One great regret

I have one particular regret in life right now: Not having seen Sonic Youth live. They're not my favourite band, but that Confusion is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols disc in one of my favourite albums of all time, and I love many others.

I was even close to see them once. We went down to New York City a few years ago for the Portraits of Past reunion show. We landed in Newark, we found our hostel, left our luggage there, had dinner, went to the Cake Shop for the show. Next day, we're having breakfast (a single bagel) at the hostel, I open up the Village Voice, and Sonic Youth had played a concert at the BOTTOM OF AN EMPTY SWIMMING POOL in Brooklyn the night before. I was devastated. We also missed Public Enemy playing a free concert in a park that day, which kinda killed F, because I hadn't read the Voice far enough that morning (in part for being upset at missing Sonic Youth, although given a choice, I still would have gone to see PoP because this was one of only two reunion shows...)

Now that Moore and Gordon have split, there might still be some SY show in the future, but It Won't Be The Same. I just listened to Chelsea Light Moving, Moore's new project, but it's not as good, even though it's undeniably Moore's band. I'll have to listen to his solo music, and hope he plays somewhere here soon.

Don't ever wait to see your favourite acts live. I have learned that lesson too many times already, and I keep learning it over and over.

Next up on my Can't Miss list: Neko Case, The New Pornographers. Already that TNP mostly don't tour with Neko anymore... :/

Ska'll stars

Dear DreamJournal,

Who are your favourite women in ska (and reggae, I guess?)

I adore Amy Winehouse's ska tracks* and The Slits (not technically ska, but seriously, listen to them??) as my recent discoveries. On the general ska front, I love the Specials as much as I love Against All Authority, so I go for all waves. An old female-fronted mainstay of mine is The Cartel from Montréal, but no one knows about them and there's almost no online documentation about them...

*: I'm convinced that if she had kept singing ska, she wouldn't have killed herself. She sounds so happy!!

CanCon & Zine eCon-omics

So, the US Postal Service has increased cross-border postal rates even more than Canada Post has in recent years. The large flat rate envelope, a mainstay of Americans sending zines my way, has gone from $13 to 20$ in one year. Meanwhile fucking Amazon has a sweat deal with Canada Post, which means that they probably pay less than anyone else for premium service. The delivery times on Amazon items is frighteningly fast... The Canada dollar is dropping, making American zines more expensive.

Anywé, this means that I will be selling a lot more Canadian zines to Canadians in the near future. I have nothing against Canadian zines (!), but there's just such a smaller scene here, it's easier to find American zinesters with a certain following that have been going at it for a long time and that Know What They're Doing. This is going to force me to dig out and promote a lot more Canadian content. The Toronto Public Library bugs me once a year to sell them Canadian content, and I never return their calls because I don't have anything they don't have already. Maybe I'll soon return their calls!

Thank you USPS and Canada Post for sucking big time, you're making me do what I should have been doing a lot more of in the first place. :P