless.

18. Six By Seven, "Left Luggage at the Peveril Hotel". The world completely forgot about them, they slinked off to make a fourth album that nobody knew about (I believe "4" was an internet release only), and the only fanfare surrounding their fifth album was the squint-and-you-still-missed-it news about the band breaking up just before it was released. Don't miss these Spacemen 3 rave-ups ("Waiting For you Now"), and the cathartic-like-open-heart-surgery epic "Here Comes the Sun".

17. Caribou, "The Milk of Human Kindness". It's a significant improvement on the much-heralded "Up In Flames" by virtue (in large part) of its amazing diversity. It effortlessly spans psych-folk, motorik, and noise, while packing the whole thing into a joyous and perfectly brief 40 minutes.

16. New Order, "Waiting For the Sirens' Call". "Krafty" is their strongest single since "Regret", and its chorus virtually screams "I was made for opening summer festival shows." The album's more retro (= more dance, less rock) style pleased many fans who were none too thrilled with "Get Ready", and even the campier moments ("Jetstream", anyone?) hardly dampened anyone's enthusiasm for it (unlike "Working Overtime". And "Jetstream" is amazing, ffs). It's not a return to form ("Get Ready" served that purpose), but it is a return to *a* form, I suppose.

15. Sunn O))), "Black One". More drones to drift off to death with. With bonus cackling. From a casket.

14. t.A.T.u, "Dangerous and Moving". Inevitably, it will be about the Big Two. "Dangerous and Moving" smokes the similarly bombastic "Not Gonna Get Us" (both songs feel designed for driving at, er, 200 kph, don't they?). "All About Us" can't seriously mount a challenge to "All the Things She Said", although it certainly aims BIG, with ultraviolent (and sexy) video, and Wagnerian arrangements. But once you get past the Big Two Singles, the rest is anything but filler (unlike the comparatively drab "200 KPH In the Wrong Lane").

13. Billy Corgan, "The Future Embrace". Billy's dream wasn't to rock out. He always wore his influence on his sleeve, talked about Boston and Queen when everyone else was rambling on about punk, but most people just played up the grungetastic Billy vs Kurt angle. Billy loved Stevie Nicks and Depeche Mode, so Smashing Pumpkins covered them both, made an album seeped in 90's electronica and 80's synth music, and the world shook its head in confusion. The final Smashing Pumpkins album was a facade, I felt as though they were pretending that the previous three or four years had never happened. "Look, it's the original lineup! We rock again!" Next thing you knew, they'd imploded, surprising nobody. "Adore" may be spectacular in parts, but it is a) far too long, b) far too rock. Billy Corgan corrected things on both counts with "The Future Embrace". Forgetting that he was once in a grunge band, he covered his live setup in enough silver paint to film a Flock of Seagulls video. Sonically, he set the controls straight for the DM of "Everything Counts" and "Get the Balance Right", made his goth album, and covered every song in layers of shoegaze-y guitar (those FX are icing on the cake and they MAKE the album).

12. Audion, "Suckfish". Minimalism is hot. I still can't believe it, but it is. Other than the Modernist (whose records project squeaky smiley family friendly fun and couldn't be more different than what Matthew Dear is doing here), who has instilled this much unadulterated fun into minimal grooves? Every track is filled with thick, electrohouse crunch. It's a sexy, sleazy (dig the song titles too) dancefloor romp, now someone should find Peaches and stop her before she tries to steal every last one of these beats.

11. The Warlocks, "Surgery". Now they need to become a full-on girl group.

10. Ellen Allien, "Thrills". Dirtier and greasier than the too slick, too Kompakt-esque "Berlinette", Ellen Allien's records retreated from glamourous nightclubs and tapped into the sound of an underground hideout choked with dry ice smoke and ominous, dark blue spotlights.

9. The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, "Horses in the Sky". The last album was an instrumental album with singing thrown on top, but this one is a singing album with instruments thrown on top (and sometimes they didn't bother with instruments at all, e.g. "Hang On To Each Other"). Huge difference. Throw your head back and sing.

8. Broadcast, "Tender Buttons". After years of wondering why Broadcast seemed like such a good band in theory, yet made such boring records, they delivered this. It's the album that Stereolab should have made after (or arguably before) "Cobra and Phases Group", a full-on funky motorik pop groove record stuffed with three-minute gems.

7. Jesu, "Jesu". Doom, buried under walls of guitars, too long by at least 15 minutes, frequently devastating, DOOM, kill yr speakers, play me loud, DOOM.

6. Low, "The Great Destroyer". Their "loudest" album to date is also their best. "When I Go Deaf" is like nothing else in the Low canon, they're abusing their distortion pedals while screaming their heads off and coming completely unglued. Sadly, the recurring themes of retreating/giving up/retiring took on new poignancy in light of Alan Sparhawk's annus horribilis. But to me it feels that throughout the entire album, the defeatist attitude is wrestling with catharsis and healing (swooning harmonies can make you feel that way), with even a bit of swagger ("Monkey") mixed in.

5. Rhythm and Sound, "See Mi Yah". Yeah, it took me six months to wash those 24 hours out of my system, but once the cleansing stage was over, I immersed myself in ONE MONSTER RIDDIM all over again ...

4. Animal Collective, "Feels". This record saved me a lot of time this year. You see, sometimes an album is so good that it eliminates the need to listen to anything else remotely like it. After doing somersaults over "Feels", I no longer felt the need to endure Broken Social Scene's self titled release. "Feels" has all of the kitchen sink theatrics and infinitely better tunes. BSS's album, to its detriment, comes off like an exercise in studio wizardry first, and a bunch of songs second. Let's see how many production tricks we can fit into one hour! "Feels" is so *alive*, with its propulsive table-banging rhythms and gutshots of reverb stoking the record from start to finish. From the hazy strumming of (MBV's) "I Need No Trust" sound-a-like "Flesh Canoe" to the tribal wailing of shouldabeenfifteenminuteslongANDthealbumopener "Banshee Beat", it's a crystallization of Animal Collective's talents.

It certainly made the middle third of Caribou's "Milk of Human Kindness" feel a lot duller too.

3. Depeche Mode, "Playing the Angel". "A Pain That I'm Used To", "John the Revelator", and "Suffer Well" constitute the best 1-2-3 opening punch on any Depeche Mode album other than "Music For the Masses".

2. M83, "Before the Dawn Heals Us". "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts" tried to faithfully recreate "Loveless" with synths. Afterward, M83 wanted to attempt the same with "Isn't Anything", with one caveat: they hadn't *heard* "Isn't Anything" in fifteen years and tried to reconstruct it from memory. Oh, and the reason they hadn't heard it in fifteen years was because they lived in a cave since 1990 and weren't around to hear lo-fi slacker indie explode in the 90's (plz ignore the nonsensical timeline vis-a-vis xeroxing "Loveless" on their last album). So they ended up plastering their memories onto music which remained fresh in their mind: Loverboy. What's with the weepy instrumental interludes? ... or the appearance of aching balladry the likes of which Kevin Shields wouldn't attempt until "Moon Song"? Gorgeous from start to finish.

1. Sigur Rós, "Takk...". Why? Because it's a fairy tale. They no longer sound like mist rising from a crack in a glacier -- those records weren't so great anyway. They've reeled in the massive sprawl of "{}" and made their pop album. They've packed it with piano-led hooks and a series of heart-stopping crescendos. "Sé Lest" is filled with childlike wonder, coasting over Disneyland, soaring over rolling hills, eavesdropping on oom-pah-pah bands playing for a modest group of ten spectators all dressed in their Sunday best. The second half is downright dour, hitting a glorious low point in the final minutes of "Andvari", as the ghostly strings draw out the despair not unlike the final moments Gavin Bryars' maudlin "Sinking of the Titanic". Sighing. Sighing. It's hard to write about this without coming off like a twee indie fuck. What I just wrote is probably indistinguishable from a description of a shit Múm album. Damn.

Mogwai, "Travel Is Dangerous"

Stuart Braithwaite once said: "Any band that doesn't rock is pish."

The band finally realized that their studio recordings now sound out-of-step with the skull-scraping explosions of their live shows (or more realistically, they finally decided to do something about the disparity). Hence, we have the chatter in advance of their forthcoming album "Mr. Beast" (what a shit title) that hypes the album as a return to the more balls-out sound of "Young Team".

Influence among contemporaries is reciprocal, and on the basis of "Travel Is Dangerous", bands like Aereogramme are influencing Mogwai far moreso than the reverse. I have a feeling that the new album has absorbed a considerable amount from "ambient metal" bands like Isis and Pelican. "Travel Is Dangerous" is massive, and on this one track at least, they've thankfully kept the gargantuan sound without resorting to gargantuan track lengths (there's a reason why I get kinda bored after hearing two or three Isis tracks in a row).

My (slight) perception is that the "Young Team" pluggers have lost a bit of steam over the last couple of years, leading to an increasing prevalence of opinion that Mogwai are still peaking. If "Mr. Beast" turns out to be Slint trying to play early 90's Soundgarden at maximum volume, then initial feedback about the album should quickly and definitively prove me right or wrong (those who hate it will stand it up to "Young Team", and those who love it will probably declare it the long-awaited successor to "Young Team").

I listened to "Come On Die Young" today and it's obvious that it hasn't dated well in the context of the music they've been making ever since. I still love it and now have even more appreciation for the absurdly difficult task they assumed for themselves -- namely, making an album where the first forty minutes constitute one exceedingly long build-up. Some people claim that nothing happens during those first forty minutes, with a bland and featureless slog stretching all the way to "Ex-Cowboy" (I disagree). However, I do find that "CODY" feels very, very remote from the "ideal" Mogwai album where they finally peak (more on that in a moment).

So what's wrong with "CODY"? Dave Fridmann is a big part of it. Like Albini (who would hate the allusions + comparisons I'm about to make), Fridmann uses a formula in the studio and simply plugs each band into his formula. That's not really a criticism, because bands work with him for exactly that reason. No matter what their recordings sounded like before, Fridmann laces them with a spacey, warm-fi, "recorded in the midst of a grassy field" quality. His formula isn't particularly versatile, which is why "CODY" is so homogeneous compared to something like "Rock Action", which regularly shifts from industrial crunch to Verve-y balladry throughout its running length (a full half hour shorter than "CODY"!) For me, "Rock Action"'s kitchen sink approach comes closest to the ideal because it shows the band doing so many things so incredibly well -- often all in the same track ("2 Rights 1 Wrong" keeps twisting itself into confounding shapes with each listen ... their best ever song?) Throw it together with the best of "Happy Songs For Happy People", which showed them capable of writing soaring, epic, heart-wrenching melodies deserving of inclusion of the best soundtracks never made, and you might end up with an album that tops "Loveless".

Depeche Mode, The Raveonettes @ Air Canada Centre (Dec 1)

In the end, the concert was only part of the story. Bands, songs, or even moments in songs will regularly become forever linked with events in your life. If not, then you're not listening carefully enough. Stop listening to music regularly. Find a new hobby. Spend your money and time elsewhere.

Even before my department scheduled my Ph.D. defense for the day after their concert at the ACC, Depeche Mode were already my favourite band ever. I've lost interest in loads of bands over the years, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Some of them were even present or former inner circle heroes. These things happen for countless reasons -- sometimes they break up or made a crap album, causing me to temporarily lose interest in them. Sometimes (probably more often than I would like) there are no good reasons for it. A band falls through the cracks in my attention span, becomes lost in the shuffle of a million other names, and don't pique my interest again for months, years, or forever.

None of that has ever happened with Depeche Mode. I didn't need to link any more important life events to this band. The first concert I ever saw was Depeche Mode at Exhibition Stadium in 1990. I have the wrinkled, faded Violator $30 concert t-shirt to prove it. I've known my friend Sandra for over half my life and I've never seen her happier than those four minutes during which Depeche Mode played "A Question of Time" in the encore of their summer 1994 show. "Enjoy the Silence" is my favourite single of the 90's. It's enough already! I don't deserve any more of this!

Just then, reality came calling and (quantum?) entangled yet another Depeche Mode Mode into my everyday life. This is my biggest challenge ever, isn't it? Someone's trying to tell me to get off my ass, stop being afraid of a few tens of thousands of words on a page and the threat of a few professors berating me for a couple of hours, bring my A-game, and GET SHIT DONE. Do it my own way. Is anybody surprised that I'm going to this show? No, they're not. Nobody else is dumb enough to do this but me. This is monumentally stupid, isn't it? My favourite band comes to town the night before the culmination of a billion years of work. It all goes down in about a sixteen hour span. It's not about the show. It's not. If it wasn't the show, I'd still be home, studying the same page of equations for the 100th time, wishing that I had a couple more days to prepare. I'll never feel fully prepared. One thing is for certain though: I'm not looking forward to this show, because once it's over, that means ...

The Raveonettes have the thankless task of playing while people were still filing in and milling around outside. Unfortunately, their intimate harmonies are easily ignored in a large venue like this, and the volume necessary to experience their Wall of Sound approach evaporates while travelling to the seats in the upper level. But none of this prevents "Twilight" -- their "Disco 2000" moment -- from being exhilirating.

Their synths are sitting atop platforms that might have been hauled off the set of a 50's sci-fi movie. The elaborate video screens and projections from past tours are pared down to a more basic setup that mainly showed closeups of the band members performing, with the odd animation thrown in to mix things up. It's like they want to be a real rock band now and are bored of standing stoically around their keyboards listening to another man sing (hoarsely) while cartoons play in the background (yes, it's 2005, why do you ask?). What is there to look at now besides Martin Gore's black leather pants and black frilly angels wings?

Duh. Look at the band, listen to the pleasantly energetic crowd (a marked improvement over the thousands of bored and boring asshats who flocked to their last two Toronto gigs), and experience their best album in fifteen years played at full volume. "A Pain That I'm Used To" feels scaled back in comparison to its "Reptile"-ified album version, but "John the Revelator" is tight, funky, perfect. As the intro to "A Question of Time"-soundalike "Suffer Well" hits, I become excited at the notion that this will be one of those gigs where the band plays a swath of their new album in its normal playing order before switching to the old stuff ... whoops, this IS "A Question of Time" after all. That was clever. I tip my hat.

"Policy of Truth" has been the odd single out of the "Violator" quartet on a couple of other tours, but tonight it nearly outshines all of them. The gold continues to flow with "Precious", a slamming version of "Walking In My Shoes" (I have never particularly enjoyed this song on record, but live, it breathes fire into me), "Suffer Well" for real this time ... this set is flawless, peak after peak after peak. Crazy Heroin Dave is dead. Long live Happy Fun Dave, the guy who has honed his voice into a instrument that's twice as powerful as his predecessor despite consuming only half as much air.

The pace finally slows down and it's time for the more sedate portion of the gig when Martin Gore sings. The delicacy of "Damaged People" is like banging on pipes and watching them twinkle. I don't know how they did it, but they perfected "Construction Time Again" twenty years after the fact. This song easily outclasses the schmaltzier "Home" and Dave's brooding "I Want It All". I could complain that they should have gone full-scale gothic right here and played "Nothing's Impossible" instead, because that might have snapped me out of a temporary trance where my thoughts drifted off into the expected events of the following morning ...

Everything snaps back into focus with "I Feel You", and finally the entire arena becomes unglued during the opening bars of "Behind The Wheel". People who were grooving in their seats suddenly leap to their feet, those who were already standing briefly lose control of their limbs before latching onto the beat. "World In My Eyes" is followed by perennial set closers "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence", the latter now incorporating drum (!) and guitar (!!) solos to extend its excellence for a minute or two longer.

At this point, the crowd's overall mood is one of exhaustion. Swapping "Behind The Wheel" with one of the songs in the encore might have kept the energy level through the roof right until the end, but that would be nitpicking. After a return to the 80's with resurrected hits "Somebody", "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Everything Counts", they return for a second encore of "Never Let Me Down Again" that feels nearly anticlimatic now. Almost in recognition of that fact, "Goodnight Lovers" serves as the cooldown phase. This little anodyne lullaby is one of their most underrated singles, and it's a refreshing change to see a Depeche concert close on such a mellow note, lights dimmed, soothing harmonies, soft blue glow.

A career of increasingly complex and elaborate tours have given way to a more basic stage setup that thrives on the basis of little more than an exhaustive back catalogue littered with excellence. U2? Say what? Depeche Mode are trumping some of the best new music of their career with some of the finest concerts of their career. Now, as I walk and ride home in the rain, my last obstacle is gone. The concert is over. I could always say that the concert came first. I guess it's all me now.

Madonna, "Confessions On a Dancefloor"

This past Friday night, I sat contently in an alcohol-aided, smoke-induced haze while some friends DJ'ed. I kept intending to get up and dance, but somehow never got around to it. That's OK, I guess, but I felt a little bad about it when they dropped "Hung Up". Girls seemed to appear out of nowhere, packing the dancefloor. It's possible that I was gushing about M83 at the time.

Madonna's new single is spectacular, it's easily her best since "Ray of Light", and before that ... I don't know, "Justify My Love"? Powered by a tremendous, unrelenting beat and the best use of an ABBA sample, well, ever (are there even any other deserving nominees?), it feels destined to be timeless much like Kylie's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is timeless, as opposed to the "electronica sure seemed like the hot new thing"-quaintness of the "Ray of Light"-era singles.

Suddenly, scores of people chime in and exclaim that Madonna's music hasn't been this deeply soaked in club culture since her earliest records (um, "Vogue"? "Express Yourself"?), which are then held up as the best of her career ("Holiday" wasn't that great a record. And the singing on early Madonna singles is atrocious).

I'm suspicious of the album in the same way that I'm suspicious of almost every 60-minute album (so many of them could stand to lose a few tracks and 15-20 minutes). It's supposed to ressemble a pumping DJ set, a concept which leaves little room (for such a disco-fied style, anyhow) for the types of balladry that typically appear on Madonna's albums. The album is frontloaded with corkers, but the second half comes down from a massive high, the vocals become lusher and more drawn out, and the lyrics become more introspective. It feels like some of these songs were conceived as ballads but the overriding album concept didn't allow them to end up sounding that way.

But at least half of this album KILLS, and that half certainly provides an incredible rush.

Mogwai + Sex and the City

I caught a rerun of SatC this and they managed to slip a Mogwai song past me in a scene where I somehow hadn't noticed it before. Somebody who works for that show LOVES Mogwai because that makes three songs of theirs that they've used during the series' run (and maybe more are lurking, unnoticed by me for whatever reason? I just discovered that the episode guide on HBO's web site also includes musical credits, so ... anyone wanna check for me? Nah, I'll eventually look through every one of them myself anyhow ...)

Season 4, episode 14, "All That Glitters". The first and best. Trey and Charlotte decide to separate just days before House and Garden magazine planned on visiting to photograph the happy couple in their fashionable, renovated apartment. Cue Trey's dramatic arrival as the opening notes to "Take Me Somewhere Nice" slide in.

Season 4, episode 16, "Ring A Ding Ding". I suppose I hadn't noticed this because unlike the other two instances, the song doesn't appear during a climatic final (or near-final) scene. Instead, "Close Encounters" shows up as Carrie sits down to read what she believes is a goodbye letter from Aidan, only to have the scene (and music) abruptly cut away to the coffee shop once she realizes it's a letter from his lawyers. There's also some serious superfan trainspotting shit going down here because "Close Encounters" was only available on the Japanese version of "Rock Action" (although it was later compiled on a European tour EP).

Season 6, episode 3, "The Perfect Present". Carrie and Berger lie in bed and finally spill the beans re: their emotional devastation at the hands of their respective exes, and in the background -- as they reveal the skeletons in their closets -- is "Kids Will Be Skeletons". It really is one of the most peaceful songs Mogwai ever recorded.

John Cale, Priya Thomas @Lula Lounge

It's my first visit to this venue, and I'm a bit startled to see that it's an actual lounge, with people eating dinner and stuff. It's funny how I find myself here just a couple of weeks after getting a looksee at the "A Night With Lou Reed" video from 1983 that was held in a similar-looking club in New York, with tables up front and standing room in the back.

Opener Priya Thomas is well-versed in "Is This Desire?"-era PJ Harvey, although PJH had started singing instead of wailing by that point. And I can't get over a nagging feeling that her guitar+voice are badly out of tune with the canned parts from her sequencer. Cale manages to take a career of wild unpredictability, avant-gardism, and defiantly anti-pop nonhits and turn it into something polished and nigh on professional. His new album "Black Acetate" is a slick piece of churning rock and roll that is ably recreated with his live band. The likes of "Pablo Picasso" (mammoth, intense) and "Guts" (feeling nearly like a handheld singalong with Cale at the piano) fit comfortably alongside newer straightforward rockers like "Outta the Bag" and "Hush". Overall, it's a tremendously entertaining two hours spent watching a 63-year old dude who's vigourous beyond his years. Oh, and Matthew Sweet would have killed to have written "Perfect" a decade ago.

Cool Drummings - Steve Reich and Friends @ McMillan Theatre

On Sunday night, I saw one of those concerts I thought I'd never see. In the early 90's, I had a few close calls with the Orb -- rumoured shows, a cancelled show, a tour stop in Montreal but not in Toronto (and I wasn't able to make the road trip to attend it) -- but I knew I'd see them eventually. Being conscious of that didn't erase the frustration of having to wait years to see them, but I knew that it would happen someday.

On the other hand, I never thought I'd see Steve Reich. That was a fantasy. That was the type of concert that I knew was happening somewhere in the world, but I couldn't envision it happening in the part of the world that I inhabit.

These weren't unfounded paranoias -- Steve Reich hadn't been to Toronto in twenty years. But last week, he visited the University of Toronto Faculty of Music as a Visitor in Composition, and the gala concert featured a trio of Reich pieces, "Music For Pieces of Wood", "You Are (Variations)", and "Drumming".

Members of percussion ensemble NEXUS have been playing with Steve Reich and Musicians for literally decades, and the ease with which they play are clearly the result of years of familiarity with the countless nuances of these semi-improvised pieces. They are absolutely astonishing -- them old dudes have SKILLS. They possess a sick sense of rhythm, and an uncanny ability to keep metronomic tempos just as easily as they can phase them out from each other and lock them back into place completely at will.

The flimsiness of a CD recording of "Music For Pieces of Wood" is lost in a live setting. All music is best heard live, but with percussion-based music in particular, the high harmonics inherent to the instruments are largely lost on a recording (not to mention the concert hall reverb that requires being there in person to experience). Each strike of the wood drills loud, ringing tones into one's ears with pristine clarity. The hypnotic "You Are (Variations)" is instantly recognizable as Reich, with four pianos driving the piece forward in a semi-Spectorian type of spectacle.

Lasting 57 minutes on this night, "Drumming" is the clear highlight. As the sound made by nine marimba players filled the hall, and the spider web of eighteen mallets billows above their instruments, the overall effect seems to be one of sustained tones despite the underlying rhythmic complexity. These soft, near-melancholy drones wouldn't be out of place in the more ambient portions of Bowery Electric's "Beat", or perhaps a Stars of the Lid album.

Animal Collective, "Feels"

The Warlocks did it, and now it's Animal Collective's turn to make the Great Album That I Didn't Think They Had In Them. In this case, I thought AC were too obsessed with being weird, too enamoured with starting at the crawling walls they saw in their acid flashbacks to keep their focus over the course of an entire album. I wanted them to make an album of two-minute psych-pop songs, with ten minute drone pieces interspersed around them. The mesmerizing "Banshee Beat" comes close to the latter. It's eight minutes long but could easily stretch on for twice that length.

They haven't gotten less weird on "Feels", but it's a mellower, more restrained album and perhaps that's why I like it so much more than "Sung Tongs": I'll take a good chillout album any day over an album of yelping and screaming.

Warlocks, Gris Gris @ Lee's Palace

This scarily underattended show brought back memories of a Bardo Pond show at the same venue three years ago. The gig was scary good and the crowd was shy, but game, although most people didn't dare to descend upon the largely empty floor until the second half of the headliner's set. The aftermath of this is that Bardo Pond haven't come back since.

Last night, Gris Gris impressed me greatly with their metronomic Spacemen 3 act. Setting up on the floor, presumably because there was no room on the stage to set up around the Warlocks multi-guitar, multi-drum arrangement, brought an intimacy to their set that you wouldn't expect from pounding drone-rock (which always seems like such a standoffish type of music to me).

When the Warlocks took to the darkened stage, the energy level in the crowd was approaching zero, and the band launched into their set with calculated efficiency. As the crowd loosened up, they seemed to do the same (chicken? egg? chicken? egg?), relying mainly on the concise songs from their new album "Surgery". Their last Toronto gig was frighteningly loud, with a couple hundred souls packed into a sweaty Horseshoe to listen to one two-chord jam after another. But just as "Surgery" favours songs over mesmerizing jams, so did this gig, with the bulk of the new album rubbing shoulders with the more "hit-single" qualities of "Phoenix Album" tracks "Shake the Dope Out" and "Hurricane Heart Attack". Although I have to wonder why, if they opted to play a pop set rather than a rock one, why they left out the 60's girl group/"Psychocandy" excesses of "Angels in Heaven, Angels In Hell" or "Evil Eyes Again". Even the critics that dislike the new album (of which there are many, but fuck them) enjoy those two songs. What is holding the Warlocks back? Loyalty to their "jam it out" beginnings? Go whole hog and become a pop band! Verve started out as a jam band and became a pop band. Animal Collective are headed that way too, if their new album is any indication!

Depeche Mode -- Playing the Angel

Eight years ago, they delivered a great album when you might have least expected it. It would have been easy to forgive, though. A band is allowed to make a misstep after losing a member (and primary knob-twiddler) to careerism and almost losing another member to the throes of death. Fortunately, this is all a moot point because Tim Simenon stepped in as producer, Dave Gahan sounded fierce and determined on record, and "Ultra" was one of their best albums.

However, "Exciter" didn't live up to the lofty expectations of a DM + Mark Bell collaboration. Beatstompers ("I Feel Loved") and lush, ambient deep sighing tracks ("Freelove", "When the Body Speaks") were the main selling points, whereas their attempts to curl their lips and rock out ("The Sweetest Condition", "The Dead of Night") were not. With half of a brilliant album, plus some of Martin Gore's dullest ballads, I was resigned to an endless future of Depeche Mode albums that repeated "Exciter"'s hit-and-miss rate. After 20 years, I'll take that from just about any band.

But consider my mind blown -- they rendered another point moot. "Playing the Angel" is nothing short of outstanding. It's their best album since "Violator", and might be their best album OTHER THAN "Violator" (pardon the wishy-washiness, but I'll need a few months of perspective with this).

Given the smorgasbord nature of producer Ben Hillier's varied career, I was puzzled as to what the band expected out of him. I wasn't expecting an album packed with such gorgeous industrial noise, quaking bass tones, and electro-sheen. The only fault I can find with it are the ballads, which in contrast to those on "Exciter", are the weaker moments here, despite having a very similar feel to them. That just goes to show how strong the more upbeat tracks are.

"A Pain That I'm Used To" takes the "I Feel Loved" template and adds a smattering of Nine Inch Nails' "Reptile" to it, resulting in an instant industrial pop classic that has future single written all over it. "John the Revelator" is Depeche Mode doing gospel ... ho hum, you say? ... over electro beats straight out of "Computer World". Another corker, and for my money, far less derivative than the very popular "Lose Control".

"Suffer Well" gives a stiff shake to "A Question of Time" and amps it way, way up inbetween the ethereal backgrounds that cloak the verses. Elsewhere, "Black Celebration" is given another stern talking-to, as "Nothing's Impossible" one-ups "Fly on the Windscreen" and brings the dense, near-industrial gloom while Dave Gahan intones "how did we get this far apart?" in blank disbelief. There's a lot of Projekt Records' cinematic gothic intensity in this album -- and if the idea of Depeche Mode making that type of album appeals to you in the least, then you need to run, not walk, when this album is released next week.

"Precious" is one of the most understated Depeche Mode singles ever, as Gahan shows the sort of vocal restraint that is usually reserved for the Martin Gore-sung tracks. The lack of a gigantoid chorus doesn't hurt this song a bit, making it the stark opposite of a single like "I Feel You", which is ALL chorus. I make that comparison here because "Precious" is easily their best single since "I Feel You". Elsewhere, "Damaged People" people adds extra layers to DM's "Construction Time Again"-era minimalism, and looks back to how ballads might have sounded on that record if they had let up on the metallic wasteland concept just a bit.

A one-line soundbyte for this album might be "Black Celebration done better". Incredibly, we still seem to be living in Depeche Mode's peak years.

MIA and Dylan

The mini-controversy over the Honda ad featuring MIA's "Galang" is a a great example of what I called a "trivial" issue in my last post. The two sides of the argument are as follows:

Side A. MIA has sold out to a big corporation. She makes anti-capitalism/anti-imperialism overtures in her interviews and therefore she is a hypocrite for allowing her song to be used in this commercial.

Side B. A girl's gotta pay the rent.

Preamble A. People still care about "authenticity"? Is it 1977? Liscensing songs for use in ads -- is this uncommon?

Preamble B. MIA is already a total hypocrite in regard to her so-called "values", because in interviews she talks about being anti-war and how violence solves nothing, but her album cover is adorned with pictures of bombs, machine guns, and tanks -- imagery which effortlessly slots in next to her fascination/hero-worship toward her PLO-trained father.

Now then, she let Honda use her song, a move which appears to be in conflict with her personal politics/values. And you know what -- it is! However, she can carry on pushing the same issues she's always pushed and I don't have the slightest problem with it. Similarly, I have absolutely no problem reconciling my feelings about unionism with my habit of shopping at Wal-Mart. There's a Wal-Mart three minutes from my house, they sell things I want and need, it's fucking cheap, and I'm not exactly rich. I sleep just fine at night after shopping there, knowing that I'm going to work at my unionized teaching job the very next day.

I'd much rather talk about "No Direction Home", the strongly-hyped four-hour Bob Dylan documentary that aired this past week. The attitudes I just discussed were also raised in this excellent doc, which needless to say, is required viewing for even casual Dylan fans. A couple of quick thoughts:

-- Joan Baez does a great Bob Dylan impression
-- Dylan was remarkably lucid (for Dylan), although he did seem noncommittal at times in that he dodged potentially revealing questions ("my songs weren't about anything", "I was always an outsider" = "I will only comment on the things I personally did and can't (or won't) provide my present-day perspectives on the folk/political scene as a whole")
-- Part I is a remarkably detailed historical document (old pictures, recordings). Part II's power is slightly curtailed if you've already heard the 1966 concerts and seen "Don't Look Back".

Dylan famously (supposedly) sold out by going electric, but even before that, some people within the folk scene weren't happy that he signed to Columbia and started cutting records, leading to (naturally) a spike in his public profile. Ires were raised because his behaviour ran contrary to the intimacy/politics/monetary goals of the NYC folk scene. On the other hand, it was noted in the doc that some of this animosity was because Dylan's success forced some folkies to look in the mirror and notice that they were hungrier than they cared to admit. They needn't have bothered tearing themselves apart over this -- you can sell a few records and not worry about how you're going to eat without feeling that you've betrayed your personal politics. In the mid-60's, maybe this presented more of a dilemna ... Joan Baez talked about how everything was so polarized -- you were either for or against the war in Vietnam, for or against segregation, etc. -- to the extent that you had to decidedly pick sides, leaving no room for any "shades of grey" fence-straddling attitudes. But in 2005, mobilizing around the big issues is more of a slog, and such polarizing rhetoric is more easily marginalized. In 2005, you can have your cake (speak your mind) and eat it too (sell your song to a car advert).

Why I do more thinking about baseball than I do about music (garbling ahead)

Well, that's not actually true. However, I find myself writing almost exclusively about bands, and not about, shall we say, "issues". I hear some music I like and I write about, whereas I haven't felt at all compelled to write about rockism or whatever issue various music websites are up in arms about. In some sense, I think you reach a point where everything becomes subjective and at that point, what other people are saying becomes irrelevant. At that point, certain issues become increasingly trivial. Like this one: Soulseeking

I've felt that need to consume, both in the downloading age and before it. But what happened to Nick a couple of years ago was the need to hear everything, and I haven't felt that in at least ten years (not even everything within a scene or genre). Compared to my teen, it's considerably more fruitless to even attempt such a thing and engage in that sort of completism, since there's so much more music available and it's easier than ever to get hear it. Nick doesn't want to know everything about postpunk and grime -- hey, neither do I! -- and the solution is simple. Don't listen to it, no need for drama, listen to something else. It's that simple. That's the sort of triviality I was referring to. My response is brief and I don't feel the need to discuss it beyond "just listen to whatever you want and leave it at that".

The need to hear everything is foolish, but the need to hear lots and lots is not -- it's a simple addiction just like any other. As I've said on other occasions, I accept the fact that there's practically an infinite pool of music out there that I would absolutely love if I ever got around to hearing it. I'm becoming convinced that the timing of anything I hear is essentially random. Recommendations are everywhere -- I follow through on some right away, some get filed away in my brain for years, and others are simply forgotten. Why? What determines whether a song or album is heard immediately as opposed to never? The crucial question is how much of this depends on factors that I can control (absolute choice over what I hear and when I hear it) and how much of it is pure randomness that is unrelated to music (moods, finding the time, millions of other real life pursuits).

My main objection to the article (which I enjoyed for the most part) is the way it looks toward the past, implying that we are, to some extent, powerless to avoid judging new music (and the feelings we get from hearing that music) with how we felt about music we heard in the past. Why won't new albums don't make him feel like InSides did? A valid concern, perhaps, but that will never happen -- those feelings will never return. You hear music differently at 18 than you do at 26 or 31. Nothing is the same. Kissing a girl isn't the same at 31 as it was at 18. It's not less exciting or less special, it's just different because 18 is not 31. I went through what Nick went through. I used to wonder out loud if I'd ever be truly excited -- heart-palpitation excitement and life-affirming joy -- for any band ever again. Then I discovered Pulp. Again, it felt like the end of something, a conclusion to diehard fandom and I continued to wonder whether those feelings could ever be repeated. That was 1995. If I was incapable of feeling that strongly about a band over a period of ten years, I would have lost interest in hearing new bands several years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth, as this blog clearly shows. A steady stream of comparisons to the past helps to confine the past to a self-enforced higher pedestal that can never compete with the present, and then you're no different from those people who say that nothing can or will ever be better than the Beatles or Zeppelin.

Black Dice, Et Sans, Awesome @ Gladstone Hotel

There's a gas leak in the building. Oh wait, it's Awesome in their stage outfits, with soft glowing white lights where their faces should be, blowing into spooky horns, sampling and looping their voices, and pushing buttons on ancient toy organs. Watching all of this in the darkened room heightens the ghostly elegance of their music, and although the tension slowly builds toward a Black Dice-ian bleep-filled finale, I think their strengths lie in their more anodyne moments. They captured a feeling of pastoral stasis similar to that on Flying Saucer Attack's "Distance", which FSA couldn't or wouldn't recapture after that (typically relying on layer after layer of reverb to make their points both before and after that album).

I know essentially nothing about the state of goth music, or anything related to goth music (except for darkwave, which is still recycling 1995 trance the last I checked) but if more of it sounded like Arcana's "Inner Pale Sun", then I'd listen to a lot more of it. In contrast to highly intimidating labelmates such as Brighter Death Now, this album is lush, inviting, and cinematic, exuding warmth with each blaring note. Goth music always seems to bring thoughts of horror and fright to my mind -- a spider-infested haunted house as opposed to the grand prescence of a true gothic manor with leafy green ivy crawling around its exterior. Why can't more music in this genre sound this grand? Where do I find more of this stuff -- is this as simple as (finally) buying myself some Dead Can Dance CD's? As you can tell, I haven't a clue what I'm talking about when it comes to this stuff, but I know what I like.

I've been meaning to write about that album for a while, but conveniently, it fits into a discussion of Et Sans because they've found another wonderful goth formula that I wish others would use as well. Bouncy synth pop and shimmering keyboards form the basis for improvisational noise and fits of unrestrained screaming. Sure, let's let Fennesz's computer go nuts all over Depeche Mode's "Get the Balance Right", why not? The band are barely able to contain their smiles, which is perhaps a reaction over being not allowed to smile in their 4839 other bands. The sense of fun in their music is mostly absent on their album -- there's obviously something to be said for watching a performers' face and having the option of dancing along with them.

Since I'm writing this a couple of days later, I might as well open up a time loop to the night following the concert in order to talk about one more thing that I know nothing about. I saw five minutes of Canadian Idol last night. These were the only five minutes I've seen all season. What is wrong with my country? The emperor has no clothes and I think I'm the only one who realizes it. The judges certainly don't because they're working overtime to polish turds into gold and if I hadn't seen the two finalists with my own eyes then I might have bought what the judges were selling. Neither Rex or Melissa looks like a star. They look like ordinary kids. Ryan Malcolm looks like a waiter who won a singing contest. He doesn't look like a star and that's why he isn't one. Kalan Porter is a dewy-eyed manchild. He looks like a star and he is one. Rex and Melissa don't look like pop singers. Neither has a future as one.

Rex's version of Five For Fighting's "Superman" was delivered in a brutal monotone that had me aghast at the notion that this was actually the finale and not the round where they eliminate 32 contestants down to 16. Plus, the dude's a midget. Sorry. Melissa has a fine voice and should clearly be the winner, but taking on "Angel of the Morning" was a potentially suicidal move because of the extremely high risk of falling flat on your face with a song that difficult. My perception is that she managed to do enough with it to not change anybody's opinion of her, no more and no less.

Canadian Idol, then: let's have some humility and quit before we make ourselves look any dumber.

Black Dice rocked my socks off. They have got to be in my top five of bands that you absolutely have to see live to appreciate. They're punishing in person, but on record, their electronic squiggling carries maybe 10% of the power (one or two tracks on each album excepted).

Sloan, controller.controller @ U of T orientation week (9/9/05)

OK, they like discopunk. They sound not one iota different from the last time I saw them over a year ago, and until controller.controller write one tune that's one-tenth as breathless as Blondie's "Atomic" (in itself being only the 15th or 20th most breathless, exciting Blondie song) then I'll be leaving them alone.

Speaking of bands whose songs all sound the same, we have Sloan's brand of noisy, harmony-drenched, guitar pop. It's no surprise that they break out the greatest hits set for the occasion, which had many in the crowd singing along -- and some of them were actually frosh!

But only two songs into the show, I'm struck by a sobering thought. As 1992's "Underwhelmed" resonates around the sun-drenched field to general indifference, I realize that at that moment, it could have been MY frosh orientation. A dozen years later, here I am, on the same campus, listening the sort of indie rock that I didn't much care for at the time! Thankfully, the Sloan boys make no attempt to come across as anything other than the collective frosh's geeky and not-so-in-touch-anymore older brothers. Ah yes, they're from my generation, I thought while eyeballing hundreds of cute, unattainable girls.

Back in the day, we all had a good laugh as Sloan morphed from slacker kids into britpoppers seemingly overnight (even though the songs were fairly good -- strangely enough, we had the same reaction when Bryan Adams did the same thing ... hmm). While Chris Murphy was trying to out-Lennon Liam Gallagher, the band continued to write summertime singalong after summertime singalong, until they had gradually turned into Canada's version of Oasis without the, you know, bullshit that you have to put up with if you're a fan of Oasis and the assholes that populate that band. There is no greater use for them and their greatest hits CD than to blast it at as many summer festivals as possible lest the band grow old and stop caring about these songs.

Xiu Xiu, Frog Eyes, Yellow Swans @ Gladstone (9/8/05)

I could try describing Yellow Swans' blast of ever-growing quaking noise (with bonus screaming), but on occasions such as these, it's really best to defer to the Mogwai scale (a continuing work in progress for me), and leave the summary at that. So, at their peak they approach 0.75, maybe 0.8 Mogwai. Hopefully that clears things up.

Consider me sold on Frog Eyes after months of musing over the odd ecstatic comments on message boards ... with precision riffs (and the young Shel Silverstein on lead guitar), and stiff, almost robotic stage motions, they're a hardcore version of the Feelies, steeped through the Ex's sense of white funk. Whisper to a scream, why don't you ...

For this tour, Xiu Xiu have scaled back to the duo of Jamie and Caralee, but when one loses the use of one of the five senses, the other four are heightened in order to compensate for the loss. So, they compensate by setting all of their instruments to "stun". Unlike their last visit here a few months ago, the duo have no patience for slow-building, moody pieces. Instead, they shuffle the setlist to favour a maximum amount of dense noise and manic energy with sinus-splitting versions Don Diasco and (especially) Apistat Commander. One exception was the closer, "Sad Pony Guerrilla Girl", which was delivered as an aching duet and basically forecast the fact that we were being sent home.

MTV Video Music Awards 2005

Note: I'm very late with this ... I wrote a bunch of stuff during the live broadcast, but didn't get the chance to go back and look it all over because a) I moved this week, and b) the internet isn't hooked up at my new place yet. In any case, the fallout from this show will be overshadowed times 1000000 by Kanye West's comments on the Katrina Telethon that aired on NBC earlier tonight. It was a tense and beautiful moment ... he was visibly nervous, even shaken as the words emerged from his mouth ... he knew that he'd started to ramble, but ended his monologue powerfully with the "they're sending in the army to shoot us" line, which was enough of a "WTF, did I just hear him say that??" moment as it is. However, you could tell that he had more on his mind ... also, it's remarkable that he didn't raise his voice during the whole tirade (can it still be called a tirade if spoken in calming, hushed tones such as those?). He never came unglued, never lost his cool, never let his anger bubble up and overshadow the words he was saying. I know I wouldn't have kept my cool like that, and I doubt that many others would have been able to as well. This makes is pretty hard to handwavingly dismiss what he said as the rantings of another irrational, violence-obsessed black man on crack, although many commentators will surely try.

Here we go.

7:46. There's something quaint about the fact that Much Music gets (or wants) ZERO VMA priviledges. Every year, they're wandering around in the street outside the venue or are backstage in some closet bringing us hilariously bad "coverage". For the pre-show, we get oh so exciting shots of Leah wandering around the CNE. Why have a countdown show at all?

I'm looking forward to this year's show a lot more than last year's, AKA "let's give Usher a blow job for three and a half hours". It feels as though there's a lot more starpower this year, and what's more, it's *new* starpower. Britney and Christina aren't being recycled for another go-around, but instead we have Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani (er, her solo career is new), and Mariah Carey (back from the dead, what's old is new again). Plus, the host is some new guy I've never heard of, this Diddy character. I love looking at that name in print and laughing at it. Diddy. DIDDY. I can't wait to hear the announcer say "AND YOUR HOST -- DIDDY!!" :/

8:00. Green Day open the show, looking like a group of snot-nosed twenty-year old freaks, playing the song that nearly became the first rock #1 since Nickecrap. All that pyro was completely unneccessary, but they're going to win a billion awards tonight, so the pyro is just letting us know how important they are.

8:07. In 2002, the WWF finally gave into the panda organization after years of legal scuffles and changed their name to WWE. That week on RAW (their weekly flagship program), they held a hardcore title match to lead off the show. Suffice to say that the title was a joke at that point, i.e. it had no prestige at all. Part of the gimmick was that the title was defended 24/7, at all times. I can't remember who was in the match, but it was over very quickly and the announcer said "the winner, and NEW WWE Hardcore Champion, [whoever]". Then, somebody else came down to the ring unexpectedly, hit the new champ with a chair, and pinned him, resulting in yet another title change (remember, the stupid title was defended 24/7), which led to another announcement: "the winner, and NEW WWE Hardcore Champion, [whoever]". This happened about five times in sequence. I think the original champ ended up with the title once this clusterfuck was over, but the title didn't mean shit anyway, so whatever. The real purpose of all this was to get the WWE name announced as many times as possible off the top of the show in order to drill the name change into the fans' heads.

Tonight's opening montage, featuring Sean Combs, was designed for precisely the same purpose.

8:11. I thought I had gotten used to seeing the skinny version of Lindsay Lohan, but apparently not because she now has Alicia Keys' body. Bizarrely, they are presenting Best Male and Female Video together, which leads to Kanye West and Kelly Clarkson approaching the stage while their songs are awkwardly stapled together and played over the loudspeakers. Kelly's backless dress is practically falling apart as she speaks. No complaints.

Before the commercial, we get a Beavis and Butthead vignette! MTV, I'm warning you: don't tease me with this one. We need B&B to chuckle at Gwen Stefani and Theory of a Deadman and we need it NOW.

8:25. Luda's "Pimpin All Over the World" is just sorta there, a bit too clean and sterile for me. Diddy claims he's a gentleman, which means there's no foul language allowed such as fuck and shit. That joke is more played than ... see DX 1997 for the ideal execution of the joke. There are way too many things to make fun of in Diddy's mini-monologue, such as his pulling the "VOTE or DIE" catchphrase out of it's Fall 2004 mothballs. Voting in a presidential election, voting for who has the nicer dress between Gwen Stefani and Eva Longoria. Eh, it's all the same.

8:34. Green Day win Best Rock Video. No surprise.

8:40. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN! Like a stilted dance number featuring the smooth steps of our man Diddy. Usher looks bored. Is that the singer from Good Charlotte with Hilary Duff (looking bored)? Black Eyed Peas are grooving along, I guess that's the sort of thing that happens when you let a white girl into the group. Grandmaster Flash on the decks is cool though ... and just as I make fun, MC HAMMER APPEARS AND DANCES TO A VERSE OF "U CAN'T TOUCH THIS", complete with suited entourage. OK, I believe, I believe.

8:48. Shakira and Alejandro Sanz perform amidst jets of fire. It's a Latin performance, so I guess there needs to be fire. Because Latin music is spicy. Hot. Get it, folks?

9:03. I have no idea how they decide which hip-hop videos get tagged with the "Dance" tag, but "1, 2 Step" and "Lose Control" were both nominated, and I'm all in favour of electro songs with rapping on them taking over this category (and the charts).

9:06. R. Kelly: method actor. Acting out every part of "Trapped In the Closet", complete with pillow-throwing, imaginary gun waving, and homosexual hissy-fit, he horribly lip-synchs through a (new?!) Part Six, in which Chuck leaves Rufus and returns to his wife. Hope you enjoyed your foray into cock-sucking, Chuck. I really like R. Kelly's album, but this performance was like unintentional slapstick.

9:24. The Killers perform "Mr. Brightside" at a nighttime pool party in their motel. Then we lose out on a surefire "Anything Can Happen (TM)" moment when Luda ("Number One Spot") beats out The Game and 50 Cent ("Hate It Or Love It").

9:38. Diddy talks about how cool he is and all the people he knows. Again. For the fifth or sixth time tonight. Then he pretends to conduct an orchestra while Biggie plays on the big screen. This is like the hip-hop dinosaur excess version of the American Bandstand 33 1/3 show, where the all-star orchestra played "Blue Suede Shoes" and Elvis joined in via tape. Snoop shows up, sounds great, but can't save this segment. The London Philharmonic Plays the Music of Biggie Smalls -- in a record store near you, just in time for Xmas.

10:00. Things got interesting: Fat Joe dissed G-Unit, a bunch of reggaeton artists got 15 seconds each to ply their trade (feel the record sales spike, FEEL IT), Missy won again (Best Hip-Hop, Missy:MTV VMA's = Sting:Brits = dead, sick, and dying people: Grammys), and Pharrell introduced Coldplay all serious-like (because Coldplay are "deep" and "emotional", necessitating the use of proper gravitas when saying their name).

10:16. Kelly Clarkson wins again (best POP vid), and again, acts like the game show winner who can hardly believe that she's actually a star. That's refreshing. Kanye West gives his usual solid performance, but on second thought, maybe he'll be the one to come out with an album featuring just an orchestra instead of beats.

10:29. The Killers give the most boring acceptance speech ever, while Eva Longoria wears a dress/bathing suit that somehow manages to be incredibly revealing and incredibly ugly. Then we cut to Mariah Carey, who was put up at a much fancier hotel than the Killers were. She sings a "Shake It Off"/"We Belong Together (remix)" medley, and I still can't figure out what the bigass deal is with either song.

10:59. This is the point in the show where we're coming up on three hours and I can no longer keep concentrating. My Chemical Romance aren't going to help turn things around, either. 50 Cent swearing up a storm (censored by MM) did manage to wake me up for a few minutes. I don't know what Fat Joe was thinking -- 50 never loses these sorts of flamewars. The pertinent facts: Fat Joe vs 50 Cent is a commercial mismatch by at least a factor of ten.

11:07. Green Day win again and don't want to be left out of all the fun, so Billie Joe swears a few times while thanking his friends and managers.

11:15. Destiny's Child get to say a special goodbye speech on the cusp of their retirement. Wow, unprecedented, just like Lance Armstrong after winning his seventh Tour. Then, to the surpise of nobody who has watched any 20 consecutive minutes of this show, Green Day win for Video of the Year.

11:17. Kelly Clarkson gets the closing spot -- amazing. Let's get one thing straight. Skinny blonde Kelly is hot. This is the look that Lindsay Lohan is craving right now.

Well aware that she's closing the show and can afford to lose her mind a bit, she screams her way through an unglued version of "Since U Been Gone", as the performance incorporates an extended ending and a wet t-shirt contest. No complaints.

Final comment: my mind probably wandered very easily because of the busy week ahead, hence the lesser attention to detail compared to past awards show commentaries. It's also possible that the format is growing stale for me -- we'll see. Unlike last year, it was decently-paced and I didn't find myself bored shitless through most of it. As a host, Diddy was pompous, annoying, and totally unfunny. Otherwise, there were no grand peaks and valleys, just rolling plains of marginal quality with a few bits of interesting topography thrown in. Many people have slammed the show, calling it the worst MTV VMA's ever, but those people have obviously blocked 2004 out of their system. But I am starting to wonder if they'll achieve the rollercoaster rides of 1997 or 2003 anytime soon.

Two More Things You Should Hear

Sigur Ros, "Takk". After the sleepy (= a bit boring) shoegaze of their debut and the so-called "boring" (= entrancing) sophomore effort comes "Takk", a cymbal-crashing tour-de-force that's as furious as Sigur Ros are likely to get (stretched out over an entire album, that is). What's more, the Disneyland-goes-Morr Music twinkling that filled the "Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do" EP is also here in abundance, which enhances the other-worldly feeling you get from so much of Sigur Ros' music. Now if only the tickets for their upcoming tour weren't so pricey ...

TATU, "What About Us" (single). The song strays almost comically close to "Show Me Love" from their last album. Its qualities as a fist-clenching anthem didn't click with me until I saw the video, that is, it all starts to make more sense once you watch the video. Following in the tradition of anti-classics like Michael Jackson's "Leave Me Alone", it's splattered with satirical tabloid headlines about Yulia and Lena's "relationship" -- just let them be, people, for the good of humanity! Let me get this straight ... their whole shtick is upholding a "THEY ARE LESBIAN LOVERS -- OR ARE THEY?" media image (along with releasing some utterly fantastic singles) , so they decide to release a video which, in part, attacks the media for perpetuating this circus? My brain hurts.

Regardless, the video features prostitution, guns, vodka shooters, and girls kicking ass in skimpy outfits in a manner that would have made Russ Meyer grin from ear to ear. Oh, did I mention how SMOKING HOT they (TATU) are in this video? Try to track down the uncensored version before MTV gets their hands on it (although it will be interesting to see if Much Music airs it as is).

Stretching Out That Point ...

Autechre -- EP7. This is where it started getting weird, although they could still lay claim to making caustic, clangy hip-hop. Because of the titling methodology, I think I was expecting a sequel to the previous year's "LP5". Of course, Autechre were drastically morphing their style with every release in those days, so I have no idea why I thought that logic was sound. It figures that they would follow up their most melodic album with an EP that foreshadowed its banishment from their music.

Jesu -- Jesu. Yep, it's time to form that four drums, bass, and five guitar band that pounds away on mammoth riffs all day. They'd be perfect for playing something like ...

Th Faith Healers -- Lido. Wait a minute, these guys invented Bardo Pond, didn't they?

The Delgados -- The Great Eastern. The litmus test. If things are getting too extravagant for you here, then it's best to retreat to "Peloton" or "Universal Audio". Otherwise, proceed to the overproduction nirvana of "Hate".

We've Reached That Point In the Year

I've come to realise that I'm sick of hearing all my early year faves. I've been taking a break from the New Order and Caribou albums, to name just two, because I'm rather bored with them right now. Or burned out on them. I'm on the verge of reneging on my "'Broadway' is the greatest Low song ever written" proclaimations from earlier in the year (where are all the harmonies I used to concocted and hum on the spot?) and the M83 album is not, at this instant, the greatest album since "In Sides" (I'm not sure what is, though)(don't ask me to pick something else). Tis the season for overlooked albums that slowly morph into favourites as a result of involuntary (read: addictive) repeat listens (like Beef Terminal's "The Isolationist" from last year). It's also a time to catch up on some music as a result of watching every CD I own slowly pass through my hands as part of my long-overdue CD spreadsheet project (500-odd down, damned if I know how many are to come), accompanied by the continuing saga of bigass CD-booklet filing. The last time I did this, I entertained myself with the musical version of the blind taste test, and here I am, back to my old tricks with:

Arovane, "Atol Scrap". What's more, it shared the carousel with Aphex Twin's "Drukqs" -- I'm picking on that album yet again! However, I'm gaining an appreciation for how it convincingly snuggles up next to so many different styles of music. RDJ pulls off melancholy moods better than nearly anybody else. Speaking of impersonations, this Arovane album is sounding less like a faithful Autechre rip-off these days. It meshes so well with the Aphex Twin record because they're both so gloomy, even when the breakbeats are rattling around your listening space. Autechre haven't been this gloomy since "Tri Repetae" ("Garbage" and "Amber", however, deserve their own separate strata of punishment via gloom and "what's that sound??!?!?!" isolationism).

A Silver Mt. Zion yadda yadda, "Horses In the Sky". Even before their recent gig, I became hopelessly addicted to this album, which would be their best in a world without "Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward". The guts of their last record consisted of epic, symphonic sweeps. The vocals were then stapled on top. With the new record, the vocals are the main focus, not only because the instrumentation is so sparse, but because every track climaxes with a massive, bursting vocal line. It's as if everything was originally written for harmonica and crackling campfire accompanient, and later on, somebody decided to add some violins and guitar to increase the dramatic effect.

The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band, Sandro Perri @ Tranzac

Compared to his 2003 opening slot for ASMZ, Perri has scaled down his band. The two-drummer attack is gone (Boo!!), resulting in a quieter, looser ensemble of guitar, brass and ramshackle percussion. For the sake of these newer, lyrically introspective songs, scaling down the instrumentation is likely to their benefit because the old band would have completely overwhelmed them. Still, I spend most of their set wondering if I'm watching a pleasant slice of Toronto country-tonk or a slightly botched performance of Peter Maxwell Davies' "Eight Songs for a Mad King".

This is ASMZ's 51st show ever (IIRC, the 2003 shows were their first of that tour and only their 10th and 11th gigs together) and it quickly becomes apparent that they've shed any remaining morsels of apprehension in regards to their singing. They're no longer singing with a shy, nearly bashful confidence, like someone singing karaoke for the first time in front of long-time friends. Now, they're really belting shit out to incredibly powerful effect. There is no better advertisement for their talents than "Teddy Roosevelt's Guns", which starts with the impassioned "O Canada, I'll never be your son" line, disintegrates (in a good way) into a noisy, droning jam; and completely comes apart (also in a good way) in the finale with drums pounding, the Branca-esque sound of detuned guitars being struck while melting, and crazed screaming of the song's title. Intriguingly, they seem to give a preview of the next album, too. Last time, some of the "Horses In the Sky" tracks appeared as codas to the older songs and with this show, the pattern is repeated.

Jews Rock

Jewsrock.org is a fun site about -- take a guess. It's a new site, and very much a work in progress (where are Jonathan Richman's Bar Mitzvah photos? Get them, dammit!) but there are already plenty of essays and factoids to chew on. I thought that I'd read my books and knew who was Jewish in rock and roll, but it turns out that I hadn't. Now, far be it from me to complain that some of the writing is, er, "too Jewish", but I can understand that they wanted the site's writing to appeal to the broadest possible age group. Hmmm ... here are some things I learned from the "Challah Fame" portion of their site, AKA the RNR Jewish roll call. (I'm also including some passages that I felt like excerpting for the hell of it -- all excerpts are from jewsrock.org):

Er, I didn't know they were Jewish!

Robbie Robertson! MC Paul Barman! Jack Black!

Chris Blackwell!!! This one really blew my mind. His family started the first synagogue in Jamaica.

Gavin Rossdale (half)! I'm just on the "B"'s here!

"Family Portrait" makes a bit more sense now

I wouldn't have guessed that someone named Alecia Moore was Jewish, but she (Pink) is indeed. Her completely non-revelatory family exposé (ooooh, her parents argued, she wasn't happy, how -- NORMAL) made her parents cry when they first heard it. This whole scenario is very Jewish.

This is stretching it a bit

From their early days in the San Francisco psychedelic scene to their one radio hit, 1987’s "Touch of Grey," the Grateful Dead have always had a large Jewish following. Deadheadism is a lot like Judiasm. Fans of the Grateful Dead, like observant Jews, glean spiritual meaning from the intensive study of their chosen texts: in this case, song lyrics. They view themselves as misfits in the greater world but draw incredible strength from their own communities.

I'm cool with the first sentence. I raise an eyebrow with the second. By the third, I'm trying to contain laughter. By the fourth, I'm merely trying to quantify how much acid the writer took at Grateful Dead concerts in the 80's and 90's. Somebody had a good time in college, I'll tell you that.

They mention that the band's manager was Jewish (no name given). I'm not sure if they had more than one Jewish manager, but one of their first was Hank Harrison, who is a) half-Jewish, b) wrote one of the first Dead bios, c) Courtney Love's father. Strangely, none of this is mentioned in the entry about Love.

See what I mean? Too Jewish

On the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: The jury is still out on lead singer Karen O (does that stand for "Oy"?) and guitarist Nick Zinner, but drummer Brian Chase definitely qualifies as a Jewish rocker.

Who says that?

On Yo La Tengo: Every Hanukkah, Yo La Tengo puts on an eight-day show at Maxwell’s, the veteran rock club in Hoboken. Frontman Ira Kaplan, who has been called "the Jewish Jimi Hendrix," brings his Jersey hometown covers by Jews ranging from Neil Diamond to the Ramones.

I think they made up the "Jewish Hendrix" bit. I've never heard anybody say that. I can't imagine that anyone would think that. If Ira Kaplan ressembles anybody, it's the Jewish Lou Reed ... oh, redundant. If anyone is the Jewish Hendrix, it's Lenny Kravitz :)

See what I mean? Too Jewish

On Lou Reed: As they say at seder, if he’d only founded the most influential band of all time, it would have been enough. But after his run with the Velvet Underground, once he’d made it OK to sing about heroin and S&M and to use feedback and soundscapes in rock songs, Lou Reed went on to release Transformer in 1972. If he had only added New York grit to glam rock with an album produced by David Bowie and featuring the Top 20 hit "Walk on the Wild Side," dayenu.

He did sing about heroin, but I wouldn't say that he made it acceptable to sing about it. Funny how people always use that song to support the notion that Reed kicked down a lyrical barrier. Did he also make it OK to sing about orgies involving sailors and transvestites? I've never heard anybody argue that.

Oh, if he'd only utilized a silly pun on the song title "Original Wrapper", outdone Depeche Mode in the "WTF? World events? Why? What is this?" song contest of 1986, and written an album ("Mistrial") that even his most devoted fans won't defend -- it would have been enough for us!

That lawsuit is making a bit more sense now

Richard Blum, aka Handsome Dick Manitoba, senselessly sued Dan Snaith for ownership of the name Manitoba.

This might be all you ever need to know about Phish

Like the Grateful Dead, Phish play unstructured, jammy, jazz-inflected music, tour incessantly, and occupy a special place in the hearts of many a Jewish hippie.

A perfect summation. Oh, half of the band was Jewish.

Jacques Lu Cont

Sometimes you just ignore the hype. JLC can do no wrong, the Gwen Stefani remix is the best of 2004, gotta hear his Missy Elliott remixes, etc. You can't keep up with everything.

This is further confirmation that there's always music that is beyond brilliant floating around out there, unheard by your ears. You can't walk around in a constant bother about this, rather, just accept it as the state of things and enjoy everything you hear, whenever you get to hear it. There was a time when I kicked myself for sitting on Drugstore's debut album, inexplicably not getting around to hearing it for three years. That sort of thing is common now, the difference is that I've stopped kicking myself as hard as I used to.

Lu Cont's hot streak is reminding me of all the Timo Maas hype from a few years ago. Essentially, both guys have a remix formula, with each remix turning out more or less identical to the others once fed through the formula. What's more, their styles aren't all that different -- Maas is looser, proggier; while Lu Cont has a knack of coming up with addictive new melodic leads. Huge, thumping, quaking 4/4 house beats; and euphoric, crushing breakdowns are among the qualities they share. However, I never really got into the Maas hype, whereas I'm feeling JLC, big time. I'm confused about why this is, considering the similarities between the two. One theory: I don't remember Maas relying so heavily on vocals during the climactic moments of his mixes.

It's also interesting that lots of people dislike the original tracks but love their JLC mixes/overhauls, which is just about the best compliment you can give to a remix. I also don't recall this being as much the case with Maas.

Some of this is old news, but if you haven't done it, track down JLC's work on "What You Waiting For", "Jetstream", and my tune of the week, the Thin White Duke Dub of "Mr. Brightside". All of them handily slay the originals.

Polmo Polpo, Off the International Radar, The Peppermints @ Sneaky Dee's

Flanked by halos of coloured light that pulsate along with the beat, Polmo Polpo spirals through a spectacular 30-minute version of "Kiss Me Again and Again". Incredibly, he starts off with a sparse, stoic crowd and succeeds in getting almost everyone to dance and funk out to disco laced with the ambient bleeping chaos of a dozen cosmic video arcades. Never mind all this, just go see the guy next time he plays because after five years of this (this was my eighth PP gig), I'm running out of superlatives.

Met by twinking organ drones and guitar fuzz, my first thought is that Off the International Radar aspire to be the shoegaze-inflected Inspiral Carpets. Despite my love for both the Carpets and the 'gaze, the combination would be absolutely horrid. Fortunately, things don't head down that road ... instead, muscular Can-like drumming and noisy one-chord jams make this a lot closer to Reich's "Four Organs" gone the way of Caribou's live show, rather than Madchester with louder guitars. Thankfully.

It's funny, earlier in the day I was remarking how silly bands can look when they play two minute treble-laden rock songs while girls engage in off-key shrieking. The topic of discussion was Sleater-Kinney and the narrow line they walk. The Peppermints are of a thrash and hardcore bent, but none of this is enough to make me stick around watching them for very long.

The Warlocks, "Surgery"

Add the Warlocks to the list of "Bands Who Made a Great Album That I Didn't Think They Had In Them". Even Spacemen 3's "Sound of Confusion", which is their best album, starts to grate on the nerves when listening to the seventy-minute CD version (containing the "Walking With Jesus" single as well as the proper album). How many two-chord jams in a row do you really need to hear?

"Surgery" moves away from the treble-heavy, jam-it-out approach of their past albums, in favour of a more 80's Jesus and Mary Chain + 60's Girl Groups approach (well OK, the JAMC already had the girl group element, but the Warlocks don't/can't explode the 60's with a treble bomb as heavy as "You Trip Me Up" ("It's Just Like Surgery" kinda tries, right down to using the same chord progression), instead, they go full swoon ahead, pianos and all -- witness "Angels in Heaven, Angels in Hell" and "Evil Eyes Again"). Sweet, anthemic melodies explode from the speakers, and for once, the singing actually conveys depth and emotion rather than merely acting as an accessory to the surrounding din.

Rock Star:INXS

"It's my dream to be a rock star". "This is what I wanted to do since I was four years old". Etc. Keep that dream alive, because it's not going to come true here. After all, it's just INXS, who haven't meant anything in 15 years.

I loved INXS. I still do -- "Kick" didn't leave my cassette player for most of 1988-9. But they've dropped off the face of the earth since Michael Hutchence's death and as soon as this show starts, even a big fan such as myself has trouble buying into the notion that these 15 hopefuls are in line for an important gig. Their profile plummetted after their lead singer accidentally killed himself in a freak masturbation incident -- notoriety couldn't stick to these guys with superglue. How many people under 20 are watching this show, and how many INXS songs do they remember?

At least nobody looks like the second coming of Hutchence, and as long as nobody tries to ape him then this show won't get too queasy (but why would anybody do that, since MH =! icon, as mentioned above?). The closest we get to Hutchence is Ty, who's the body-and-voicemeld of Terence Trent D'Arby (INXS singer for approx. 3.8 minutes) and Green Velvet. Most of them look like they'd rather be trying out for Good Charlotte, with exceptions such as Suzie from Toronto, who looks like she was singing at Grossman's just last week.

I can't see myself wanting to watch this until the last four or five weeks. How much of Dave Navarro ("good friends" with INXS, yeah right) and the stilted stoicism of Brooke Burke (didn't she used to be 100x hotter?) can I take? Oh, and Kirk Pengilly's beard and moustache look unbelievably stupid.

Live 8

Here are a few random notes from the various Live 8 events. All times are EDT, and may not correspond to the time that those artists actually performed (i.e. I may be watching on tape delay at various points). Unlike running diaries of other events, I'm making no attempt at completeness here, just commenting when I feel like it.

Lots of people are being cynical about Live 8, complaining that we're all dreaming if we think this will accomplish anything. I refuse to buy into that viewpoint. Live 8 is not an endpoint. Nobody should be claiming that we're going to solve all of Africa's problems in one day. But awareness is important and shouldn't be underestimated. How many international causes would kill to have this sort of attention? Surely more people have learned about African debt in the past month than have learned about the Sudanese and Rwandan genocides in the past ten years.

9:32 London. Ben Mulroney and some other talking head are doing commentary between performances. They noted that Coldplay were coming on following U2 and claimed that it signified a "passing of the torch". Uh ...

9:38 London. RIchard Ashcroft (still performing in bare feet -- yes!) joins Coldplay for "Bitter Sweet Symphony", which is supposed to be one of those "moments", but feels like Mad Richard with a subpar backing band nearly ruining his signature tune. He warms up to the song after a few minutes, so good for him, I guess.

9:42 London. Chris Martin says that Live8 is the greatest thing that has ever been organized in the history of the world ever. Really? Better than the moon landings? Use much hyperbole?

13:38 Barrie. Oh, here comes the "we forget that those in the Third World are people too" speech except this time it's coming from Bruce Cockburn, and it's the lead-in to the still-relevant "If I Had a Rocket Launcher". Perfect.

14:21 London. I've just now tuned into AOL's webcasts, but sadly, I am too late to catch Snoop's profanity-drenched performance. Ugh, I'm gutted. However, I am in time to hear Madonna scream "ARE YOU FUCKING READY LONDON". Eh, whatever, I already got my fix of swearing from Bruce Cockburn earlier. Still, Madonna ("Like A Prayer", Ray of Light", "Music") is easily the best thing I've seen thus far.

14:49 Philly. Dave Matthews Band are playing some background music. ZZZZZZ.

15:08. London. I would have tapped the Killers to make a lasting impression and be to this show what U2 were to Live Aid, but they only got to play one song ("All These Things That I've Done", great as always) and weren't on stage long enough to burn themselves into anyone's memory.

I'm lost as to where we are on the London schedule. Things aren't proceeding according to the schedule I've seen, but we still have (at the very least) Robbie Williams, The Reunited Floyd (where's Syd?), Sir Paul, and what's sure to be a barf-bag singalong to "Do They Know It's Christmas".

15:44 Barrie. The mere mention of going live to Vegas brought out a round of boos for Celine, probably the biggest spontaneous reaction from this crowd thus far. Celine Dion's mini-monologue about helping the poor is ... exactly what you'd expect from a Celine Dion mini-monologue about helping the poor.

15:53 Philly. What in the name of all that is holy is happening here? A rap-off between Linkin Park and Jay-Z? Oh good, Blue Rodeo are coming on now in Barrie.

16:30 Barrie. Just my luck, Lightfoot comes on stage just as Def Leppard break into "Pour Some Sugar On Me" in Philly. Lightfoot looks and sounds great for a guy who spent most of his life drunk and nearly died a couple of years ago. Despite his weakened voice, he's one badass stoic singer.

Lightfoot is from Orillia, which means he's the only performer to my knowledge that is from the area where this concert is taking place. Speaking of which, why are the Philly and London gigs all mixed up regarding the nationalities of the bands playing there? Why aren't the American bands all playing in Philly and the Brit bands all in London? All the other gigs have gotten this straight, with a few exceptions (Deep Purple, lucky us).

16:52 London. Whoa, I just learned that Mariah Carey didn't actually say that quote about flies and death and stuff (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/carey.htm). Does make her any less of a flake? A tiny little bit, yes.

17:25 London. Amazingly, Robbie Williams hasn't performed live since Knebworth almost two years ago. His retirement/burnout at the time is clearly exaggerated -- or at the very least, the time off has done him a world of good. With "Let Me Entertain You" (complete with bonus Killers and Queen lyrics), "Feel" and "Angels", he riles the crowd into a football hooligan frenzy, and confirms the notion that he should appear on the bill of every festival.

18:00 Paris. Robert Smith on saving the poor and hungry people of Africa: "It doesn't matter if we all die!!!". Naturally, the Cure are amazing.

18:26 London. Led Zep reunited for Live Aid (3/4 of them, anyway), but even they'd only been broken up for five years. Reuniting Pink Floyd (4/5 of them, anyway) is a far more notable feat considering how much Gilmour and Waters hated (hate?) each other for some 25 years. Somehow, great bands have a knack of hating each other and still creating great music, as Floyd transcend and redeem two decades of bullshit with a chilling version of "Comfortably Numb".

18:35 Philly. Is that Rob Thomas singing "Higher Ground" with Stevie Wonder? Is that Rob Thomas sounding 1000x better than I ever thought he could while singing "Higher Ground" with Stevie Wonder?

19:01 London. Passing the mic during "Hey Jude" (what happened to the first three minutes of the song, anyway) was a really bad idea, but still preferable to the planned "Do They Know It's Christmas" celeb singalong (axed for time or taste reasons?). During all of this, I missed Stevie Wonder closing the Philly concert with "Superstition" -- Toronto is now the only one still going!

(oh, it looks like the Rome show is still going on -- wow, Rome and Paris went longer than Berlin!)

19:55 Barrie. The start of Jays-Red Sox means that I don't feel the slightest inclination to see BNL. I did happen to flip over and hear Stephen Page make a good joke at the expense of The Box (anyone under the age of 27 probably didn't get the reference).

20:18 Barrie. Neil Young is a different story. If you're going to pack the stage and do a singalong, I'll take "Rockin' in the Free World" over "Hey Jude", thank you. The whole thing turned into a shambolic mess by the end, but who cares.

And that's it. Hopefully I'll remember to tune into the London broadcast in a couple of hours to see Snoop drop f-bombs all over the place.

Xiu Xiu, This Song Is a Mess But So Am I @ Poor Alex Theatre

I hadn't even considered the Gay Pride Weekend factor until about two days before this gig. I'm referring to both the composition of the audience as well as the likely non-coincidental scheduling of the gig on this particular weekend. Sure enough, the crowd was a smorgasbord of various sexual orientations and freek folk, the kind of people who think nothing of moving their bodies to the distorted, fucked up dance beats of a band like Xiu Xiu. Ditch the bulk of Toronto's "oh, we couldn't possibly dance at a gig and appear as though we're enjoying ourselves" indie scenesters and give me a cross-section of Xiu Xiu's Toronto fanbase any day of the week.

This Song Is a Mess But So Am I played a set filled with various take-offs of Xiu Xiu's "Brian the Vampire" -- chaotic, blustery noise with stage presence to match. The one-man band's name is as true to the music as any name you'll ever find. I don't consider the name to be reflexively critical, but it is an endearing statement of truth.

Many tracks from "Life and Live" are gorgeous and inspired, but over the course of a 15-track live record, the overly sparse instrumentation and song choices becomes snooze-worthy. Oh look, it's another plaintive guitar ballad filled with long gaps of silence and punctuated by whispers and screams. The three person live incarnation of Xiu Xiu is far more intruiging. Their laboratory of percussion and effects offer plenty of sonic distractions for the brain, particularly on rapturously received tracks such as "Crank Heart" and "I Luv the Valley". The quieter "La Foret" songs also make more sense when performed live amongst one hundred entranced strangers watching a man sing with a scrunched up face on a dimly lit stage.

Xiu Xiu tread a line between stark seriousness and indie-rock ironic detatchment. In short, sometimes you're not sure if they're joking or not (generally, they're not). They're the melodramatic friend who wails about how their life sucks and they want to die. You want to listen to them and make a few cracks and get them to lighten up, but you're afraid to do that just in case they are really serious about offing themselves. Thus, when Jamie Stewart screams the "vacation" rant during a ferocious version of "I Broke Up", he rolls his eyes into the back of his head in such a ghoulish manner that there's no way I'm making any cracks about it.

MMVA's 2005

I'm stoked because this year's lineup of guests is the best in the history of the MMVA's. Ciara! Yum! For those who aren't familiar with the wild chaotic masquerade street party that is the Much Music Video Awards, read the first paragraph of last year's post for an introduction.

I caught a couple of minutes of the red carpet arrival, which appeared crazed and disorganized while the VJ's tripped over their words trying to kill time amongst the screaming and chaos. Ah, Much Music. Good times. And here we go ...

9:00 PM. ... with Billy Talent. Let's review. I hated their performance last year. I make a concerted effort to flip their channel when their videos come on the air. And now, they're screaming a bunch of bullocks and stinking up the main MMVA stage, therefore continuing the established pattern. At least the stage looks great. I walked by it last night and it looked absolutely majestic -- sleek, metallic, and very, very, shiny.

9:05. Matte uses the word "ever" over and over and over and over and over again in his opening spiel. I hate this guy, I really do. I can't recall ever hearing him say anything intelligent on air. To be more precise, I can't recall ever hearing him not say anything unintelligent. This show is off to a terrible start.

Where are the gaudy Halloween outfits? Sarah looks normal. Does the spirit of Sook-Yin Lee no longer reside at Much Music?

9:11. As expected, four billion things are happening and I can't keep up. Sarah makes dumb Canada vs USA small talk with the Killers, K-os wins an award, and Ciara jacks up the crowd with a "Oh"/"1-2 Step" medley featuring some astoundingly dodgy lip-synching.

9:21. Black Eyed Peas get a Sandman-esque entrance, which leads to them announcing Billy Talent as the winners of the Much Loud Best Rock award. The highlight of this show so far is the constant, excessive screaming.

9:31. Well, that's all changed thanks to a mindblowing effort from the Arcade Fire. They slam into a noisy sprawl, dressed in (appropriate) funereal black, surrounded by the fallen bodies of a marching band that has apparently drank too much of their funny-tasting kool-aid. They tear through "Rebellion (Lies)", thereby hopefully selling another 20 000 copies of their album in Canada by the end of the month. That song has been slowly climbing the Much countdown, so it's possible that The Kids really do like this song and don't think of it as a Flaming Lips/Polyphonic Spree-type wacky joke (I'm sure that's what the Billy Talent fans are thinking, but to hell with them). Finally, they hit the final minute of the song and the marching band wakes up, joins in the song, continues to play as the song ends, and marches out the front door of the Much studio with the band following them in a weird reversal of the Pied Piper motif from the video. Meanwhile, I'm sitting in front of the TV nearly lost for words. If there's any reason for you to beg, borrow, or steal a copy of this show, this is it, as I can't recall a better musical performance on any awards show in recent memory.

9:38. It's all downhill from there, although Sarah shamelessly hitting on the Backstreet Boys like a drunken sorority girl is certainly quite entertaining. The crowd is going bezerk, nobody can hear anything, and A.J. looks really fucking old. Whose dad just wandered on stage? Did Oasis get another new guitarist and forget to take him with them after their concert on Friday? Eventually, the Killers win for Best International Video by a Group ("Mr. Brightside"), which I can certainly live with as that's a better song than the other nominations put together and multiplied by ten.

9:42. Matte kept his streak alive while talking to Tie Domi. Way to go, dude.

9:44. Best Independent Video goes to Alexisonfire. It's a good night for rock in the T.O. tonight. Later, Rob and Amber dodge a bullet with Ed the Sock. That is, Ed didn't completely humiliate them and reduce them to rubble -- it must be an off-night for Ed.

9:54. Black Eyed Peas certainly know how to rock an awards show, and this time is no exception. Fergie has the MILF shtick down pat, while Will.I.Am and the other two do their usual shinier happier impressions of Andre 3000. K-os' "Man I Used To Be" wins for Best Rap Video, and the recipient simply thanks his parents despite Matte's protestations that he say something wacky and stoopid. It's appropriate that this followed the BEP's performance, because the aforementioned Andre 3000 would empathise with that sort of humility and general disdain for awards show silliness.

10:04. What a difference a year makes. After a rough debut last year, Devon is now completely comfortable in this environment and is the only VJ tonight that hasn't been spewing complete drivel from his mouth.

10:07. Alexisonfire deliver a frantic, treble-drenched performance. Impressive through sheer willpower, if nothing else.

10:09. It's definitely an off-night for Ed, as he admits that he's got no dirt on Billy Talent. The band has obviously spent years watching Ed's antics and just laugh along with everything he says anyhow. Ed, where is your muse?

10:13. Best International Video ... the usual suspects ... Snoop, Usher, Kanye, 50 Cent, and ERIC PRYDZ'S "CALL ON ME"? Huh? Did they throw that in there to check if we were paying attention? Spoof or not, the song is pure cornball junk. Does a Steve Winwood sample pass for irony these days? Man, what can I get for a Genesis or Supertramp sample? There's a reason we laugh at Olivia Newton-John videos these days, so what gives? It's no "Praise You", that's for sure.

Usher's "Caught Up" is the winner, despite being the worst song of the bunch. Yeah, Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" was also the 19th single from a mega-selling album, and it was also a fun video despite being a bleh song, but what do you expect when you're milking an album for bonus singles? Also, he couldn't even be bothered to come up with a half-assed excuse as to why he wasn't there. The tried and true "I'm in the studio" line always works, it's the "I have an early meeting tomorrow" of awards show excuses, but no, he's going to just chill down in Atlanta and enjoy the award. Jeez.

10:23. In the Best Video category, Billy Talent are nominated twice, as is K-os. Simple Plan are also nominated for their ripoff of the Good Charlotte suicide video. When you pattern your career after Good Charlotte, I think it's safe to say that you've hit the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, these three acts were huge in Canada this year, but three artists in a five-noms category is embarrassing. Predictably, Billy Talent win for "River Below".

10:29. K-os' understated, progrock-tinged perfomance appears to deflate a crowd that is only in it for the screaming by this point.

10:35. The mad-for-it anonymous half of Sum 41 drink with cheerleaders and introduce Ashlee Simpson. In order to cover up for her non-talent and atonal singing "style", it seems as though the band has taken to playing out of tune as well. Seriously, did anyone bother to tune the bass guitar during soundcheck? Truth is stranger than fiction. How long can Ashlee continue to get away with this nonsense?

10:39. Kalan Porter receives a curious non-reaction. Why is this -- is the crowd all yelled out, or are they horrified by his gaudy green jacket? Gwen Stefani wins for Best International Artist, and at least she had the decency to pre-record a statement and give a half-decent excuse about flying back from Italy after filming a video and being too tired after eating all that pasta, har har, etc. (Usher, I'm looking at you).

10:43. Fefe Dobson announces the Best Canadian Artist -- "KALAN FUCKING PORTER!" -- hooray for live television. He beat out Avril and K-os. Well, anybody but Shawn Desman, who, judging by his conversation with Matte, is 4'6" tall. Discovering that bad musicians are really short = a guilty pleasure.

10:46. At least they're presenting "People's Choice Favourite Canadian Group" last, unlike last year (Int Group, presented minutes before, was Green Day). Simple Plan win for the third year in a row, and they're NOT THERE??? Would Green Day skip the MTV video awards? Would any artist nominated for multiple awards not bother to show up to their own country's awards show? But principally, Much Music broke artists like Avril and Simple Plan, so if they're nominated, they should stop everything and get their ungrateful asses to the show. Maybe the impressive roll-call of A-list musicians in attendance this year (hey, Much got all five Backstreet Boys to appear, which is a big improvement from their 2/5 batting average in past years) will convince our own artists to not shit on Canada next year.

10;48. Neutered-Ed shoots the breeze with the Backstreet Boys. Summary: "Thanks for giving me so many years of great material". "No problem, it's all good".

10:55. Rob and Amber get the Liz Taylor slot and make the final introduction of the evening. I'll be sorry when they stop the party-hopping and go back to their Florida retreat to birth babies full-time, because they handle themselves better than 99.9% of all presenters on all awards shows. In the end, it's left to the Killers to play the fantastic "All These Things That I've Done" (complete with gospel choir and Kelly Osborne look-alike) as the show comes to a close. I get a lump in my throat when I hear this song and the video is one of the best in years. This song deserves to be 1000 times bigger than the wildly overrated "Mr. Brightside".

Well, the VJ's looked dazed and confused, and the show seemed even more disorganized than in past years, but the show featured some amazing performances courtesy of almost everybody except for Billy Talent (but especially Arcade Fire and The Killers). The MMVA's may have now surpassed the Brits when it comes to jamming prodigiously large amounts of content into a two-hour show. Good night sweetheart.