Still a hipster after all these years

Last weekend, my friends Jas and Bruce were down from London to see the re-united Sebadoh perform at Lee's Palace.

The band initially broke up about 10 years ago. Nothing strange about that. Three old guys going to see a band they loved when they were young enough to keep up with what's new in music.

The funny thing is that unlike adults in the pre-internet age, we aren't listening to oldies stations. We still manage to keep up with what the kids are listening to. Through the magic of sites like Pitchforkmedia.com and Metacritic.com; combined with music sharing sites and bittorrents, all three of us are probably better connected today then we were young and "cool."

When the boys the arrived on Saturday the conversation quickly turned to what we each had been listening to. By the next afternoon I had Broken West and the Rosebuds on my iPod.

I'm not going to get into a rant about "stealing" tracks - which in Canada I'm not.

What I am going to do is explain how I manage to keep up. I simply visit the sites listed above and download every album that gets a great rating. Should be simple enough. Only 9 out of 10 of the albums I download are crap. Most don't even get through the first play.

But at least when I hear kids talk about Modest Mouse, Nelly Furtado or Califone - I not only know what they're talking about, I can give an honest opinion that they suck.