Fri 23 Mar – Saul Williams, Cadence Weapon, Spoek Mathambo, The Battle of Santiago

Given the amount of bitching I've done about how late shows get started in Toronto, you'd think that (finally) moving into the city would mean that I'd be out every single night. Instead, living a 45-minute walk in the opposite direction from where those shows happen means that, by the time I get home from work most nights, I can't be bothered slogging back downtown to some shitty pub for 10:00. 40, you son of a bitch, I can feel you getting closer with each passing…

Fri 24 Jun – Aretha Franklin

Leave it to a bank to kick off a music festival with a contemptuous dick in the ass of 90% of the people in the audience. On the off chance that the organizers weren't being condescending fuckers, though, some advice for the future: if you want to put on a show for a couple of hundred people in a tent, do that, and do it anywhere you damn well please; if, on the other hand, you'd rather stack opening night with a show that will draw 10,000+ people, then perhaps you should do it…

Sat 18 Jun – NXNE Showcase: Devo

Devo has always been one of those bands that never quite grabbed me like I thought they should have, which is weird. They're my first memory of music that wasn't just something I heard on the radio in the car with my parents — I think I've still got a tape of some CIUT top-whatever countdown show from the fifth grade somewhere — and there were a couple of intriguing tapes in the glove box of an ex's car, but they never quite clicked for me. Their Nine Inch Nails cover got me…

Fri 10 Jun – Tonalism

It's been ages since I've been to an all-night/bazillions-of-musicians event of any sort, and I hang responsibility entirely on my recent tendency to fall asleep at 9:00 PM. Getting older sucks, and I encourage you to avoid it if you can.

Thankfully, the weather was fairly pleasant when I got off work for the afternoon, so a quick walk around the city stuffed my bag full of CDs that I'd been meaning to hear for a while, stuffed my guts full of pretty-good burrito, and found me outside the Music Gallery at about the same…

Sat 7 May – Baby Dee, Wyrd Visions

This was one of those nights where somebody in Promoterland had clearly dropped the ball. The show wasn't listed on the Music Gallery's site until a few days beforehand, and whoever it was that was supposed to be handling the ticket sales didn't have a blessed thing on theirs. Two dozen people still managed to show up, but that's criminal for a Saturday night.

So, after giving any hypothetical stragglers an extra ten or fifteen minutes to stumble in, Wyrd Visions started his woozy set of looped guitar and vocals that reminded…

There's been a disproportionate number of music documentaries grabbing my attention lately, and this is probably as good a place as any to tell y'all why you should check them out.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF PHIL SPECTOR: I will always be a sucker for Phil Spector's arrangements. I adore several of the better girl groups from the '60s, and even a couple of their more obvious follow-ups in the present day (Kinoko Hotel, The Milkees, etc.). I even think that Tina Turner and Spector together are about as close as it's possible for music…

Sat 19 Feb – Rasputina, Brown Bird

Last night was like a masterclass in how not to start an evening. Dinner was unremarkable and slightly too big, and a horrible woman — think Sara Gilbert, crossed with a beluga whale, talking out of her blowhole — brayed at her boyfriend about his taste in movies the entire time. Walking back down the street, the strummy-folky-whatever-with-a-beard Brown Bird had been replaced as openers by the homegrown buzzkill of Ariel (still not the band described here, still no big loss). They were cheesy when they opened for the Legendary Pink Dots a…

Sun 23 Jan – Hélène Grimaud

You kind of forget, going to shows in grubby pubs with horrifying bathroom stalls, that there are concert halls out there with custom-designed acoustic baffles, lighting that isn't always blue and red, and maybe even chi-chi washbasins with soap dispensers that get refilled once in a while. Get your sister to buy you a ticket for Christmas and you, too, can spend an afternoon in one. (Thanks, sis!)

That's what I did yesterday, trekking downtown to see the world's most expensive piano recital. It didn't start out all that auspiciously — the usual thank-the-sponsors…

Fri 31 Dec – Elliott Brood, CATL, Bradley Boy

People kind of suck. In large numbers, tanked, convinced that it's time to celebrate something or other, they're fucking intolerable. You'd think that I'd remember the proud tradition of singing all the way home on the GO train (through repeated calls to shut the hell up from other riders), but no… both it and the fact that the 12:45 train out of the city had been delayed by 45 minutes to allow the most drunken asshats possible on board had slipped my mind. If anybody knows how to wipe those memories…

I know, I know… "showcase" is another one of those watchwords, stinking of bands who want to "make it" and bored A&R types who show up for the free drinks. When a co-worker says "Hey, my band is playing a showcase this Friday… can you come out to support us?", though, all I can think of is how awesome it was to have a co-worker or a handful of students show up for my concerts once upon a time, and at that point, my Friday night is pretty much written for me.

For the most part, the names don't matter.…