First -- the "My Funny Valentine" contest. Thank you all for your submissions - wow and holymoly. Strictly speaking, there are two winners, as the winning entry was submitted by two different people. Matt Christie and Dave Federman, I salute you! In order to settle the stale-mate, the prize will go to Matt C - who was (by a large margin) the first to submit the song. Matt, please email me at sean@saidthegramophone.com so we can arrange matters. David, I salute you again.

I will talk about the winning rendition on Thursday, as well as the other submissions. Sorry to make this such a prolonged affair, but so it goes! :)

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Happy Halloween. I don't have any good halloween music.

But you should support UNICEF and rock out to the remixes by buying the Do They Know It's Halloween single/EP. Now with purchasing info for canadians/europeans/etc!

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Nina Nastasia - "Bird of Cuzco". This song was written for John Peel, the late BBC Radio DJ. It is a modest song. Nastasia sings it with her usual tilted voice, sings lyrics that move like silhouettes. A shadow-play; shadow-forms that glimmer into colour, a white backdrop that blooms into a sunrise. Nina Nastasia asks questions, asks for help. She supplicates, quietly; she takes the answers where she can. She plays her guitar and she listens for the piano notes. She squints in the night and watches a bird.

I spent most of my life as a Canadian. I continue to live it as a Canadian, really, although I live in Edinburgh. But this is just a long way of saying: I didn't know John Peel. I didn't listen to the BBC over the net, or download almost any of his Sessions. I didn't - and don't - know him. But I need to say that as someone who dwells here now, who rubs shoulders with musos and critics and musicians, John Peel is perhaps the figure around which there is the most warmth. Not respect exactly; not reverence - but warmth. An affection that borders on love. People talk of him like a beloved friend. They stick up for his memory. They get into fights when John Peel Day seems to have been usurped. They talk about the way he taught them to love music - not just to appreciate the weird, to embrace the unexpected, but also to take full real pleasure in everything that gives you pleasure. The way he loved the songs he loved, the way he loved to love them, the way he made loving a piece of music a thing of triumph, of joy, of central human importance. The way that even if you didn't share his taste, you envied it - because it seemed so fierce.

I wish I knew John Peel. RIP.

(thanks jef jed)

[read about Nina and John at Spoilt Victorian Child]

[buy John Peel: A Tribute at amazon.co.uk]

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Stars - "Ageless Beauty (Most Serene Republic remix)". It's only a week and a half since we wrote about Most Serene Republic, but here they are again because they've lit all the lights, the hundred-candle chandeliers, and they've made me very happy indeed. On Set Yourself on Fire, Stars make "Ageless Beauty" a bionic pop-song, a press of synths that seems thicker and stronger than any life I've ever lived, and I think I've only lived one. Imagine my glee when I hear what Most Serene Republic have done with the tune: they stripped the synths away, stowed them in the closets, then wheeled out the stringy guitars and threadbare pianos. They made Amy Millan stand right there in the middle of the ballroom as the candles were getting lit, they asked her to sing just the same, but now it's not a superhero's song. Now it's a song for the scale of my life, for all the goofs and the joys, for the way beauty sneaks up out of dusty corners, the way it manifests itself as glints in peoples' eyes. The song has got today's loveliness and not some shiny tomorrow's: it's got friendship and revelry and good craic. It's got a voice sweet as honey cake and some friends who will gobble it up.

[hear the original for free]

[buy the "ageless beauty" single us/uk]

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Toronto Life has a marvellous interview with Dave Newfeld, Broken Social Scene producer. Dave is an enormously friendly character, bubbling-over with ideas and enthusiasms, passionate without being bossy. The interview's special because Dave is so honest, so forthright. A great read.

"It drives those guys nuts when we make an album; we’re not going to make any more albums like this one anymore."

Why?

"Because I spend so much time on my own that they feel I’ve taken a chunk of their soul and said, "Here, let me fucking groom it while you’re not looking," and then they come back and I go, "Look at your soul, I’ve put platform shoes on it, what do you think? Looks nice and tall now." Aagh! (laughs) Whereas their attitude is now: you’ve worked on this one, finish it this way, but on the next one we want you in not as producer, but we want you in as a band member. We want you to come in and play—I’ll play on this one, too—we want you to have input; it’ll be like a group thing. You’re not going to take this and fucking monkey around with it, and then let us hear it..."

A little over a week ago, Drag City released a 7" called Mr Jews: In search of Silver Palace. It was ostensibly a toe-dip into the long-rumoured collaboration between David Berman (Silver Jews) and Will Oldham (Palace). 500 copies were pressed, and I suspect all 500 have been snapped up. Fret not, however - you can hear this very strange thing here (click on "media"), and see the MAD Magazine-like cover art here. For those who don't mind having the surprise of the album spoiled, click through to this post's comments and I'll lay it out.

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update: I nearly forgot.... Some of you may know of November as National Novel Writing Month, but it is also NaSoAlMo: National Solo Album Month. Write and record an album in November - go on, do it! Other people are!