"One Great City!"—The Weakerthans

I did my best to go record shopping today. All the vinyl that used to be has moved on… Now Sam’s was never my favorite record store, but an ‘end of an era’ sale means big discounts, and who am I to pass that up? I scored the 90’s box set “Whatever” (a 7 CD set by Rhino is a steal at $35 canadian) and a few other obscure albums (Josh White’s “Empty Bed Blues” and Oscar Brands double disc set of all 4 military services albums). “Whatever” meets the high standard of everything Rhino despite the side step to include a lot of ‘non-rock’ radio hits on the set (i.e. Hip Hop). In my opinion, some of it works (who could deny Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”) and some doesn’t (Me Shells "Was that your Girlfriend?"). Still, there’s lots of songs on here I wouldn’t bother with any other way ("Diz-Knee-Land", "Sex & Candy"). Guilty pleasures are still pleasures. Musing: Whatever happened to Monie Love? Where she at?

Trips to other nearby CD based stores were met yielded only a Twilight Singers single. Towards the end I headed down Queen St West were I found a nice Soul/Funk/Techno shop that had scored a number of picture sleeve 7”s. 10 for $15 Canadian. Your Mars was in Valhalla dear reader. Heck I even took home a tiffany 7” picture sleeve to round out the second set.

Some sort of video shoot was going on near the TV station:
(pics to come)

I heard their sound check and decided to move on :/

I had planned to check out the tribute to a local cowboy named Ned in the same area later this same evening. There was some sort of benefit for him, as he had passed nearly a decade ago. Since it sounded kind of country (odd for Toronto imho) I wanted to check it out. Sadly, when I got there around showtime (10:30) I learned I’d already missed the greater part. So I went out in search of some beer and a real wireless connection. Seems my hotel wireless doesn’t allow me to connect to blogspot.com or many other useful sites. I found Sotheby’s Deli, which promised both boons, but only brought the beer (Alexander Keiths India Pale ale Yum!). After the third one, the wireless just seemed like it would have only been icing anyway. The real icing turned out to be the cute & kind waitress who brought some tonic water when I managed to mustard myself.

Tomorrow the rest of the NRDL nerds show up and the conference starts. I’m thinking we have to sneak in a Blue Jays Game at some point…