All the umbrellas in London

I returned tonight back into the fold of the soft revolution. Yes, it was the night of the Stars concert at the Horseshoe. It was Paperbag records one year anniversary and everyone was having a good time. The Stars were unbelievably drunk, but still managed magic. They were so drunk that the look on Torquil's face when another round of Tequila was sent up on stage said " Oh my god, no." But they rocked. The crowd rocked too. People were dancing and going crazy and singing along. It was like a kitchen party for old friends. Even a few of the Stars' parents were in the crowd. They played one new song I think called Le petit monde, a song that certainly bodes well for future albums.

Celebrity spotting: Hayden was in the crowd accompanied by (I'm pretty sure despite the oddity) Peaches. I wonder what she thought.

Glad to see Andrew back in the game. I was worried there with all the Swarthy gentlemen running around his house. I found his comment about different types of music interesting. My first thought was that I thought the Hives and Radiohead, although quite different bands, weren't that different genre-wise. But how to check that out?...I turned to www.allmusic.com for answers. But the answer still wasn't totally clear. All four bands (Hives, Strokes, Radiohead, Coldplay) are listed as being Rock Genre, but of the more specific styles categories only Radiohead and Coldplay have a common bond:Britpop. The Hives and Strokes don't share a common style. Then I started playing a fun game. How many clicks to go from one band to another. For instance, A Perfect Circle to Radiohead: Three clicks (APC--Smashing Pumpkins-Mercury Rev-Radiohead). Trust me, it's fun.

I think in the day of downloading many people's music collections are varied because the range and availablity of music out there. For instance, the Kazaa group by category thing tells me that I have 48 different categories of music at the moment (albeit 4 of those are variations on "unknown" and for some reason there another four relating to Low-fi or Lo-fi rock. ) And I doubt that I'm much of an anomaly or have a particulary varied collection. It's just that there is such good music out there in all sorts of different genres. It's really great to see.

Oh Andrew, you should check out this link for a pic of Emily Haines in concert last week. She looks sort of the same in real life except ridiculously skinny. I think she's pretending to be a robot in the picture. She does it very well.