Polaris Music Prize

There is a music prize in canada called the Polaris Prize. Which is similar in content to that of the Mercury Prize that is in the UK, as well as a similar one in the US.

It celebrates the best album of the year created by a Canadian band. There is a short list of 10 albums which are then voted on by a panel of judges and a winner is announced. The ceremony was last night.

This year Hey Rosetta!, Joel Plaskett, Metric were all nominated among some other bands who've been nominated other years.

A hardcore punk band won last night, they are called Fucked Up. Their album is a wonderful piece of work and it should be celebrated for what it is. That is an album wonderfully crafted which blurs the lines between rock and punk, while still keeping the fundamental aspects of both genres in place.

The news broke, to myself, this morning on the CBC website. The CBC is a federally funded organization which blankets the whole country in unbiased and fairly accurate news and information.  I spent the rest of the morning reading the scathing reviews that people would post on the news article telling everyone how much they hated the band. A good 75% of the posts openly admitted to not having heard their music before, but still put in their two cents on how the sound of the band matched that of the sound of their album. Its ridiculous to think that someone can be so opinated about something they know nothing about.

Getting back to the album, I have listened to the album and it honestly took me a couple of plays to get into the groove of the sound. It is one of their better and cohesive works that they've released in the past 7 or 8 years and quite frankly they deserve the recognition in their own country.

Their album "Chemistry of Common Life" is routinely found in the top 20 of most critics. It rates higher than all of the other albums that were also short listed.  I can't comment on most of the other performers on the list as I have not heard most of their work but I'm still shocked and in disbelief that someone could be so ignorant to base an opinion on nothing other than a name.

I guess the band is right, its all "Fucked Up".

Pure Wanderings

Music: Skinny Puppy - Sparkless

Did you ever have a moment in your day where it made you so incredibly angry and yet you have no idea why it even happened in the first place? 

Let me explain:

I have a friend, lets call them N, whom I have grown to admire and respect for their sure determination in life and how they manage to get everything done that they need to.  I have another "friend", whom I wouldn't call a friend any more for reasons that I will try to explain without sounding too pompus, lets call them F.

My wife at one point in time has been close to both of these people, N more recently and has developed more of a friendship than she's had with F. The problem started when F began to have her baby, which was around the same time that we were trying to have one. 

F got jealous that our doctor was more willing to help us in anyway she could without having to refer us to a specialist as the wait time in our area for a person who isn't pregnant is close to 2 years. This pissed of F to no end as they had been waiting 2 years for their appointment when they had gotten pregnant. That's the first part.

After the baby arrived things had almost come back to normal between them and they would frequently make plans to go somewhere together so that she could meet their new arrival. Weeks would go by, plans would be made, but at the last minute F would cancel saying something had come up. 

At the time, we were living about 6 houses away from where I worked. One of the days which F had cancelled on she had gone to work to show off the baby like all new mothers do, and mentioned that she would go see my wife on her way home. She never did show up. Over the next severval months F would frequently visit the office and never stop by to say hello to me, maybe F felt guilty about cancelling plans on my wife? Probably not, F is too selfious for that. 

Lets bring this back to the current issue at hand. N is getting married soon, and in light of the new friendship has designated my wife as her honorary maid of honour, since she's not having one and we had a wedding exactly like the one that she wants. 

Yesterday, it turns out that F had almost invited herself to go along wedding dress shopping. With the line, "Amanda knows me."

Who invites themselves along to something like that after knowing them for only 3 days? 

Should I tell N about this, and say that they're not really friends? Should I keep it a secret and just stew on it? I don't want to mention anything and ruin what I have already established with N. 

**My personal issue with F is that I was to go into business with Mr. F, but it turns out that he wasn't interested in sharing any of the work with me, just on using and licensing the software I was building to make his life easier. F*ck that.