The bitter cold kept me indoors this weekend, missing that Frank's Hotel show and Oxford Collapse and all the other fun things that happened throughout the city. If you went to any, fancy us with a review, would you (here)? The cold isn't about to let up -- it is winter, after all. A quick glance at the various and sundry show calendars tells me that there isn't much to miss until Thursday, when Earl Greyhound is at Sokol.

The reviews matrix finally has been updated with everything received since December (about 64 CDs). I've already begun downloading a few of the new batch and creating a nice pile of discs to hand over to the intern for his sterling interpretations. The grand plan is to refocus this site into something that's more reviews-oriented, retaining the blog (with the usual live reviews, news and gossip) and less-frequent interviews. If you look at the Interviews page you'll notice that I wrote fewer interviews/features this year than last. That's the result of fewer assignments from The Reader (thanks to their ever-growing writers ranks) and fewer bands of interest coming through Omaha in '06. When I started this almost 10 years ago, the plan was to write an interview/feature every other week. That quickly changed to weekly and sometimes two a week. Add writing a weekly column to that and you don't have a lot of time to do CD reviews. Toward the end of '06, I went back to an every-other-week schedule, which I hope to maintain this year -- that means fewer but more in-depth stories (you'll notice that they've become longer recently) and eventually, more CD reviews, hopefully at least two or three a week (with Brendan's help).

Finally, you had to feel sorry for Prince last night at Superbowl XLI. Despite the pouring rain, his purpleness put on a pretty good show. I could have done without all the covers, but the goal (I guess) was to please a crowd of millions. The highlight was his gritty guitar playing -- something that I figured would have been dangerous in all that rain (shows you what I know about electric guitars). Best commercial: The KFed ad. Yeah, I think the guy is marginally talentless, but I actually dug the beats that he was rhyming on (more proof that a good producer can make anyone sound like a genius), and thought that the overall self-deprecating approach made him look human, and funny. Maybe there's some talent there after all? Nah…

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