Consolation Champs

I’m barely 40 pages into Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live and I’m already feeling jealous. Not of his talent for comic writing, though he has plenty of that. I’m feeling strangely jealous that I’ve never been able to go on a solo road trip with 600 CDs like he’s doing. You see, I’ve never […]

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Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Rattlesnakes (1984)

I’d met Goldie through my friend Colin around 1983, I think. With his thinning hair and permanent scowl, he looked like a perennially pissed off old man. We shared a love for punk, even though he was somehow affiliated with the strange evangelical subculture I’d recently become part […]

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I’m not a music blogger, but in the spirit of all the year-end lists that are popping up on proper music blogs, I thought I’d make my own. My criteria were simple. The disc had to come out sometime in 2007, and I had to actually care enough to buy it. I don’t buy that […]

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I’ve been listening to Spoon’s new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga for the past few weeks, “unofficially.” Today in the mail I was delighted to receive my pre-order of the new CD from the nifty guys at Merge Records. Because I was among the first 200 geeks to order, I got a signed 7″ […]

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Rheostatics, circa 2006
I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a witness last night to my beloved Rheostatics‘ last concert. After more than twenty years together, they’ve decided to call it quits as a band, although all of the members will continue to make music.
The event was held at the fittingly historic Massey Hall, a large […]

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I know this post is long overdue, but it’s actually taken me this long to recover physically and mentally and catch up a bit at work. This year’s SXSW was even bigger than last year, and despite the fears of my friends and I, it was actually somehow a bit more manageable. This was probably […]

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Thanks to my mad mouse clicking skillz, I was able to secure four tickets to the May 15 Arcade Fire show at Toronto’s storied Massey Hall. I love seeing shows in this venue. Plush seats and early start times also let my darling wife participate. Tickets for both May 15 and 16 sold out in […]

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Every year I’ve attended SXSW, I’ve put together a compilation CD to give away to people I know, and this year is no different. The playlist is finalized, the liner notes are almost complete, and I’ve started burning the discs, but I’d like to know how many to burn. I usually give away about 30 […]

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In a bizarre case of art imitating life imitating art, or something, there is now actually a BAND called Consolation Champ! I wonder if they left off the “s” since they couldn’t get this domain name? Most of you know that the name of this site was one of a number of hypothetical band names […]

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Yes, it’s hard to believe, but I’ll be attending my seventh South by Southwest in a few weeks. Things will be a little different this year for a number of reasons.

This year, for the first time ever, I’m speaking on a panel. Not seeing anything on the schedule about the subject, I proposed a panel […]

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