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].

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“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.

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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.

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

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Matthew Good, Belleville

, 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].