I'm afraid Aug 18 won't work for me - that happens to be my anniversary, and Caroline takes that sort of thing rather seriously! I'm going to be in Toronto on the weekend of Aug 12, but that weekend is a complete mess, with a softball tournament, furniture shopping for my daughter and my visiting parents in tow, so I wouldn't be able to participate in an evening of music regardless. I'll also be back in the Big Smoke sometime in late August or early September to drop Jenn off for another year of school - if music night slips until then, I could potentially join you. But I think you should go ahead with the 18th and drink a toast to my 21st anniversary while you're enjoying some suitably uptempo and celebratory tune.

I've given some thought to the question of musical predecessors, and I've drawn a blank. I can think of lots of artists whose original bands were better than their solo careers or subsequent bands, but I can't think of any that I discovered after the fact. And I also flipped through my album covers (although I've fully digitized my collection, I've taken great pains to ensure that every song is tagged with the correct album art), and I was surprised to find that it was difficult to identify many real favorites. I have lots of fond memories of gazing at album covers while listening to music, but when it comes right down to it, not that many of them really strike me as interesting artistically. Here are the few that I came up with: