This week­end Philly’s best nomadic book­ing part­ner­ship, Plain Parade, signs off after four sol­id years of crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed book­ing. Their final two shows will be host­ed at Tri­tone and the M‑Room, their two most sta­ble venues since leav­ing Doc Wat­son’s, and both nights will fea­ture bands they’ve cham­pi­oned since Plain Parade came on the scene…

What if Elliott Smith front­ed Slow­dive, or if Sys­tem of a Down used their prog instincts for the forces of good, instead of boredom? [Full dis­clo­sure: Jeg er meget glad for Danskerne og deres nye musik­gruppe. Det er nem­lig meget bedre end Melanie’s Breast o.s.v.]

It’s an intro course in lan­guage arts, but here’s Rup­ture suss­ing texts and con­text re Da Capo and oth­er col­lect­ed works with canon­i­cal pretensions: How is it that the notion of a CD con­tain­ing “The Best Music of 2006” would be pre­pos­ter­ous while the idea of book col­lect­ing “The Best Music Writ­ing of 2006” is…

New York Times music crit­ic Kele­fa San­neh writes: Lots of the folks in “Before the Music Dies” might think the huge­ly pop­u­lar Cana­di­an neogrunge band Nick­el­back is a sign of all that’s wrong with the world. But when the most recent Nick­el­back album hit 3.7 mil­lion copies sold in Amer­i­ca, Mr. Lef­setz could scarce­ly con­tain…

This is unequiv­o­cal­ly my favorite song of the year.