The Sound of the Colour

So, made some modifications to the template on account of Tim's complaints about readability. I rarely ever see it on any monitor but my iBook, so i've been largely unawares of how bad it was to read on other peoples' monitors. So I did some tweaking and arrived at the current blueberry scheme. which I am liking.

I watched the Juno awards last night, though "watched" is misleading and "had it on the TV while I did other things in the same room" is more accurate. The fact that Billy Talent was awarded Best _________ is a sad commentary on the state of Canadian music, the running in-line advertisements were depressing ("this award is sponsored by Doritos" was honestly one of them), but most of their performances were decent, Feist caught my attention with her one-girl-and-an-electric-guitar thing, and the Tragically Hip were at their strangest. That's really why I didn't turn it off in the first place: The Hip. I really am a massive fan of this band. Well, not to the point of stalkerdom, but I certainly geek out over their music and performances. Incidentally (though really directly related) my favorite part of the (all around amazing) Wil concert I attended to Friday night was their homage to The Tragically hip and their induction into the Canadian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a rendition of "Grace Too." The Hip's Performance last night, coincidentally, was one of their signature mash-together-medlies fusing "Fully, Completely" with "Grace Too" including several segues of Gord Downy threatening his microphone. There's something about live music that has the potential to exceed anything recorded. No album can carry the same quantity-for-quality of entertainment as watching Tegan and Sara insult each other for 10 minutes in-between songs. Wil's record bears only passing resemblance to his live act. Even the Wild Strawberries' most mediocre songs are fused with an inescapable energy on stage. You don't even need to have heard of the band before to have one of the best nights of your life of watching Wide Mouth Mason. Matt Good's alterations to old material often reach levels of brilliance that ought to be captured in the studio, but may very well escape the capacity of those machines (I'm thinking of the slow version of "Hello Time Bomb" in specific).
Then there's The Hip. Existence demands that you stand up and squeal with glee, hoot, holler, and cheer as the guitar solo in the middle of "Fully, Completely" winds down to a gentle throbbing while Gord Downy dances across the stage for a few second before piercing the room with "She says I'm tragically hip..."

Or maybe it's just me.