Rolling Stone handled Are You Experienced and Fresh Cream in a dual review, Nov 1967.

Here’s a taste:

The earlier pop groups of the new wave, starting with the Beatles, the Animals, the Stones and the Beach Boys, were all four-instrument groups, and tended to influence others in that direction. But from the beginning some American groups have attempted to enlarge this concept.

…

Oddly, in England the trend has been in the other direction. The Who, the current Yardbirds, the Cream and Jimi Hendrix are all three-instrument groups. They represent attempts to tighten the music, to eliminate the superfluous and to get closer to the mythical nitty-gritty. In some cases they are going so far as to eliminate the distinction between background and foreground sounds.

In considering the work of two major new trios, the Cream and Jimi Hendrix, it must be remembered that there is no point in eliminating the rhythm instrument if it is a group’s intention to play the kind of rock in which it is important to have one. Any rock form in which there is a solo-accompaniment idea, such as the blues or hard rock, will require more than a bass and drums for rhythm. It is therefore self-defeating to start a three-man group to play those types of music. Hendrix has been more successful in realizing this and in using the three-instrument idea more meaningfully.

That issue of “are there enough instruments for this kind of music” is the core of the review, and the reviewer is not at all pleased with the trios. No sir.

On the Are You Experienced album Jimi has made a tremendous technical advance in the use of three instruments. The superfluous has been eliminated, the tightness of the arrangements is total, the ornament and the background-foreground concept have been limited, if not eliminated, and the level of individual virtuosity is extraordinarily high. But, in Jimi’s case, the sum total of all this is pure violence. Above all this record is unrelentingly violent, and lyrically, inartistically violent at that.

Inartistically violent!

It was a different time.

Now I have no choice but to donate to NPR.

It’s sustainer time, baby!

When we last saw rainbow sweater girl, she’d been expelled from her private school for being too much herself.

And then…

Then Rod Dreher, senior editor at the American Conservative, did some digging into the sexual-identity of a 15-year-old girl and decided to publish it in an article entitled “Rainbow Cake Girl: The True Story.” Which is in itself a statement about American conservatism in 2020.

My understanding is that [the child] had a long, specific list of repeated infractions — bullying, disrespecting teachers, vaping in school (as Alford acknowledges), and so forth. Part of what she has allegedly done is promoting LGBT consciousness in the school, including aggression on that front. I’m trying to be delicate here, but I can tell you that she has transgressed against other students on this front, to promote bisexuality. For example, she allegedly drew rainbows and wrote slogans like “bi pride” on other kids’ papers, and gave at least two different girls the impression that she was sexually harassing them.

He then posted several images from the child’s private Instagram account. Because Rod Dreher is a creep.

He is also a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by the child’s parents yesterday in Jefferson County Circuit Court. They allege breach of contract, since the school released the child’s personal records and failed to follow its own escalating disciplinary policy, which allows for “an opportunity for mercy and grace through contrition,” rather than summary expulsion because the some nosy assh*le screengrabs a photo which confirms the school’s suspicion that the child is gay.

The suit alleges defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy by the school and American Conservative, as well as by Jacobson and Dreher personally. It further alleges that the child’s disciplinary record consists of cutting lunch once and getting caught with a Juul, after which she was referred to the school counselor who treated the child’s nicotine habit with a book entitled “Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, And Who God Has Always Been.” Which must have been very helpful.

Many cats are a little nuts, but a shelter in North Carolina says it has “the world’s worst cat” and is waiving adoption fees in hopes someone will take Satan’s evil spawn off its hands.

“We thought she was sick. Turns out she’s just a jerk,” posted the Mitchell County Animal Rescue Inc. on Facebook.

The little hellion’s name is Perdita, and she’s “not for the faint of heart,” according to an adoption ad that reads like something on a bad dating app. Mitchell County is about 55 miles northeast of Asheville.

“She’s single and ready to be socially awkward with a socially awkward human who understands personal space,” the post says.

“LIKES: staring into your soul until you feel as if you may never be cheerful again … jump scares (her specialty), lurking in dark corners… DISLIKES: kittens … dogs, children, the Dixie Chicks, Disney movies, Christmas and last but NOT least…HUGS.”

…

“I hope Perdita finds the goth home of her dreams,” Sarah Sayour said.

“Us too … like soon,” the shelter responded.

I’ve noticed a pattern…

Every time my boss leaves my office these days, my first impulse is to head over to Indeed to see if any good jobs have been posted since he last left my office.

OK, how does this work…

An H-Mart opened near me recently (well, 20 miles away. That counts, for me). First time I bought something there they instantly emailed me a receipt. But I had never given them my email address, and they’d never asked. They must have got it by association with my credit card somehow.

A couple of weeks ago, I wanted a snack, so I stopped at one of the stalls in their food court and got something I’d never had before: Taiwanese popcorn chicken. It’s just small chunks of seasoned boneless fried chicken with fried basil leaves. Tasty enough.

Today I open YouTube and it is recommending me a video on how to make Taiwanese popcorn chicken.

The world sees me and acknowledges me and wants me to be happy.

Namaste, it says, and lights my path.

A Kentucky teenhas been expelled from her school after a photo of her 15th birthday celebration was shared on social media.

The celebratory photo captured Kayla Kenney — who was wearing a rainbow shirt, and smiling in front of a colorful cake — at a local restaurant, where she’d gone with her family to celebrate.

“She was happy, she looked beautiful,” Kenney’s mother, Kimberly Alford, told local news station WAVE 3. “You know, of course as a mom, I took her picture of her blowing out her candles and I posted that on my Facebook page.”

The moment was a cause of glowing smiles for some, but gloomy frowns for others.

The picture caught the attention of administrators of Kenney’s private school, the Whitfield Academy, who found no reason to celebrate with the teen. In fact, they called the image just the latest incident in two years’ worth of the student’s “lifestyle violations.”

Ukraine opens probe into possible surveillance of U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch

Ukrainian authorities announced a probe Thursday into possible surveillance of U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch before she was dismissed from her post by the Trump administration.

The statement by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry followed the disclosure of new documents in the impeachment proceedings into President Trump. The material included exchanges between Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, and others about the need to push Yovanovitch from her post.

I suspect the GOP is going to start yammering about how Ukrainian investigations are all politically-motivated with hunts and can’t be trusted.