Part of being a public figure is that sooner or later people are going to say things about you that you don’t agree with.  It comes with the territory, and the longer you’re going to be in the spotlight the more that’s going to happen.  Hell these days just having a blog seems to be enough for people to give you their opinion on every facet of your life, and that’s fair because if you choose to share it then you’re inviting comments.

The quickly written unauthorized biography is a staple of the music world.  Collecting previously published interviews and then hammering those into some sort of narrative structure to capitalize on someone else’s success.  Want to find out the real story of Trent Reznor, that unauthorized biography of him that I bought certainly did not tell it.  Though to be honest official biographies, or autobiographies, are rarely any more interesting or accurate.

It’s understandable that having an un-official biography written about you would be annoying.  However it’s free speech and anyone is allowed to say almost anything verbally or in print, no matter how badly written or poorly researched.  Matthew Good was never going to be happy about Eric Blair’s Ghosts in the Machine [am], but having his fans remove all mention of its existence from Wikipedia was disappointing [mg].

As much fun as people poke at Wikilality, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and one that is generally self-regulated to provide accurate information.  The fact is that this biography exists, and while it’s proper to point out that Matthew Good was not interviewed and doesn’t support the biography simply pretending it doesn’t exist runs contrary to the principals of Wikipedia.

From the Wikipedia History of the article on Matthew Good [wp]:

An unsactioned (sic) biography of Matthew Good was written in 2008 by Eric Blair entitled “Ghosts in the Machine”. However, Mr. Good has formally denounced the book, stating that “I wasn’t interviewed or contacted, no member of my family was interviewed or contacted, nor were any of my friends”. Further, Mr. Good states that “I don’t sanction it whatsoever as any representation of me, my work, or my personal history.”

That’s not exactly a glowing endorsement of the book, nor even a particularly good advertisement.  It seems fair and balanced, acknowledging the books existence while not calling the author gay, a thief or otherwise libeling him.

The truth is that the book exists.  For all anyone knows it actually might be brilliant, though more likely it’s rubbish.  Removing it from Wikipedia doesn’t change that.

“Hello Time Bomb” was at the top of MuchMusic’s charts when I tried to request it during a phone in request hour back in Kelowna.  I was working an extra long shift at the Uptown Cinema Centre, and wanted to hear the new Matthew Good Band track.  The DJ at The Lizard, which at that point was what passed for the alternative rock station, had never heard of the song.  He offered to play “Crash” by The Dave Matthews Band.

The Matthew Good Band was fast becoming one of my favorite bands, and since they toured British Columbia a lot more than U2 and charged a lot less for tickets I ended up going to a lot of shows.  At that point I’d already seen them at EdgeFest in Edmonton and since then I’ve seen the band and Matthew Good solo nearly twenty times.  My first time at the Commodore Ballroom was to see one of the band’s five shows that they played over the holidays between the release of Beautiful Midnight and The Audio of Being.  I’ve been to Kamloops and Penticton far more than I’d like simply to catch a show.

So Tuesday’s release of Matthew Good’s Live At Massey Hall album was an obvious buy for me.

Having such a compulsive need to see as many Matt Good live shows as I could, I had always been a strong believer in the need for him to release a live album.  One of the first things I had done when I had discovered the usefulness of Napster was to seek out bootlegged live songs.  The best of which were a handful of tracks that had been recorded in Germany, with only a little too much treble.

With all of my favorite artists I’ve always wanted a full Pearl Jam like live recording release.  These days all shows go through a mixing board of some kind, and attaching basic recording equipment to that would allow for a release of a live album for every concert performed. 

The Vancouver native didn’t go that far with his first live release, instead opting to focus on a single show at Toronto’s famed Massey Hall this past May [mg].  It’s traditional but Good’s promotion of the release almost exclusively through his website and iTunes could be the first step to a Radiohead / Nine Inch Nails like movement away from a traditional record label.  That the album is already at the top of the charts on the Canadian iTunes store and doing well in the States is  sign that maybe Good doesn’t need a label anymore.

I’ve spoken enough already about what I had hoped for, and what the future might hold.  The nitty gritty of a review should of course be about the record in question.  As it stands the album released on iTunes is just the first disc in a two disc set.  Recorded during Good’s return to full band touring after a few years of doing stripped down solo acoustic shows, the album focuses largely on his newer material with only “Hello Time Bomb” and “Load Me Up” surviving from the Matthew Good Band days.  (More MGB tracks will be on side two).

Having caught the Vancouver show on this tour, one of two of his shows I caught this year along with a cross boarder trip to Seattle for one of the acoustic dates, the tone is familiar.  Returning to a full band arrangement seems to have put a new burst of energy into some of the tracks, and while there’s a bit too much musical noodling at times we’re not talking about a Grateful Dead style jam session. 

Acoustic tracks will be part of the second disc, and were a large component of the In A Comabest of album from a few years ago, but I’d have almost preferred a release from one of his acoustic shows.  Still that’s complaining about what the album’s not, as opposed to focusing on what it is.  Good and backing band are tight and this is probably the closest we’ll ever get to the definitive live collection from his career.  It stands up well against other arstis’ live releases, and if it lacks the courage of Pearl Jam’s “release everything ever” philosophy then it’s worth noting that so does every other act in the world who aren’t Pearl Jam.

At the end of the day this disc isn’t going to convince anyone whose not already a Matthew Good fan to become one.  I think anyone cautious of really giving him a chance because of the radio hits like “Hello Time Bomb” should still check out his solo work like Hospital Music, but like a best of album this is mostly a repackaging of what’s come before.

It’s still a worthy purchase for any fan.  Anyone whose deep into his catalogue will have a few tracks they would have liked to have seen.  My all time favorite song of his is “Suburbia” and it’s nowhere to be seen, it’s also a fucking fantastic song live.  Thankfully it does have “Black Helicopter” his best track since.

I’m still going to see him live as long as he’s within driving distance, but to hold me over through the lean months when Matthew Good isn’t on the road I know have something to hold me over.  Matthew Good Live at Massey Hall is the methadone for my live concert habit.

All photos by Jeffery Simpson.

Black and white, originally uploaded by rvnix.

Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height… height…

- Radiohead, “Paranoid Android”

Those lyrics from Radiohead’s final song followed us up the hill as we left the field at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium. It had indeed rained down on us, and while facing the elements to watch a great rock and roll show can be a beautifully uniting experience every inch of my body was soaked and I was pretty much tired of beautiful communal experiences at that point.

Any other show I would have before the first encore, but this was a great show despite the weather. A good rock and roll show can remind me why I love music, and there’s none better than Radiohead right now. Their music is big, soaring and operatic the music of motion picture soundtracks meant for laying on your bed in the dark with good headphones. I’d go to watch someone like Matthew Good play a stripped down acoustic show any day of the week, but when you’re watching the best band in the world at the top of their game it’s something else.

It’s incredible.

So incredible that Thunderbird Stadium stayed packed right up until the end, whereas another audiance would have abandoned the show early on we stayed clamouring for a chance to actually see the stage and catch sight of Thom Yorke and company as they performed the non-radio friendly hits that make up the band’s back catalogue. It’s challenging music at its best, and while the band have yet to vere from the road laid down by their Kid A reinvention they’re still one of the most interesting bands out there.

And did I mention they’re awesome live?

All in all even with a few misteps by concert organizers, the exit plan seemed to be having concert goers scramble up a muddy hill and over wet metal pipes that had been laid down in our path for no apparent reason other than to cause injury, the show was a great success. I even picked up the best bit of tour merch ever [jks].

If you’ve been living in a cave, or only watching American television, for the last week you know that the Canucks are now out of the playoffs. Another year of dashed hopes and spoiled dreams, and it’s time to start talking about what needs to be done for next year [cbc].

Brendan Morrison and Markus Naslund are both free agents. Trevor Linden is most likely leaving, or if he stays will be little more than a totem on the bench having long past the days when he could drive the team game after game. Roberto Luongo fled town as soon as he could, one of the few players to do the jersey any credit this year.

So what’s the blogosphere say? Find out after the jump.

- Miss 604 was at the last game of the season where the team really showed their heart by giving up and letting Calgary trounce them by 7-1 [m604]. At least Trevor Linden tried, and got feted by the assembled fans.

- Beyond Robson asks the reasonable question “What happened?” [br]. Their answer is good.

- The Canucks Official Fan Blogs have been silent since March with few exceptions, and as you’d guess they’ve been fairly easy going on the team. Mike The Yankee takes the reasonable approach of looking at the cloud’s silver lining [cb]. By that I mean he’s insane, the fact that the team barely missed the playoffs is not a silver lining. This is a team that should have been competing for top in the division, not first amongst the losers. Still if Bush could roll out the Mission Accomplished banner so early in Iraq, I suppose we can start calling the season a success.

- Matthew Good [mg] posted that Vancouver never has really been a hockey town, and that the team needed to rebuild around Luongo. For that he got his mailbox flooded with letters from Canucks fans, until he finally took down the post.

I’ve been receiving a ton of email from Canucks fans lambasting me for everything from my lack of knowledge to the fact that ‘my music sucks’. Normally that wouldn’t bother me too much, but when you start to get emails that claim that Rolling Stone voted you the worst song writer in North America, which is a total fabrication, then you know you’re in for a shit storm that’s best avoided.

- The Blog According to Buzz has a fairly humorous new logo for the Canucks [bab].

- Michael Klassen believes that the Canucks won’t ever win the Stanley Cup, and it’s all your fault [mk].

A short post about Matthew Good’s Seattle show below the jump.  You can find a longer one over at my own blog [jks].

Over the past decade or more I’ve been to a lot of Matthew Good shows. When I lived in Kelowna I drove to Edmonton, Vancouver, Whistler, Vernon and Kamloops to see the old Matthew Good Band play. I’ve seen him play curling rinks, hockey arenas, the Commodore and the side of a ski hill all across western Canada so the three hours (with border) to Seattle was hardly a trip at all.

I wasn’t the only Vancouver blogger who made the trip down, as I spent the night trying to take photos over the heads of John Bollwitt [jb] and Duane Storey [ds].  In fact the crowd seemed largely made up of cross-border concert goers from Vancouver who had made the same trip down.  A sad fact that even south of the border where his back catalogue isn’t the radio staple that it is here, Good could not avoid repeated calls from drunken idiots shouting for “Timebomb”.  I don’t say drunken idiots lightly, as the group just in front of me spent the entire show shouting at each other at the top of their lungs about such topics as pooping their pants.

I’m not going to go too indepth about a show that actually happened in Seattle, Vancouver artist and audience or not.  Instead I’ll just say that it was a very good show, and it’s well worth looking at seeing Good with a full band at the Orpheum this summer [mg].  Duane Storey has a good review of the show up on Good’s own website [mg] most of which I agree with.  The only part that I’ll argue is that I think the opening act Courtney Jones was terribly unimpressive.  She’s the sort of piano/vocals act that every city has a hundred of, and offered nothing particularly more interesting than what you could hear performed at an alternative coffee shop on a Saturday night.

, originally uploaded by shannon steele. 

Like so many other cross boarder scavengers this weekend I’ll be away to Seattle. The only difference is that rather than going down to take advantage of the good Canadian dollar and the cheap smokes and drinks on the other side of the world’s longest undefended border I’ll be at the Matthew Good show [mg].

It might bit odd, traveling to Seattle to see a Vancouver artist, but I keep missing his shows in Vancouver due to the fact that they sell out way too fast. Besides I need to do some Bunburying anyway [wp].