Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Deck chairs and viruses

I heard an interesting rumor yesterday at the epi society year-end christmas shindig. This is just a rumor remember. But the jist of it was that there was some confusion over the huge rate of transmission of SARS inside hospitals--and yet almost nothing outside of them. One possible answer was that SARS *did* sweep through the Toronto population and that hundreds of people did get sick from it, only just not sick enough for them to difffereniate it from the normal type colds and flu that go around. It was said that the rate of "colds" among paramedics at that time was extraordinarily high. As I said, rumor and idle speculation, but interesting.

Anyways, Lindsay wrote recently that she feels like she doesn't know what the "kids" are listening to these days. Exactly the same feeling I had when I was in South Africa and which started my decline into music geekdom when I got home. The Broken Social Scene/Metric concert last week was technically all-ages and at one point the underage people were encouraged to clap or something. It turned out that in that packed house of ~1000 people there were maybe half-a-dozen underagers willing to identify themselves. Now I know that whatever the "kids" are listening to, it's not what I'm listening to.

Oh, and the concert itself was good. Maybe not as transcendant as I would have hoped, but good. Leslie Feint wasn't there and she was really missed. Emily Haines and Amy Millan filled in duties and it was unfortunately clear that Emily possessed the much stronger voice of the two. Much of the drony stuff got to me after a while and their newer stuff was clearly superior to their old. Anthems for a Seventeen year old girl was the only piece that came close to that feeling that I was looking for. The encore was neat as they were joined by Hayden, Jay from Sloan, and Gentleman Reg from the Hidden Camera. The song that Reg sang was probably the highlight of the night.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

And the snake finally eats its tail

One of the interesting things about the new Taddle Creek mag is that it closes a little circle of sorts including works from one-blog removed Jay Pinkerton and one-room removed Rachelle.

An interesting thing about Rachelle's piece, which incidentally is one of the grossest, naseous-inducing things I've ever seen (and I mean that in the best way), is that it's a true story. She does apparently have a friend who does that, and that it's a real, honest-to-goodness phenomenon.

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

13 Songs

Since we now officially have another month to go this year, I'll take the opportunity to highlight 13 songs from 2003. I'm not sure if it's going to be the best 13 songs, but really the songs that have stuck around on my computer despite various major wipes of the hard drive.

In no particular order:

1. The Laws have changed- New Pornographers
2. Elevator Love Letter- Stars
3. Streets theme- The Streets
4. Combat Baby- Metric
5. Hey Ya--Outkast
6. Toxic-Britney Spears
7. Such Great Heights--Postal Service
8. My name is Hov--Jay-z
9. Big Sur-Thrills
10. Don't be Shallow --Sondre Lerche
11. July, July--The Decemberists
12. Dom Andra--Kent
13. You're only King once--Beulah

Two of these songs are cheats: July, July and Dom Andra are both from 2002 albums, but I feel that they only really appeared here in 2003, so I count them. You may also notice the appearance of little miss B.S. who makes this list because I listened to that song on repeat for about a week. I still say that it's great (although ask me again in another couple of months). The entire Beulah archive gets better every time I listen it to, and its definitely one of the shows that I regret missing.