Red Herring versus My Many Other Commitments

So it totally excites me that ("Vancouver's best underrated '80's art-punk band," though Elizabeth Fischer may have other ideas) Red Herring has gotten their old (but classic!) EP remastered for CD. Of course, CDs are very nearly extinct these days, but digitized versions of music most definitely are not, and for some years, I've been earnestly trying to find digitized Red Herring songs to put on mix CDs of my own (or listen to on my phone: yes, I too now listen to music on my phone). Other than the option of ripping audio from Youtube - something that is kinda not my cup of tea - only one Red Herring song has ever turned up anywhere that I've looked: "If You Work For Me," which someone apparently transferred from the Undergrowth tape. Now all my favourites - "Taste Tests," "The Crab Song," and the recent addition "Love Machine," which I had to see the band play live to realize how much it kicked ass - are going to be there for phone listening and so forth, for the cost of a mere CD (I still don't use iTunes or such - I find it very weird to pay for disembodied songs - but I still do buy the odd CD, and will definitely get this one ASAP). Exciting stuff!

However, my dear Red Herring, what with my commute to work in the city, my suburban dislocation, the need to look out for my mother, and my general state of disorder and disarray my life finds itself in, it seems very unlikely that I will be at this show. I am currently in Maple Ridge, and well behind on my writing, and I promised the Dishrags and a certain US punk magazine that I would get an interview I did with Jade Blade transcribed this weekend. And maybe get started on a big Dave Dictor thing I did quite some time ago, which another magazine is waiting for for next week, which I really have to get done. I already have done a Red Herring interview, but... much as I would like to buy your CD (and see you guys live again, this time at the Railway Club, where I have never seen you), the whole "commute from Maple Ridge" thing makes tonight's show totally inimical to my getting any work done at all. So I do think I'm going to have to pass. Again. The writing (and the need to have one weekend where I don't commute anywhere) trumps all. I mean, I've got a media pass to the VIFF, too, but do you know how many movies I'm going to see this weekend? NOT ONE, guys, not one. The first ones I'm even going to TRY to see are on Monday - The Fool and maybe Maps to the Stars, if there are tickets. Not even free movies can get me out of the burbs this weekend.

So. Have a good show, but sorry - this is yet another Red Herring gig that I will miss. I haven't even mentioned the marking I'm behind on, the prep I have to do for class this week, and...