4 Excuses For My Haphazard Updates of Late

Friends, women, countrymen...lend me your eyes.

I have been gone for many blue moons, only tossing rubbish and band promotion at you all instead of penning incendiary political criticism or interviews with Montreal's music illuminati. While some would attribute my lack of output to my lazy, id-feeding habits, I would argue that the following 4 excuses will get me off Scott-free.

• Concordia University
Skipping classes is a hard thing to do, both for students and non-students alike. Although I have missed a couple along the way, I have really been attending history and religion classes this semester, seriously depleting both my free time and my will to spend hours in front of a computer taking literary sniper shots at the Big Brother Inc. scum south of my border.

• The Dissonants
We have been playing a lot of shows recently (with the Redscare, Silent Film Soundtrack, Rio Bent, and most recently Death of Fashion) but this will change very soon. [Ed. Note: The Dissonants broke up on Wednesday, September 28th. It was an amicable split and the guys will probably get drunk together every so often as pals. Phil Shearing is going to pursue a solo project and as of press time, the rumour was that Armen Forget was starting a new band with his old singer, Phil (a different Phil, with longer hair). Nikos may be involved but this could not be confirmed.]

• Recreational intoxicants
When you're as high as a 747, it is quite difficult to actually sit down at a keyboard to contribute anything of use to humanity. Think Pete Doherty, only I don't do crack or heroin. It's really crap, anyway. My new plan is to focus on smoking dope only once a week, drinking whenever it pleases me, and staying away from Colombian seductresses who leave your wallet sore and your throat torn up the day after.

• Interviews in the Concordia Link
Since the beginning of the semester, I've interviewed two bands/musicians. The first was Whiskeytrench and turned out to be a great piece, but I missed my deadline and my editor gave the assignment to someone else. The second piece was with Beaver. That guy is one inspiring sonofabitch, in the nicest way possible. He deserves to be a megastar, or at least a new Leonard Cohen or something.