I'll bring along my ipod, as well as a few discs. I should have at least one rocking track for you (already have it picked out).

Agree that it's been a little quiet here of late, which I attribute to a combination of the following: brian's vacay, the lack of interest in submitting a valentine's playlist of free mp3s (which i also lost interest in so please don't take this as a reprimand), stuart's recent fixation with music he already owns, derek's recent fixation with child-rearing, the fact that marc has already contributed his quarterly post, my travel, the cold weather, global warming, the incompetence of the bush administration, and the general despair associated writing anything about music in a world where the grammy awards exist.

I was tempted to write another diatribe against music awards shows, after reading that a novelty rap song wherein the female vocalist repeatedly boasts about the size of her tits was crowned 'best pop performance' at the aforementioned annual celebration of the mediocre, the irrelevant, and the downright fecal, but I think the complete list of winners speaks for itself.

I was also going to talk about how pitiful cd stores are these days. I went to HMV (Bloor/Yonge), Atelier, and Songbook recently to look for the Prokofiev disc and was sorely disappointed by the lack of selection and general disinterest of most of the staff. Will we have to buy all our music electronically in a few years? Is this a bad thing? I bought Sarah a copy of the latest Shins disc this week and she asked me why I didn't just buy it online. It's not available at emusic so I couldn't have got it for a steal but still could have saved $6 (tax in) by downloading the whole album from itunes for $9.99. I didn't really have an answer. Or rather, my answer should have been, "I should have bought it online".

All this brings me to an article in today's National Post, which suggests directions for the music industry that we've all discussed in the past.

My thoughts:
1) It's well past time for the record industry to join the 21st century and acknowledge that most people who actually give a shit about music don't really give a shit about most of the artists that they promote
2) Awards shows like the grammys and junos will continue their slide into irrelevance as declining sales can't even mask the conceit that they are bestowing honour based on merit
3) I will continue to reserve my right to complain about the inherent flaws of any future music distribution system

Also, XM radio rules. The rental car I had last week in WA had an XM radio receiver and I was treated to "All Cats Are Gray" by the Cure, "Nowhere Girl" by B-Movie, and "Let Me Go" by Heaven 17, all 80s gems that are largely forgotten and seldom played. Derek, do you have any of these tracks on vinyl (the cure song is on 'Faith' but the others are probably just singles)? If so, can you play them on Friday?