Late additions

...to the blogroll, that is. I've belatedly added Peter Breslin's Stochasticactus to the list; like me, he's a musician/radio jockey, and often brings up quite challenging issues in the state of improvised music. Also stirring the pot is The Improvising Guitarist (whom I long thought was the alter ego of Stanley J. Zappa - my apologies to both of them), with a fabulous cache of essays on gender, race, and identity within music.

A non-music blog (blasphemy!) has been added: Freshwater Mermaid, a fellow Montrealer with acerbic wit and great insight into local, national and international issues. If you dig deeper into the blog, you'll find excerpts of a novel-in-progress. It may well be complete by now, I'm not sure.

The mighty Helen Spitzer, who helmed CBC's Brave New Waves for 8 momentous weeks before the show's untimely demise, has left the blogosphere for now. Jesse Jarnow is on vacation. Under the Mediatrics banner, a belated welcome to Hank Shteamer.

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Steve has word that Tonic will shut its doors mid-April. When that headline popped up in my RSS feed, I was stunned. Tonic had become an integral part of my NYC experience, and I will miss it terribly. I'm working on a eulogy for PanPot right now.

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The final show of Indigone Trio's March residency is tonight at Le Parc des Princes. We've broken in drummer Phil Melanson admirably. 8:30 pm, 2 sets of original compositions by ourselves and other people.

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The other night, I was working on a new piece for BMI at my local Second Cup, and it was easily the strangest crowd I've ever experienced there: two tourists, above and beyond expecting waitresses at a Second Cup, spouting the most disjointed conservative rhetoric I've heard outside the O'Reilly Factor (accusing the recent Quebec election of not having issues - I suppose health care and education aren't issues enough - as well as accusing Canada of being a lefty-pinko land of lollipops and roses sufficiently out of touch with the reality of the rest of the world as the US sees it)*; two women rather loudly gossiping about the ineptitude of the returning officers and other scrutineers; and one guy who, after intently watching me work, started rambling at me about various quasi-related subjects.

* - the true irony: these guys were sitting right beside me, while the piece I was working on was catalyzed by my friend organizing the benefit concert for Darfur.