SXSW 2011: Compilation Champs

Last year, I finally figured out how to use Garage Band to put together a sort of digital mix and I think it worked out pretty well. I think my CD-burning days are behind me, but I’m still excited to be revealing my 11th annual South by Southwest mix. You don’t need to be attending SXSW to download and enjoy this edition of Compilation Champs. But if you are, make sure you say hello if you see me. In any case, please let me know what you think about the songs. I love putting this together each year and writing a little bit about music, which I don’t do often enough.

You can stream the whole thing by hitting the play button, but it works best as a download, so go ahead and click that link (or the image). By the way, the lovely image is of my dear late friend Brad Graham, whom I met at my very first SXSW in 2001. That’s him trying on a jacket at Austin secondhand shop Uncommon Objects that very year. The amused-looking Dinah Sanders is in the background. We lost Brad in January of 2010 but it just wouldn’t be SXSW without him.


SXSW 2011 Compilation Champs


Duration: 55:11
Download .m4a file (81.4 MB)

  1. Lisztomania – Phoenix (2009, from the album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix): How 2009, the hipsters are sneering. But who am I kidding, the hipsters don’t come here. Sure, I may be late to the party with French veterans Phoenix, but how much more I’m enjoying them after waiting out the hype. This whole album just feels like a refreshing breeze and a taste of summer. Sort of like Austin in March, non?
  2. Pure – Lightning Seeds (1989, from the album Cloud Cuckoo Land): Believe it or not, I rediscovered this song in Carlos Assayas’ masterful 5.5 hour film Carlos (review). I really loved the way he used music, from the jagged postpunk of Wire and Another Sunny Day to the, well, pure pop of this song. “Just lying smiling in the dark” – ah yes, I remember.
  3. The Last Time – Gnarls Barkley (2006, from the album St. Elsewhere): Here’s a great overlooked track sung by the great Cee-Lo Green from his collaboration with DJ Danger Mouse. I really like the combination of his silky voice and the jittery keyboard riff.
  4. Pages – Starlight Mints (2003, from the album Built on Squares): I think Starlight Mints should be more well-known. They have a really unique sound and some lyrical tricks, like on this off-kilter love song.
  5. I Want the World to Stop – Belle and Sebastian (2010, from the album Write About Love): From perhaps the finest pop songwriters of the past 15 years. I saw the band this year and was knocked out by their showmanship and musicianship, but most of all by the sheer number of incredible songs they’ve written. Plus, Stuart Murdoch is one of the coolest gents ever.
  6. Love Without Lies – Comet Gain (2008, from the album Broken Record Prayers): I discovered this band literally the day before putting this compilation together. I was watching a UK indie film called 1234 (review) about, yes, being in an indie band, and found veterans Comet Gain, together since 1993, for the first time.
  7. Whirring – The Joy Formidable (2010, from the EP A Balloon Called Moaning): Welsh three-piece fronted by a kick-ass blonde guitarist named Ritzi. What is not to love? Plus, they are playing SXSW, although I won’t be around for music this year. Make sure to catch them live.
  8. Off Your Face – My Bloody Valentine (1989, from the EP Glider): Upside Down is a documentary about Creation Records that is playing SXSW this year. My Bloody Valentine are one of my favourite bands from that label and era. I used to think that Bilinda Butcher was singing “James” in this song, and since my crush on her remains undimmed for the past twenty plus years, I refuse to change my opinion.
  9. Hummer – Foals (2008, from the album Antidotes): Late to the party with these guys, too, but really love the dancefloor-friendly precision of the guitars. I found out about them through my support on IndieGogo for Anyone Can Play Guitar, a documentary about bands from Oxford. Go and help Jon finish his film!
  10. Royal Gregory – Holy Fuck (2007, from the album LP): I saw this Toronto band at SXSW in 2010 and loved their live knob-twiddling performance. Catch them live this year if you can.
  11. Steady Shock – Girl Talk (2010, from the album All Day): I’m not a huge Girl Talk fan but some of the samples in this particular track were inspired. Not a day goes by recently when the line “all the girls standing in a line for the bathroom” doesn’t run through my head about a hundred times.
  12. Zebra – Beach House (2010, from the album Teen Dream): Beach House really don’t sound like any other band I’ve ever heard and I’ve enjoyed listening to their moody music this year.
  13. Down in the Park – Gary Numan and Tubeway Army (1979, from the album Replicas): When I was 14, I wore out the grooves on this record. This predates Blade Runner but shares the same vision of a grimy and slightly seedy future.
  14. Dream Job – The Dears (2008, from the album Missiles): Montreal natives The Dears just released a new album that was critically savaged by hipster favourite Pitchfork. This is from their previous record, which wasn’t reviewed all that strongly either. It just goes to show you that some bands march to their own, er, drummer. I’m glad to say that The Dears’ music is the sort that grows on you, and I hope you’ll come to love this underappreciated band as much as I do. Also, I have a Dears story.

I have no way of determining how many people download the compilation this year, so if you’ve read this far, would you mind just dropping a comment to say Hi after clicking the download link? Of course, it would be great if you came back to tell me what you thought of the music, too.

Looking Back and Looking Forward: 2010 Edition

The Roman God Janus, namesake of the month of January
The Roman God Janus, namesake of the month of January
(image courtesy of Wiki Commons)

It might be a cliché to take the beginning of a new year as a chance to take stock or to make resolutions, but I’ve always admired people who do it honestly. This past year, this blog marked a decade of existence, but it’s been growing quieter and quieter, and I’d like that to change. When I began my other blog, Toronto Screen Shots in 2007, I fully intended to keep blogging here for more personal stuff, but the rise of Twitter and Facebook seems to have taken over the realm of the personal, at least for the quotidian stuff. And although I’ve been meaning to use this space for lengthier more contemplative writing, I’ve frankly become a bit spooked, mostly due to my work experiences with “social media.” It’s hard to be honest about your life when you can’t talk about the thing you spend most of it doing, which is going to work. As someone who thinks about the world of work constantly, and who seems to change jobs just as constantly, I’ve tried to put a few of my thoughts about that here, but have had to be less than candid at times. I hope that might change a little bit. And as for the personal, I’m hoping to use this blog as a bit more of a place to examine myself and my life. For those few of you who might still read this blog on a semi-regular basis, thank you and I hope you’ll stay with me on this hopefully-not-too-narcissistic journey.

Family

As I look back on 2010 and forward to 2011, the phrase that comes to mind is “contentment in the midst of uncertainty.” I will turn 46 in February and am now closer to 50 than I am to 40. It really is true that time seems to speed up the older you get. It’s very strange to see all the grey in my hair and the lines forming on my face when inside I still feel like the geeky teenager I used to be. And yet even as lots of things change around me, I am pretty happy most of the time. The obvious reason for that is Brooke. We’ve been together for 13 years now, married for 8 and although marriage isn’t easy, and we don’t take anything for granted, we have a pretty stable and low-maintenance relationship. She’s remarkably tolerant of my faults and still laughs at my jokes. She’s easy to be around, and even as I age, she seems as young and beautiful as ever. I don’t want to make it sound like we have a perfect marriage. Both of us have made significant sacrifices to be together, and my life is not at all what I imagined it would be when I was younger.

I miss having children, and letting go of the idea of being a father was very hard for me. It’s only been in the last year or two that we have pretty much released the tension that used to exist between us on this subject. But Brooke was honest with me from the start. Her ambivalence about parenthood never wavered and time finally made the hard decision that we never quite could verbalize. I think I would have been much more comfortable if either of us had siblings. As it stands, we live in an eerily child-free world. A dog is certainly in our future, though.

Each of us has only one surviving parent. Brooke’s dad died in 2007, and my mother way back in 1987. This past year has been exasperating at times as each of us struggled with our emotionally needy parents and realizing we’d become parents to our own parents. My dad is just 68 but as a heavy smoker has started to lose his health. He’s developed a troubling wheeze that probably means emphysema but he’s too stubborn (or afraid) to go to his doctor. Brooke’s mum is in good health but is 75. So, sometime in the next 5-10 years, it’s likely that we’ll lose one or both of them.

Career

My career has always been a source of uncertainty, and for that I must take full responsibility. I’ve just never found that perfect fit, and although I’ve enjoyed the wide range of environments and industries I’ve worked in, it might be nice to finally settle down. My current job is a contract that will run until September 2011, and I have no idea whether I’ll be moving on again or if it will be renewed. Since 2007, I’ve had five different jobs. While that might be fine in one’s 20s, I get a bit nervous now going for interviews.

2010 was certainly a learning experience on the career front. Working on the front lines of film distribution was wonderful, but I realized how hard it is financially for a small independent company to survive in the face of competition from larger corporations. And going to work for one of those larger companies turned out to be very unappealing. My choices were to remain in a job where I worked 3 days a week with no benefits or to look for something more lucrative but potentially less interesting. I’ve now added health care and the film industry to the list of sectors in which I’ve worked (internet services, financial services, computer retail, web design, wine!) in the past decade. And I’m discovering that my core skills are essentially about communicating online. I hope that will continue to lead me in interesting directions in the year and years ahead.

Friends

Moving from the thing that takes up most of my time to the thing that actually means the most to me, 2010 was both good and bad in terms of friendships. The year began with my dear friend Brad Graham suddenly passing away at the age of 41. My tenth annual pilgrimage to SXSW was particularly poignant since that was where I had met Brad in 2001, and it felt like a bit of the personal web died with him. Keeping this blog going is an attempt to fight that creeping feeling that nobody can be themselves anymore online. Nobody was more himself online than Brad, and I plan to honour him by trying to be more of myself here as well.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom. SXSW was still a highlight, where I got to reconnect with old friends and connect with new ones. And locally, I made new friendships and deepened older ones within my circles of friends, both small (I’m lookin’ at you, SuperNerds®) and larger (film bloggers represent!). I’ve always been relationship-focused and if I happen to be more vocal about my friendships this year, I hope you won’t mind. In my own low-key way, I try to bring people together and nothing pleases me more than being a kind of matchmaker and then seeing sparks (creative, romantic, whatever) fly between people I’ve introduced.

Conclusion

Well in typical rambling personal blog fashion, I didn’t really know what I’d end up writing and now here I am trying to sum up. Here are some things I want to do in 2011, in no particular order.

  • Be more demonstrative toward my friends, both old and new. They should know how much I love them.
  • Write more, and more honestly, here. Self-examination without narcissism, if that’s possible.
  • Continue to try to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
  • Admit mistakes, but more importantly, learn from them.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for more from life. And then to pursue it without fear.

And before I end up sounding like a motivational speaker, I’ll stop. If you’ve made it this far, thanks. And I wish you a very good 2011!

Thank You For Sending Me An Angel

Urban Angel

I’ve been needlessly secretive about the new job I started this week, and I’m not sure just why. Perhaps it’s because I’m still pinching myself. The past few weeks have seemed pretty dreamlike, with a wonderful ten-day vacation in Spain also contributing to my giddiness. Here’s what has happened.

Despite the best intentions of all parties, it was clear that my 3-days-a-week gig at indie film distributor KinoSmith was not going to turn into a full-time salaried position with benefits and vacation. So a few months ago, I began yet another round of job searching, applying for just about everything with the words web, content, writer, or editor in the job description. I was encouraged that there seemed to be more of these positions showing up in my daily career alert emails, but I wasn’t getting as many interviews as I would have liked.

Then, in early October, many weeks after I’d applied, and during a particularly quiet spell, I received an email from Anthony Lucic at St. Michael’s Hospital inviting me to an interview for the position of Website Managing Editor. It had been so long that the original posting had disappeared from the web and I actually had no idea what the job description was anymore. Nevertheless, I was excited for several reasons. First, this was a position in the nonprofit sector, at one of Canada’s leading hospitals, and I could easily get excited about working in the healthcare field. Second, the position seemed interesting and challenging: writing and editing, but also a strong strategic component, where I’d be involved in planning the direction of both the public-facing site and the hospital’s intranet. Anthony was actually the incumbent in the position and had been on a secondment to another part of the hospital for several months, so he knew exactly what they were looking for. He interviewed me by phone at first, then invited me in for a more formal panel interview the next week. Finally, the week after, I was invited back for a second (third?) interview where I met the person I’d be reporting to, the hospital’s Director of Public Relations.

All this was happening with our long-planned trip to Spain just days away. In fact, the very afternoon we were leaving, I received a phone call from Anthony just half an hour before our taxi arrived, offering me the position. It made our vacation that much more enjoyable knowing I’d be coming back to start an exciting new job. Technically, it’s a contract position, and if Anthony’s secondment isn’t renewed, he’ll likely be returning to the position next fall, but I’m not worrying about that just yet. I’m looking forward to some new challenges related to managing a large corporate website. I’m hoping that the burgeoning field of content strategy will hold many new insights for me, and I’m bemused to be wrestling with both an unwieldy corporate CMS and the tortured prose of professionals and academics again.

P.S. The title of the post and the image both reference the iconic “Urban Angel” statue that has come to represent St. Michael’s Hospital. You can read more about it here. “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel” is a very fine song by Talking Heads from their second album (and my favourite), More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978).

Cassandra Podcast

I had a doctor’s appointment today, way across town in west Scarborough, where I grew up. Taking advantage of my last day off in a while (more on that soon), and some sunny (though cold) weather, I took some time to walk around my old neighbourhood with my digital voice recorder. I recorded almost 45 minutes of stream-of-consciousness stuff about growing up on Cassandra Boulevard there in the 70s and 80s. It may not be of interest to anyone but me, but I’m going to post it along with a few images from Google Maps of the neighbourhood.


Duration: 42:36
Download MP3 (20MB)

Click for full-size

You can click on the above image to get an idea of the whole area of my walk.

I started at my doctor’s office on Ellesmere just east of Pharmacy. It’s marked by a red polygon.

After walking through Parkway Mall, I headed for my old building at 270 Cassandra, marked by the red polygon.

I continued walking on Cassandra, past 250 to Cassandra Park.

I turned left onto Avonwick Gate, to visit Annunciation Catholic School, where I attended grades 1-8 from 1971-1978. The school is marked by the red polygon.

Across from Avonwick Gate is the entrance to what we called “the ravine,” which is really Brookbanks Park. I emerged by Crestwood Preparatory Academy and Brookbanks Public Library, which is marked with a red polygon.

If you find this site because of Google, and you knew me, please get in touch! You can add a comment or if the comment form is closed, you can find me on any of the various social networks out there.

Ken McCourt, Mike McArthur, Mike LaMantia, Debbie Potter, Anne Fisher, Warren Dixon, Tim Nishikawa, Robert O’Connor, Donald McCarthy, Steve Cusimano, Mike McGrath, Louie Porco, Raymond Schell, Walter Fazackerley, Michelle Vautour, Caroline Ryan

A Decade of Blogging

Late last night, I realized that it was the tenth anniversary (birthday?) of Consolation Champs. Although I’d started reading blogs in late 1999, and had actually been manually updating a page I called now.html for a few months before, it was on July 7, 2000 that I started my first real blog, thanks to the good folks at Blogger.com.

Back then, there were probably a few hundred blogs in existence, and I could link to all the ones I followed on one page. It was before the days of punditry, so there were no business blogs or political blogs. They grew out of people’s personal “home pages” and so were a form of self-expression. After reading about the first blogger meet-up at South by Southwest 2000, I became determined to meet some of my heroes and heroines, and the next spring, I did. I’ve returned each March to Austin and SXSW because some of the friendships I’ve made online and cemented there are very valuable to me. And I’ve stubbornly kept this blog going as a mostly personal blog, although I don’t post nearly as regularly as I used to. That’s partially due to laziness, but also because we have so many other online tools for keeping people updated about our lives (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc.).

But I’m proud of Consolation Champs for other reasons, too. By working with several different blogging platforms (first Blogger, then Movable Type, now WordPress), I’ve increased my knowledge of how the web works. In the early days, I did much more of the coding and design of my pages, but even now, blogging helps to keep me sharp on the latest web technologies. And all that writing (1,335 posts over ten years!) has sharpened my skills immeasurably. In fact, without rambling on here for so long, I would never have started my other blog, Toronto Screen Shots. Blogging has led to friendships and to work, and has expanded my view of the world over the past decade. I hope it will always be a part of my life.

Now, just for fun, here are some of the things I was talking about way back in the year 2000:

And that’s just from July and August of 2000! Feel free to read all 1,335 posts and I’d be delighted if you left a comment, too!