March 2, 2010 Music

Minus the Music

“It’s not about the hair, it’s not about the shoes, it’s about the music. The best way to experience the music is and has always been to listen to it, to watch the performance. We sometimes forget that as fans, we get sidetracked by the other crap.

I wanted to expose people to the depth of sound hiding in the cities they live in. After talking to friends, I realized that many of the bands I consider great and even popular are completely unheard of to most people. I’m not bitter towards mainstream music, but the Canadian music scene has so much to offer — minus the shoes and the hair.”

Straight from the mouth of the man himself. Check out Jeff’s project at Minus the Music to be enlightened, to be exposed, to hear the many flavors of indie music flowing out of Canada’s great cities. No decorative distractions, just the music.

March 1, 2010 Books

February Catalog

School and a new job have been devouring my free time at an exasperating rate. I always have to read something, but my list this month is a lot shorter.

I found Carson McCullers’s first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, slightly battered and buried in the bargain bin. It was beautiful and sad. I’ve never read anything by McCuller’s before, but her praises are well deserved.

I am also halfway through a very different novel I got from my Dad, The Aquitane Progression by Robert Ludlum. He likes to read these espionage-action novels, and I thought I’d give it a try. The military jargon is a bit of a tangle, but the descriptions of Europe and the spy drama keep it interesting.