Lost

Two weeks ago my hard drive died and everything on it was lost. Let's just say that my annual Blue Screen Of Death was a bit overdue and that I should have been better prepared for this (read: in possession of a backup hard drive). My most important, irreplaceable work-related files were backed up elsewhere, but about 9 GB of mp3's were irretrievably lost.

I wasn't particularly bothered by this (I was thankful for my complete care warranty though), mainly because -- to my numbed surprise -- I could barely remember what music had been on there. I knew I had over 1 GB of albums from 2006, but I couldn't immediately recall which ones I had beyond my four or five favourites, and felt very little need to recover most of them. Storage space is so cheap that I usually don't bother deleting anything unless I actively dislike it. Once the new Flaming Lips album was on my hard drive it was a non-decision to keep it there, but now that's it's gone, I'm not in the slightest rush to get it back because I didn't particularly care for it to begin with. There were several dozen unclassified tracks floating about, but damned if I can remember more than 10-15 of them (note to self: reacquire "Ms New Booty").
Can anyone possibly justify keeping over 1 GB of live Animal Collective mp3's on their hard drive (on top of the 600 or so MB already burned elsewhere)? How many live versions of "The Purple Bottle" does one person need? (OK, scratch that, you can never have too many versions of "The Purple Bottle")

So now, my computer runs like new thanks to the Windows reinstallation. In parallel with my mp3 replacement strategy, I'm in no hurry to reinstall every last thing because my computer's memory and hard drive were bogged down with a bunch of programs that I probably don't need at this very moment. I bought a backup HD (but not a DVD burner to back THAT up ... a mathematical induction problem awaits me), discovered that many of those Furtwaengler and William Basinski tracks were a lot easier to find again than expected, and replaced the essentials (Bardo Fucking Pond) with some new blood (Lisa Germano ... oh man, more on this another time). In all, I trimmed the digital fat and my computer is likely better off because of it -- I would almost recommend that everyone should have their HD wiped out at least once in their lives!

But it all made me wonder what other inessentials I'm saving. If half of my current CD collection suddenly evaporated, would I be that upset about it (besides the hammer to the head feeling of calculating how much I paid for all those discs)? I could go for years without hearing large parts of my collection simply because there's so much to wade through. What would I really miss? The strange thing is, I think I would miss a great deal of it, in part because I think a music collection is no different from a book or painting collection. It's as strong as its whole, and each CD fills a small but unique niche. People don't read every book on their shelves every year, or even every ten years, but it's nice to know that certain books are there when you need them. Sometimes you don't need them and it's enough for you to know that they're a playing their part in this tiny bit of your life's overall work. And the best part of all -- reappreciating and reevaluating music after neglecting it for years is a fantastic feeling.

Konono No 1, Jamie Lidell @ Harbourfront Main Stage (part of Beats, Breaks, and Culture)

Despite all the flaws in his set (bad PA system or shitty gear or a combination of both, keyboards that wouldn't work unexpectedly, keeping his gear in tune, a sloppy mix in which the percussion swamped the sludgy bass tones that sounded as if they were being played through a decaying guitar amp, the tendency to make Jamiroquai comparisons whenever a white British male makes an attempt at R&B, the overwhelming feeling that Brinkmann as Soul Center did a much better job with this minimal funk thing with the exception of the vocals), Jamie Lidell is onto something.

My number one expectation from Konono No 1 live was that they sound exactly like their "Congotronics" record. Everything over and above that would be gravy. Oh, and there were some other questions I needed answered, like "what sort of drum do they use for that rattling snare-esque sound?" (answer: it's not a drum, it's a hi-hat fed through a really shitty mic) and "do they use any sort of bass other than those thumb pianos?" (answer: no). In this case, the gravy was a huge group of white Torontonians getting down to an hour and a half of raw minimalism. The last (and probably only) time I saw anything like that in this city was the Scion + Tikiman show in 2002. And since this was the last show I will see in Toronto for a while, it's nice to go away knowing that people CAN learn some new tricks around these parts.

Berlin Music Stores -- the update

I swore that I wouldn't buy vinyl on this trip and I managed to keep that promise to myself. The planned Hard Wax swingby never materialized for unrelated reasons, I blame the World Cup. "Blame".

I spent a lot of time in Kreuzberg during the six days I was there, which was enough time for Spacehall to join my pantheon of Berlin music stores. Oddly enough, the further you walk into the store, the greater the riches become. The front is devoted to an unexceptional selection of indie rock, but a few steps further back is one of the grandest collections of rare early-to-mid 90's techno and rave compilations I've ever seen. The electronic and ambient CD sections are solid, but they pale next to the stunning quality of vinyl in the store's back room. Besides a top notch selection of new records, they keep a dazzling array of prominent techno artists perpetually in stock -- where else can you be sure to see about 30-40 records by the likes of Surgeon or Richie Hawtin or Speedy J, covering their entire careers and containing several rare gems?

With its expanded space (and vinyl stock), Dense easily remains on top of the Berlin heap. Every second inside that store is another second of trying to not look too conspicuous while my money burns a hole in my pocket. I managed to escape with about 40% of my remaining cash and CDs by Sensational, Final, plus a few Berlin noise/improv artists. Onward to Neurotitan, which is even more dominated by comics and artwork than I remember. In concerted symmetry, its CD stocks felt even more dominated by obscure and local noise.

A few words about the Saturday night clubbing experience: after wandering through roads that were paved over with bottles (fallout from the Germany vs Sweden celebration) we were denied entry to a Perlon night at Watergate (f. Luciano, Zip, Sammy Dee) on account of the bouncer's dissatisfaction at the guy/girl ratio inside the club. Modeselektor, Plaid, and Jega at Club Maria made for a fine Plan B. Despite the mountains of recent hype, Modeselektor sounded like the 3rd or 4th coming of Heckmann at times. On the night's rankings, they trailed far behind Plaid's thick, tuneful anthems as well as Jega's snowstorm of dnb and Confield-era Autechre-ish beats. Jega's onslaught brought the intensity of black metal, and in that vein, he played for only 30-40 minutes, followed by a near-instant crash of energy on my part.

Xiu Xiu, "The Air Force"

OK, "La Foret" didn't happen. It was a nice little experiment in improvisation, an attempt to make almost an entire album full of sparse ballads. Incidentally, several months following the release of "La Foret", I fell in love with "Helsabot of Caraleebot" from the "Fleshettes" EP. Sparse, tense, fragile -- these words don't even begin to describe it. That EP should have been Xiu Xiu's last word in tender acoustic ballads because since then they haven't been able to assemble three of them that I can listen to without getting bored.

Xiu Xiu's new album, "The Air Force" is an outstanding piece of work. With every Xiu Xiu album, people seem to write "This is the album that will appeal to those who weren't pre-existing fans. We swear it! It's the Xiu Xiu album that everyone can love." One pained Jamie Stewart scream later and that proclamation gets shot to hell. Those who feel that Stewart's voice is their main impediment to appreciating his music on any level should know that he's remarkably restrained here, with female vocals featured more prominently and his own vocal eccentricities are squashed for the most part. Whereas "Fabulous Muscles" was Xiu Xiu's crack at making pop music (white noise pop at that), only the delightful "Boy Soprano" really fits that mold. Over and over again, they hit upon a dazzling sequence of fascinating and unexpected sound combinations set to hummable balladry, midtempo 80's throwbacks, and anodyne noise-blanketed moods. If "Fabulous Muscles" was the pop album, then "The Air Force" may well be the power ballad album.

"Buzz Saw" begins with gentle piano that could have been lifted from a Satie piece (or "Music For Airports") before getting interrupted by snare cracks, ghostly cymbals, electro-funk squelches, a female chorus, and wind chimes -- all in turn (and in various combinations). It threatens to break out into something more menacing (and earsplitting), but that moment never comes. This is a ballad that is determined to see itself to the finish. "Vulture Piano", with it's metronomic beat and spidery bassline, could pass for "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me"-era Cure (the letter-by-letter spelling of the song's title toward the end, similar to that in the chorus of the Cure's "Fire In Cairo", leads me to believe that the the ressemblance is no accident). Continuing the 80's theme, "Save Me" sounds like the Magnetic Fields covering songs on Fleetwood Mac's "Tango In the Night". Elsewhere, those who crave a noisier Xiu Xiu should be pleased with "Bishop, Ca", whose Kraftwerkian intro ("Franz Schubert" or more accurately, Rising High label ambient as immortalized on the early 90's "Chill Out Or Die" comps, or even better, Depeche Mode's "Waiting For the Night") does nothing to foreshadow the nightmare that accompanies its friendly "walla walla hey" chorus.

I have a CD by composer Martin Janicek, and on one of the pieces he plays a bent piece of thin plank wood held taut in its position by strings, creating echoey drones from its complicated vibrations. The final track on "The Air Force" is called "Wig Master" and to me it sounds a lot like that Martin Janicek piece. By this point (the entire record is a wonderously brief 34 minutes), I already have a million things to think about and that's before I get hit with the line "I'm gonna spank your ass so hard you're gonna hate the Wig Master, but I'll put two pillows on your dining room chair." Excuse me?

Two Memorials

Hundreds of notable personalities are buried in Paris' Cimetièire Père Lachaise, but it's only at Jim Morrison's grave that you'll find a security guard at his post seven days a week. As you surely know, Jim Morrison was a talentless junkie who also happened to be the lead singer of the Doors. Stories of his boorish behaviour abound, and his amateurish 8th grade Oedipal ramblings speak for themselves in terms of defining his uselessness as a writer. Ray Manzarek has made a career out of sanctifying Morrison as a visionary hero, eerily similar to the style that Tony Wilson would adopt vis a vis Ian Curtis (a Jim Morrison ripoff according to some) about a decade after Morrison's death. I personally enjoy the (apocryphal?) story about Jimbo dangling (or walking) off/on a balcony in an overwrough display of affection (twisted guilt trip?) for Pamela Courson (or Nico). The apologists say that it was an act of fiery passion by a man consumed by his romantic devotion to another human being. The sensible folk note instead that dangling (or walking) off/on a balcony is a fucking stupid thing to do, and only a total moron would do it under any circumstances. Speaking of drug abusers and sex addicts who died in Paris, it took me about twenty minutes to find Amedeo Modigliani's gravesite, which was about four rows off the walking path (most famous people are situated directly next to or within easy viewing distance from the path) and displayed a very unremarkable headstone. Until last week, not a single stone rested on his grave. They made a biopic about Modigliani's life too, so where is the love?

Continuing on the theme of people who drank themselves to death and expired in Paris, I figured I couldn't visit this city without making my own pilgrimage to Serge Gainsbourg's longtime residence at 5 Rue de Verneuil. Graffiti covers virtually the entire outside wall, and anguished poems and greetings to the deceased are written everywhere. It's a fairly quiet street, and in the few minutes I spent there, the people did walk by hardly seemed to notice the building at all -- surely it blends in with their perceived surroundings because they've seen it a million times before. I quietly took a few pictures and walked on.

Naturally, everybody should do what pleases them, but forgive me for ridiculing those who pull a tortured artist shtick and visit a gravesite or memorial to wrench immediate inspiration from it. It's about paying one's respects, not about camping out and relishing the taste of one's own angst.

Hopefully I can accompany this post with some pictures very soon

Bardo Pond, Ghostlights @ Lee's Palace

Bardo Pond's soundcheck/warmup becomes a spectacle in and of itself, building from gadget-checking tics and plucks into a cauldron of improvised noise with every band member's instrument screaming in unison. A lot like the opening band, Ghostlights, as a matter of fact. I can't help feeling a bit like a sucker for going out of my way to purchase or hear so many BP side projects and jam sessions when it's plain to see that they can knock that shit out in their sleep without the slightest thought.

And that pattern tends to repeat itself ... "Destroying Angel" begins a string of songs based around a similar tempo and style -- relaxed start, slow build into the cauldron of etc., and even though I fall for their tricks every single time, after an hour I'm still holding out for something much slower (e.g. "Favourite Uncle") or much faster and aggressive (e.g. "Again"). Those moments never come, for the band is in the mood to pour jam on everything tonight, even digging "Abscence" out of the archives to slot it into this looser style. "Every Man" is one of their live staples, but I have always felt it was the weakest track on "On the Ellipse", so thankfully I'm more than happy to hear them encore with "Aldrin" (whose coda finally fulfills my yen for both an aggressive track and a suitably mammoth closer). But didn't you know that Bardo Pond will play all night if asked? Michael Gibbons asks for a few minutes break, and the thirty or so diehards who stick around to take him up on his offer are rewarded with an explosive run through "Tommy Gun Angel".

All this and two-plus hours in the company of Isobel Sollenberger, who is still the hottest woman in rock.

Buzzcocks @ Phoenix Concert Theatre

Seeing a perfect show is a very rare thing, so rare that I'd have to think long and hard to remember the last one I saw. No, this Buzzcocks gig isn't the best show I've ever seen (not even close to it) but it was about as close to perfect as a concert can be (be careful not to confuse perfection with excellence).

There wasn't a single song I wanted to hear that they didn't play, sure, that's not so difficult to pull off if my Buzzcocks familiarity doesn't extend much beyond "Singles Going Steady", but nearly every band fails the selfish, nonsensical Set List Test. I didn't see a single person in the packed building who made a fool out of themselves by dancing in a style that gave away their age. Again, an easy test to pass in principle, but few bands and their fans can manage it. Pete Shelley still sounds great. I gave some quality thought to the notion of the Buzzcocks making the world safe for Green Day. They played for only 45 minutes, thankfully acknowledging the fact that any bands whose songs last only two minutes can't possibly play for much longer than that. Every song was efficient and fun. They made me want to run home and listen to the Ramones, in particular, to reconfirm that "I Don't Wanna Walk Around With You" is still the all-time best song about love and relationships (it still is).

Pressure Kill Common Style, Twin Fangs @ Reverb

Rolling the dice on a NXNE gig featuring bands I've never heard of (save for a short recommendation in a newspaper) makes for some risky business -- if one of those bands turns out to be great, it's almost a bonus. Two great bands is a windfall.

For their main course, Pressure Kill Common Style channel "Isn't Anything"-era MBV, unleashing a furiously precise slate of noisy guitar rock. On the side, seemingly to satisfy the band member's collective curiousities, they do a thorough job of humiliating oft-hyped electronic pop bands like Styrofoam and Junior Boys by stealing their act and improving on it by leaps and bounds. How? Using the all-purpose musical topping -- hazy synth washes -- and drowning their dance beats with them. M83 should take note: this is the proper volume for synths in your live gigs. Then they dabble in Franz Ferdinand's style of 80's-style funk, just because they can, I guess. Brilliant stuff from beginning to end.

I don't usually like drums/guitar bands, but Twin Fangs are a very, very good one. It finally dawns on me just how low the White Stripes have set the bar. The drums are actually the lead instrument in this sort of band. Sloppy stickhandlers like Meg White put disproportional focus on the guitar -- the overall effect is that it appears as though an instrument is missing. This isn't the case with busy, dextrous, metronomic drummers. Screaming guitar solos and continual requests to increase the levels on the bass strings give the effect that there are four or five players on stage, and after a whirlwind thirty minutes, they stop, well before they've worn out their welcome. Always leave them wanting more, there's no fault in that.

Scion, "Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks"

If we assume that all mixed albums are required to represent what is hot at a particular time (a contentious assumption to be sure, but I think there's something to it), then it should be very rare for a mix to keep getting better with age. In this case, the increase in minimal techno's popularity over the past few years might be responsible for this album feeling more timeless than it does right now (i.e. the style wasn't hot at *its* particular time, but it is hot at *this* particular time). Because in 2006, "Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks" is sounding like the greatest mixed CD ever.

You wanna talk about timeless? This mix was released nearly a decade after the original recordings and instantly became the antidote for people who were bored shitless of Basic Channel and couldn't be bothered to sit through all 12 minutes of "Octagon" one more time. Its style fits midway between a couple of extremes. The first are the microassembled mixes by the likes of Ritchie Hawtin and Algorithm, who used familar source material to create something that sounds extremely unfamiliar. The second are the tastemaker comps, exemplified by Michael Mayer whose approach to mixing entails playing individual records from start to finish, with clean but straightforward mixing between tracks. Scion's mix feels like a greatest hits comp (everything on it sounds instantly familiarity) but in fact it takes old tracks and twists bunches of them together into new shapes. Hawtin's work contains hundreds of cleverly hidden details, but the simplicity of the Scion mix is awe-inspiring -- technically speaking, you could perform most of this by yourself using three decks and a mixer. Their new creations are continuously morphing, but the overall piece isn't cluttered (or busy) in the least. There's always just the right amount of "something" going on.

American Idol Gala Extravaganza!

Ten seconds into his audition, I knew I wanted to see Taylor Hicks in the top twenty four, and figured he was just enough of a unique fringe talent to end up there after the Hollywood cuts. Even as recently as the top six, I didn't expect him to win once "goofy older brother" syndrome caught up with him and the voting public realized that he was a bit too eccentric. But in the end he pulled it out easily (note the lack of on-air talk about the voting results -- when the vote is close, AI always plays it up) as Katharine was back to wearing the "I know I'm fucked" expression all over her face as the results were read. Unlike the week when Chris was eliminated (the five seconds that followed that announcement, complete with Kat and Chris' priceless expressions, will stand out as the most oft-remembered moment of the season) she was entirely at peace with her all-but-certain fate this time around. And why not? Every actor on TV would have killed for the audience that had tuned in to watch her sing, making the finale had earned her a debut single no matter what the result, she'd starved herself for months to slim down to her season-ending scrumptious self and become probably the most gorgeous person on TV in the process.

Wednesday's finale drew 36 million viewers in the US, with a peak of around 45 million. In Canada, those numbers were 5.2 million and 8 million, respectively. That means roughly 1-in-6 Canadians watched the show compared to 1-in-8 Americans. Does the Idols summer tour come to Canada? Er, maybe it should?

Best of all, they ditched the usual format for the finale (which included an hour of waiting around backstage for the real show to start) and made it a full-fledged musical gala. The quality of the performances and guest artists rivaled the Grammys or the MTV Music Awards, and everyone was having so much fun onstage that it was easy to forget that we were supposed to be nervously waiting to find out who the winner was. Ignoring the silly but entertaining mock award segments and other miscellaneous taped/review bits*, here's a look at the performances:

*OK, I have to mention the Puck & Pickler segments, which were adorable and if FOX TV executives have any brains then they're hurriedly planning a role-reversed version of "The Simple Life" for the fall season.

1. Carrie Underwood returns again this season to capitalize on her country music awards momentum lead Taylor and Kat through Barry Manilow's "I Made It Through the Rain" (one apropos track among a spate of them during the final week) with the rest of the top twelve backing them up. Everyone is wearing white outfits and by the end of it I could swear that I'm watching, I don't know, "West Side Story".

2. Paris Bennett and Al Jarreau sing "We're In This Love Together", and Paris' huge voice utterly dominates Jarreau's in his very own song. As great as this was, by the time the night is over I'll have forgotten about this completely, which is a puzzling aspect of Paris' consistently fine performances, at least for me.

3. Chris gets to fulfill his dream by singing "Your Mystery" with Live, keeping in line with his usual habit of performing songs that nobody cares about when he could have sung "Lightning Crashes" instead. He easily outsings Ed Kowalcyk, which convinces me that as a "pure rocker", he probably does surpass Bo Bice. Bo is a versatile talent who can sing rock, blues, and soul in a multitude of styles. Chris can only sing "pure" mid-90's angst rock. Yes, he still sucks.

4. Has it really been fourteen years since "Bat Out of Hell II"? Time for Part III already? Realizing this has to be one of my top five all-time "damn, I'm getting old" moments. This oddly atonal arrangement of "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" is validated by Meat's typically manic intensity and Kat's spectacularly cleavage-enhanced dress, the latter of which will be making pleasant appearances in my dreams for the next few years. In all seriousness, if all else fails (and even if it doesn't!) then she needs to tour with Meatloaf as the hoochie sidekick who duets with him on songs like "Paradise By the Dashboard Light".

5. During the guys' group medley, Taylor busts out his harmonica for the first time since the final Hollywood cuts. Last year's Idols were talented individually but never seemed to gel when singing together. This year's group doesn't have that problem. Bucky sounds about a million times better than he did at the start of the season.

6. Elliott and Mary J. Blige try to recreate her "One" moment with Bono from the Grammys. Elliott doesn't have a "big" voice, so once MJB gets going he smartly doesn't try to compete with her. In fact, he was mostly a spectator once she stepped on stage, standing off to the side and looking thrilled to be sharing a stage with MJB.

7. If Pickler could sing like Carrie, she'd have been in the finale with Taylor. If Carrie had Pickler's personality she'd be the greatest Idol winner ever. Although if Kat was half the singer she wants to be (= Mariah Carey) then she'd wipe the floor with them both. Hey, it's only been three paragraphs since I've mentioned how hot Kat is.

8. The evening's biggest trainwreck is Taylor and Toni Braxton struggling through "In the Ghetto". It wasn't Taylor's fault though -- Braxton sounds horrible, possibly because the song is in the wrong key for her. And call me a prude if you must, but rubbing oneself against Taylor's leg when singing a song about poverty feels a tiny bit inappropriate.

9. The female Idols parade through about 194 songs with the word "woman" in the title. OK, I get it, they're all women. Say it loud, they're women and they're proud. Nobody remembers Melissa McGhee anymore. I feel bad for her when she sings and nobody cheers for her. The whole medley felt like a diva display for Kat, unlike the guys medley where Taylor just blended in.

10. Michael Sandecki, AKA Clay Aiken's #1 fan from the auditions, is invited onstage to sing and can you see the Clay Aiken surprise appearance coming from ten miles away? Apparently Sandecki didn't (in post-show interviews, Seacrest states that he had to hold him to keep him from falling down, contrary to my suspicion that the entire segment was elaborately staged). I like Clay's new look, with his hair grown out and dyed brown, so sue me. At this time, let us recall that Simon Cowell, whose image of a pop star has been enforced by his work with Il Divo and Westlife, passed on both Clay and Taylor. He started by feeding them his "it's not just about the voice" criticism (i.e. "you're too ugly to be a star"), and berated their singing styles the whole season. With Clay it was "I feel like I should be hearing you on Broadway, not on the radio" and with Taylor he regularly interprets anything with soul as a drunk wedding performance (fine, Taylor's dancing doesn't help).

11. The entire top twelve performs a masterful ten-minute medley of Burt Bacharach songs, accompanied by Burt himself on piano. Gorgeous. Timeless. Who thought it would be a good idea to have Chris sing lines from "Arthur's Theme"? Chris sounds like shit when he's forced to do anything other than mid-90's angst rock : Exhibit ZZ. Dionne Warwick's walk-on is predictable but necessary, as is the closing "That's What Friends Are For" with the entire troupe. I've always hated this song, but in pro wrestling, this would be called "great booking".

12. The Brokenote Cowboys are surprisingly decent and not at all embarrassing. There's magic in the air tonight, folks.

13. Shocking doesn't begin to describe the appearance by Prince. He's a notoriously reclusive character who avoids awards shows like Ruben Studdard avoids exercise ... and he turns up on American Idol? Remember how big a deal it was when he performed on the Grammys with Beyonce in 2004? For whatever reason (Prince's ego?) this is a solo gig, which makes me wonder why he's here other than for self-promotion on one of the most watched shows of the TV season. Yes, Taylor and Katharine would both show him up height-wise, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have done a duet of "Kiss" with Paris.

14. Taylor's voice is completely unsuited for something as bland as "I've Had the Time of My Life". I'm overcome with new admiration for Bill Medley for somehow making this song work. It's a perfect song for Kat though.

15. The results are in, David Hasselhoff is crying (!!?!?!?!?!!!!), and I've now decided that Taylor's single, "Do I Make You Proud" is kinda awesome after all ...