She's real good lookin'.

I'm a bit fixated on Rick Moranis this week. Every time we dip into the old video collection and he stumbles in, being hilarious and endearing, I think to myself, "Hey self, where has that charming Moranis fellow got to?" Thankfully, my self has a subscription to the internet.

Download this week's show: Part 1 Part 2

On this week's show:

Song 1: Immaculate Machine - thank me later
Comments: Chugging rock dealing with hindsight. I know you'll thank him for it later, when your heartache nets you a hit song and you make millions! You will curse him when Bruce Allen waves a pistol at you and demands you take up smoking to give you edge, however.

Discussion: The Joel Plaskett concert at the Vogue a couple of weeks ago, it was extremely good, and the crowd loved him like a deranged parent loves their glue-eating child (i.e. unconditionally, and with goodwill to spare). He's very talented though, so we could have been quite grumpy and he probably still would have won us over.

Song 2: Joel Plaskett - wishful thinkin'
Comments: This is yet another j.p. touring song. It sounds like a train! Somebody's been taking notes from their Can-rock elders. The line "I wish you were here but you're naaaaaaaaaaht!" sounds like a taunt, which is what makes it so appealing, I think. Ha ha, Joel is beyond supervision and out of control! He's probably wearing multiple sweatervests, you cannot stop him!

More discussion: Playing solo, like Mr. Plaskett, takes some serious avocados in the pants. You have to make the material speak for itself, sans Marshall stack! That is an impressive feat. Nick Lowe is my favourite example of this. He could play any of his songs just with an acoustic guitar and force you to listen. Probably has endless success picking up chicks in bars using roughly the same skill set; there are some things you can't teach.

Song 3: Nick Lowe - Tanque-Rae
Comments: The rhythm of this is reckless and fun. Mr. Lowe specializes in songs about girls, and the fact that this one doubles as a song about alcohol is no accident. Dance dance dance, gulp gulp gulp.

Light chat: Should they make moves out of just any old book? They are probably going to make one out of What is the What. I refuse to watch actor children pretend to eat baby birds. But would I like to hear it as a radio play? Possibly! Somebody needs to resurrect the radio play business with some really gripping stories, and not ones about little orphan Annie and Superman, thanks.

Song 4: Mathias Mental - my little life
Comments: I've decided that Mathias Mental and Joel Plaskett should have a keyboard-off, if only because it would amuse me. This whole album is really great, I have made a habit of listening to it at home. This particular song is a bit melancholy, but still so danceable, and combining the two without re-writing an old Joy Division song is truly a wonderful skill.

Further talking: My summer project for 2009 is THIS. 75 pages per week and I should have read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest by the end of September. I'm on the library waiting list now. I hope it's full of repressed females and brooding tall dark men in tight pants! But I doubt it somehow.

Song 5: Luke Doucet - Pedro
Comments: A cross-border love song full of resonant guitar that would make Neil Young blush with simultaneous pride and envy. Pedro is some sort of Mexican-Canadian angel with a serious power over the ladies. Specifically the American ladies.

Talky talk talk: Rick Moranis, and why he continues to fascinate me, perhaps unhealthily. I think it behooves us all to think about how we might achieve success as early as possible so as to retire and devote ourselves to family and maybe put out a hilarious country album.

Song 6: Rick Moranis - music and love
Comments: Rick Moranis talks for ages about nothing, basically listing song titles and random stuff, and still it's hilarious. I cracked at "she's acting single, I'm drinkin' doubles." This is from the 1989 album 'You, Me, The Music and Me' which is out of print, but I suggest you click on that link up there, AHEM, cough, wheeze.

Talking: Wherein I refer to that last track as 'a song,' because I am so clever. Anyway, you should waste some time at Vectorpark, apropos of nothing.

Song 7: Kiss Me Deadly - dance 3
Comments: This is very pretty, and has sort of an outdoor festival feel to it. Would sound great in a park, full of crazed people in face paint. Get on that kids.

Song 8: Wax Mannequin - dustboy rides the train
Comments: Adventurous yet stripped-down guitar in no fixed time signature (or maybe there is one, but heck if I know, I only got to grade 8 in the royal conservatory). Thankfully the middle bit is in 4/4, which even I, the musical heathen, am familiar with. The charm of this is that it's sort of cocky but also low-key, which almost implies a threat. A threat to rock.

Song 9: Eddie Furman - jobs I'd like to have
Comments: Pretty much anything as long as the overtime's not too heavy, huh Eddie? I feel you. Can't really relate to your wish for surprise illegitimate children though. That's a bit weird.