I’m coming back, just not yet.

“Waiting Man” came on this morning, always good when I get to work on my air-stick routine, even if it’s while behind the wheel

Heard “Wernher von Braun” on the way into work, and it’s amazing: I still laugh.
 
I’ve heard Lehrer say ” … some CLOWN on the moon” a hundred times if I’ve heard him say it once, yet still I laugh.
 
Amazing.
 
For a while, I felt the same amazement at Clerks, which I’d seen 50 times and still found hilarious. But then on the 51st viewing it all fell finally flat, and we’ve put that DVD away.
 
But I can still listen to Lehrer.

Don’t say that he’s hypocritical,
Say rather that he’s apolitical

Imagine if you were pettty and vindictive.
 
Imagine if you were immature and childish.
 
Imagine if you did in fact create a “vicious horrible vendetta” that you never owned up to
 
Imagine if you wrote “How Do You Sleep?”

The Black Keys.
 
Received a rabid phone call from Cerveza earlier this week, wherein he was frantic about this Black Keys joint, raving that they reminded him of Cream, and that I had to go out and buy Thickfreakness right now.
 
In the face of such over-the-top enthusiasm, what choice did I have?
 
I bought the thing.
 
Not sure where Cerveza got the Cream comparison. Cream had much jazzier fills, extended improvisation and, you know, a bassplayer. But fer sher, other bands who did the late ‘60’s/early ‘70’s blues rock thing are valid comparisons. Mountain, for the stripped down, yet heavily amplified trip. Although Dan Auerbach does not sound like Steve Marriott, I’d still say Humble Pie, for the soulful vocals, and maybe Ten Years After because Auerbach sort of *does* sound like Alvin Lee. Cactus. The Keys also remind me a lot of Taste and Rory Gallagher.
 
And I know The White Stripes comparisons have been done, and won’t be original to this space, but the slide guitar when it comes in sounds like Jack White, it just does.
 
As with the Montrose I was talking about yesterday, I’m not totally blown away by the songwriting on Thickfreakness, and therefore can’t give it the high volume, backflip and electrical parade recommendation Cerveza gave it.
 
But still, this is quality stuff (and songwriting is less important in the blues, anyway).

If you hadn’t seen it at CNN or at Rolling Stone, you may have missed something you shouldn’t: a pretty cool tribute to the recently-passed Ronnie Montrose from his ex bandmate Sammy Hagar.
 
In the obituaries I’ve read over the last couple days, there’s been a lot of talk of that first album. Somebody even referred to it as the American Led Zeppelin I, which, with no disrespect to Montrose or Hagar intended, I doubt can be accurate in any almost any sense..
 
Amazingly enough, the only Montrose I’ve ever heard until today was the cover titled “I’ve Got the Fire” on the back side of Maiden’s “Flight of Icarus” seven inch. Last night, however, on a lark or a whim or whatever you might call it, I bought the first one at the ITunes store. Still digesting it, but for a record from 1973, it seems slightly ahead of its time. It seems like a record from the last half of the 1970’s, not from the first.
 
Don’t get me wrong: I love sludgy blooze, but at a time when sludgy blooze ruled the world, seems to me Montrose was a higher energy, rockin’ alternative.
 
On the other hand, I’m wondering about the songs. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, and I’ve heard nothing more than once, but so far I’m thinking that if the playing’s ace, the songwriting may not quite be.
 
But we’ll see what I think as I hear it some more.

And I was thinking “Possum Kingdom,” perhaps the definitive Vampire song, even though you wouldn’t know it from the title

The inclusion of “Vampire Blues” in the list yesterday got me thinking, always a dangerous thing … .
 
Carl Sagan used to write notes of his euphoric insights to his sober self while high, unwilling to rely on fickle drugged memory.
 
Never did that, back in my potsmoking days. The good thing about that was, you never miss what you can’t remember. The bad thing was sometimes you end up doing the Coleridge, and you’re left remembering having the insight without being exactly sure what it was.
 
I was stoned early one morning listening to On The Beach and as the song wound its eerie way into and through the strange, rumbling guitar solo, it became clear to my wasted self that the guitar sounds of the solo symbolized something having to do with the song, reinforced, the solo calling back in its mimetic sounds the song’s own theme.
 
It was a simple realization of elegant art, and of course in the harsh morning light it was gone.
 
What had I thought, that the solo was the rumbling of bats? The sounds of an internal combustion engine? The sound of some waste-oil-imperiled sea creature?
 
The answer, once tantalizingly grasped, continues to elude me, and of course I’ve never seen an interview since with Neil where he explains.
 
Ah, who the fuck knows? I was stoned, it was probably nothing … .
 
Yet I continue to wonder nonetheless

Hey Tad wassup.
 
Sorry about this. I do hope and want to resume posting shortly, but I have been involved in the taxing effort of trying to sell the house I haven’t been able to afford these past seven years; that, and we’ve been super busy at work, so there hasn’t been much spare time to blog there either
 
As time frees up, some of it will be directed here
 
In the interim, I was thinking about a short list the other day, can anyone think of additions?
 

Arab Strap
 
In celebration of, you know, International Sadcore Performed by Incomprehensbile Scotsmen Day