I went to HMV hoping to pick up the new Solid Steel disc only to have my heart broken. How dare they wait until February 11th to release it here?

I had a meeting with Booksoft tonight. It was very productive.

Though sleep may be for the weak, even Gods must humble themselves every so often and catch a wink or two.

I stick to my original conclusion, “The Invisible Band” (edited) impacts me more.

Music is so subjective.

East Side Mario’s
Foosball
Pho Thai Viet restaurant
Drinking with the friends
Revolution
Walking in the snow, drunk
Sleeping in
Mel’s breakfast
Super Bowl
Too much class
Conversation with Marcy
Find out Microsoft lost my resume, resent
Work

Oh boy, I lead such an exciting life. I’m going home this weekend, but I’ve made a promise to myself to catch Jason Palma’s Movement event sometime this term. It’s an absolute must!

On Jan. 23 , 1898, Sergei Eisenstein , the Russian film director and innovator , was born. Following his death on Feb. 11 , 1948, his obituary appeared in The Times.

On January 23, 1864, Harper’s Weekly featured a cartoon about the Civil War.

1789 Georgetown University was established in present-day Washington, D.C.

1845 Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

1849 English-born Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive medical degree, from the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.

1920 The Dutch government refused demands from the victorious Allies to hand over the ex-kaiser of Germany.

1932 New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

1937 Seventeen people went on trial in Moscow during Josef Stalin’s ‘’Great Purge.’’

1950 The Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

1964 The 24th amendment to the Constitution, eliminating the poll tax in federal elections, was ratified.

1968 North Korea seized the U.S. Navy ship Pueblo, charging it had intruded into the communist nation’s territorial waters on a spying mission.

1977 The TV mini-series ‘’Roots,’’ based on the Alex Haley novel, began airing on ABC.

1985 Debate in Britain’s House of Lords was carried live on television for the first time.

1989 Surrealist artist Salvador Dali died in his native Spain at age 84.

1991 Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Colin Powell said allied forces had achieved air superiority in the Gulf War and would focus air fire on Iraqi ground forces around Kuwait.

1997 A judge in Fairfax, Va., sentenced Mir Aimal Kasi to death for an assault rifle attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 that killed two men and wounded three other people.

1998 Fighting scandal allegations involving Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton assured his Cabinet that he was innocent.

Current birthdays
79 Frank Lautenberg – U.S. senator, D-NJ
75 Jeanne Moreau – Actress
70 Chita Rivera – Actress
69 Lou Antonio – Actor-director
60 Gil Gerard – Actor
59 Rutger Hauer – Actor
59 Jerry Lawson – R&B singer (The Persuasions)
56 Thomas R. Carper – U.S. senator, D-Del.
55 Anita Pointer – Singer (The Pointer Sisters)
53 Richard Dean Anderson – Actor
53 Bill Cunningham – Rock musician (The Box Tops)
53 Danny Federici – Rock musician (The E Street Band)
53 Patrick Simmons – Rock musician (The Doobie Brothers)
50 Robin Zander – Rock singer (Cheap Trick)
45 Anita Baker – Singer
44 Earl Falconer – Reggae musician (UB40)
40 Gail O’Grady – Actress (‘’American Dream’‘)
39 Mariska Hargitay – Actress (‘’Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’‘)
32 Marc Nelson – R&B singer
29 Tiffani Thiessen – Actress (‘’Beverly Hills, 90210’‘)
24 Matt Clements – King

History birthdays
Sergei Eisenstein – Russian film director
John Hancock – American Revolutionary statesman
Stendhal – French writer
Camilla Collett – Norwegian novelist/feminist
Edouard Manet – French Impressionist painter
David Hilbert – German mathematician
Sergius – Russian Patriarch of Moscow
Herbert D. Croly – American Founder of New Republic
Ralph De Palma – American race car driver
Potter Stewart – United States Associate Supreme Court Justice
Gertrude de Belle Elion – American pharmacologist

Preamble:
I had two cheques and an American money order to deposit. I was going to use the bank machine for the cheques and go to the teller for the money order (in opposite order). I parked the car on Regina Street in downtown Waterloo and stuffed the cheques into my jacket pocket since I wouldn’t need them until after I did my business with the teller. It was cold (surprisingly) so I ran from Regina to King Street. I went into the bank, deposited my money order and then went to the bank machine.

Now, sequentially:

1. I put my card in the bank machine and entered my PIN.


2. I reached into my pocket to pull out the cheques. They were not there. Check of other pocket produced nothing.


3. Realize cheques must have fallen out during the run to the bank.


4. Exit facility, start looking at sidewalk.


5. Find one cheque lying on the ground. No sign of other cheque.


6. Retrace route to car, find nothing.


7. Realize bank card is still in machine at the bank.


8. Run.


9. Bank card not in the machine.


10. Tell receptionist situation.


11. Teller asks if “this” is my card.


12. Yes it is. Take it from her.


13. Leave bank, feeling slightly embarrassed.


14. On the way to car, find other missing cheque in the snow.


15. Shouts of joy.

So in the period of two minutes I went from being on the verge of depositing money to realizing I had lost said money to finding said money again. I was very fortunate this afternoon.

One of the previews we saw was for The Recruit, starring Al Pacino and Colin Farrell. They used “Music For Body Lockers” by Chocolate Weasel as a background for the gritty training sequence in the trailer. Chocolate Weasel is another alumnus of the Funkungfusion class. I listened to their album at the same time as Clifford Gilberto but I haven’t heard anything from them since 1998/99. They’re not even listed as an Artist on Ninjatune’s website, so maybe they split up/were dropped. They weren’t particularly prodigious in their output.

I wish it would warm up enough around here so that the frost on the inside of my car could disappear.

I’m indestructible, how
I’m indestructible
I’m indestructible, how
I’m into, I’m in two

We won’t say a thing
While you give your life away
Give your life away, not a thing
We won’t say a thing
While you give your life away

Died in an amusement park accident
I came back for you
So you wouldn’t be alone
And if I go away again
You can have my stereo

I’m indestructible, how
I’m indestructible
I’m indestructible, how
I’m into, I’m in two

We won’t say a thing
While you give your life away
Give your life away, not a thing
We won’t say a thing
While you give your

I’m indestructible

Bartender: You have a steering wheel down your pants!
Pirate: Arr, it be driving me nuts.

Yuk yuk yuk.

On a brighter note, this album is so amazing. How could I go 4 years without listening to this? It’s discoveries like this that make me love music.

4:00 The Bombshelter
5:00 Weaver’s Arms
6:00 Kick-off Sports Bar
7:00 Molly Bloom’s Irish Pub
8:00 McGinnis Front Row
9:30 McMullen’s
10:30 The Silver Spur
12:00 Philthy McNasty’s

Rob told us at the beginning that only 4 people from our graduating class had ever made from start to finish on a pub crawl. I’m not sure how much I believe this statement because there were at least 8 of us that made it last night. Having free food along the way probably helped out a great deal. Cob went to a strip club after the Spur and we really had to convince Ed to stick around (he had some excuse about needing to do reading for his tutorial/seminar this morning). We met this really interesting girl Marcy, a friend of Dave’s, at Philthy’s. She was a lot of fun to talk to. I wonder how many pint glasses the bars lost last night. I had my camera with me from Molly Bloom’s onwards, so I’ll have some pictures to show when I transfer them to my computer. I really wanted to go to class this morning (8:30), but apparently that didn’t happen. Do I want to go to 428? I guess I might as well.

• Shares of Scholastic were up 8.66% on Wall Street. In London, shares of Bloomsbury jumped 4%.


• After Amazon started preorders yesterday, Order of the Phoenix flew to the No. 1 spot. At Barnes & Noble online, the book went on sale at $17.97, even though Scholastic hasn’t priced it yet.

Do you think the book industry is excited about this? It doesn’t take an accountant to figure out what this means to their bottom line.

Hello. Sorry I haven’t written in a long time, I felt like I was saying everything I wanted to say at the shows, one on one with the crowd.

Touring is over for the time being. This will be a year of recording and experimenting, of diversions and inspiration seeking. Maybe there will be a lot of new music, maybe not.

Looking back on the past year, it’s been exhilirating, frustrating, and humbling. At times there’s been overflowing positivity and other times it’s been rough. The tour kicked ass, that’s been the shining light of the whole year, for me. It was the longest, most demanding and most rewarding tour I’ve ever been a part of, and I loved every minute of it (well, maybe not that last radio gig in San Jose!). I played to about 170,000 people this year, and it was great meeting all of you.

7 months on the road is like living in a fantasy land. All of your meals and accomodations are taken care of, you visit exciting and fascinating places, and there’s no time to contemplate failure or get depressed, because inevitably, it’s “showtime.” That’s why coming off the road is like reality smack-down. All of those little burning issues in the back of the mind come creeping slowly back, bigger and blacker than before. Suddenly there’s all the time in the world to think, and the thoughts aren’t always comforting.

There were a lot of revelations and epiphanies this year. That usually happens when I’m working hard, and I’m not mad at that, hard work is how you grow. But I definitely came to some conclusions. For example: this was the year it dawned on me that I may never reach the kind of goals I have being on a major label. I just don’t think there’s enough idealistic industry people around that want to fight convention and try things differently. Or, I should say, I can’t seem to find enough of them to fill a record company. It’s much simpler for them to just plug into existing channels and pretend to believe, at least utnil a staff economist tells them not to bother.

We’ll save the major-label-as-scum diatribe until another time. However, in a related revelation: downloading is hurting artists, too. NOBODY is selling like they used to. That means artists have to work twice as hard doing more press, more radio, clamoring for more exposure, just to get to the point they got to last time; all the while spending that much LESS time making music and being creative. Let’s all get real, it may not matter to some country and urban acts because the fan base isn’t as internet-savvy. But groups like El-P, Jurassic, Blackalicious, and myself, who have to scrap for the sales we get anyway, are getting taken out because download penetration is so high among our sales demographic. If you sell 8 million albums, and you lose out on 500,000 sales, it hurts a little bit. But when you sell 200,000 and you lose a fourth of that or more, it hurts BIG TIME. Not because I can’t afford that crystal chandelier I had my eye on; but because the labels, already suspicious of these artsy-fartsy, so-called musicians like us are going to be that much less inclined to front the money to make the next video, or to support the next tour. Like Spike Lee always used to say, “I just want to make enough money to make the next filme.” With what’s going on now, there’s a real threat in our ability to do that with our music. So if you’re downloading music, don’t kid yourself. Be aware of the role you’re playing in this ever-changing landscape of music, for better or worse.

And please, don’t buy those cheesy fucking bootlegs (Live in Austin, the Brainfreeze and Product Placement reissues, etc). The people who make them are just exploiting you and me. If you want to download them, fine, I’d rather you did that, but don’t put money in these people’s pockets, it’ll only encourage them to dredge up more inferior product. Rembmer, these aren’t fans that are making them, it’s mafia bullshit. You want to copy a CD for your friend? Fine, I do the same thing. Want to press up a few thousand and pass them off as legit? You’re a criminal. Whew, am I getting too heavy for you? Sorry, but it feels great to communicate these things directly to everyone without worrying how a jouranlist is going to misintrepret or misquote.

Where was I? Oh yea, revelations and epiphanies. Well, just to summarize, I’m very proud of having delivered a new album that was not a sequel. It feels good that it’s over, everything from here on out will be judged not only against Endtroducing, but the last album as well. It’s a liberating though. And I’m happy that I managed to put out another album’s worth of music that I know I will stand behind 10 years from now, as with the first two (Endtroducing and UNKLE). I realized that I love music more than ever before, and that I am quite happy dedicating my life to chasing the perfect song.

I’ve made some big mistakes in the last year, and learned some valuable lessons. But I guess the main thing I’ve learned is to be true to yourself and your fans. I thank all of you for visiting this site, and I apologize for not writing more content and staying on top of it to the degree that I had hoped. Look at it this way: when I’m not writing, it means I’m busy being productive doing what I love to do, making and playing music. I trust you guys enough to know that you’ll tolerate my shortcomings as long as I keep trying to make stuff nobody else is making. It’s a new year, good luck and happy trails.

I ran into Abbas today too, haven’t seen/talked to him since the summer. Plans of squash were made. By the end of the term I’ll have a whole stable of squash people to play with.

History class tonight was a lot of fun, we watched Kurosawa’s Rashomon movie. Very cool movie. The discussion afterwards was a little unfocused, but still engaging. Hopefully people will have some better comments next week.

We’re going to ditch Rogers’ cable Internet service and go with Bell HSE. Our connection is too poor to put up with considering our amount of patience. We’ll have to keep it until the DSL gets set up though, which should take about a week. I can definitely see us getting charged extra for data downloaded each month.

I got a whole bunch of great music yesterday. I’m in musical heaven now until I get bored with these albums, but that shouldn’t happen anytime soon.

Tomorrow is my favourite class day. That is to say, I have none. There is still a bunch of stuff that I want to get done tomorrow, so I’ll be busy enough. I should probably check if I have any tutorials. The dumb thing about our schedule this term is that to eliminate conflicts, the department scheduled tutorials at night. I have two on Wednesday – one from 8 – 8:50 and then another from 9 – 9:50. Do they really expect us to give up our nights as well just so some people can get into a few classes? I think not.