Saturday, June 19th, 2004

Melody Freaks

The new Velvet Crush album has very quietly been released. Parasol has copies of Stereo Blues on sale for $12 to everyone in the world except for folks in Japan – apparently the Crush still has a record deal there, so they’ll have to wait till the label decides to release it proper. Though the band is still comprised mainly of Ric Menck and Paul Chastain, the new record also features a slew of guest performers. Hopefully this will be a bit livelier affair than 2002’s Soft Sounds, which was quite pretty but too languid overall. They hope to tour in support either in late Autumn or early Winter, possibly with Matthew Sweet along for the ride on guitar. Folks, it doesn’t get more pop than that.

Everyone who fell in love with The Wrens’ The Meadowlands and has been trying to hunt down the band’s earlier material without paying extortionist eBay prices gets a little bit of good news with the announcement that their Abbott 1135 EP from 1999 will be getting a re-release this October expanded with extra tracks to album length. That’s great, but what about their first two records, Secaucus and Silver? Well the rights to those records are the property of their old label, abhorrent Creed-peddlers Wind-Up Records, who refuse to revert the rights back to the band. Why? Cause they’re fuckers. So if you want to see justice done, I suggest writing a letter to the Wind-Up powers-that-be to cajole and persuade the to see the light and do the right thing. To get you started, I’d suggest opening with something like, “Dear Asswipes; Give the Wrens back their music or I will come down there and cut you. I swear I will. I’m a crazy man. Sincerely, blah blah blah”.

The new Interpol album has been titled Antics and will be out out on September 28. Rejected potential titles included Shenanigans, Hijniks and Wacky Escapades. Tracklisting at Matador Records.

The Toronto Star profiles Wilco and becomes the first article in ages to not mention Jeff Tweedy going into rehab. Instead, Vit Wagner draws heavily on Greg Kot’s Learning How To Die in considering the argument that Wilco are America’s Radiohead. Not available online is a sidebar offering an album-by-album comparison of the two bands’ careers.

Some shows coming to the Horseshoe – country chanteuse Carolyn Mark holds a CD release party for The Pros And Cons Of Collaboration on August 27 and Austin’s instrumental anarchists Explosions In The Sky will blow the shit out of the club on October 11. With loudness.

Now Michael Moore things that Fahrenheit 911 can save Canada’s elections as well as the US’. Well, he certainly has a high opinion of himself and he seems to not be aware of the fact (sad or not) that no one who’s planning on voting for the right in either of our countries is going to see his film, so his impact on the outcomes will be, uh, nothing. Further on the topic of Mr Moore, Roger Ebert succinctly articulates my beefs with the man, his tactics and how he may be doing more harm than good. From Heart Murmur.

Not much going on this weekend, which suits me just fine. I’ve been stuck in ‘go’ mode for a couple of weeks now which is really wearing me out. I need some decent ‘sit around and do nothing’ time to get it all together again.

np – The Olivia Tremor Control / Music From The Unrealized Film Script “Dusk At Cubist Castle”

By : Frank Yang at 10:09 am
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. Five Seventeen says:

    Funny you should bring up voting Frank. I read this interesting article http://…/ which means that every single vote ACTUALLY COUNTS (for something at least).

    "Every registered party that gets at least 2 per cent of the popular vote will earn annual stipends calculated by multiplying $1.75 times the number of votes received. (Parties that get at least 5 per cent of the vote in the ridings where they run candidates also qualify.)"

    My $1.75 will be going to the NDP this year since they stand a chance of winning in my riding.

  2. Frank says:

    I’m also voting NDP – today, actually. Hooray for advance polls. But this whole pull to the right across the electorate had me reconsidering, particularly since my riding is sort of up for grabs between the NDP and Liberals. In the end, though, I don’t think it’d be right to send Jack to Parliment without the missus.

  3. MLM says:

    The electorate hasn’t really swung to the right; Paul Martin, the Prime Minister, is running a campaign that has swung quite to the left of the Paul Martin people knew as Minister of Finance. Combine his platform, worthy of the NDP, with his terrible campaign to date and you shouldn’t be surprised to see the Conservative surge.

    PS: Thanks for all the Wilco coverage.

  4. duffy says:

    Hey, there’s still a lot of people in USA who are still undecided about who to vote for in November (as amazing as it sounds), so it may be possible for the Moore film to sway votes.

  5. Tim says:

    Don’t hate on Moore. Check the Sunday NYT article in the Arts and Leisure section if you’re worried about Moore’s facts.

  6. Frank says:

    Here’s the article Tim is referring to:

    http://…/

    Glad to see he’s covered his ass this time. If he’d done so for Bowling For Columbine, maybe he’d have more credibility with me. Of course, if he’d had everything in Columbine fact-checked, he wouldn’t have had a very long movie.

    As I’ve said before, I have no love for Moore’s targets – I just can’t get behind lies and propoganda even if the cause is just.