Vanilla Ice Home Lighting

Here's my new Congressional district!

Ain't it swell? It's about 80 miles, top to bottom.

I have no idea what most of downtown Raleigh, all of Chapel Hill, the non-military parts of Fayetteville, and the west side of Durham have in common with the vast rural wilderness that makes up most all the rest on the district.

But check out that little pinch in the middle. What's that all about?

Home sick today. But, I got to watch the workmen dig the ditch and then bury the line for the cable! Now I get to deal with the cable company's residential service department, to get them to run a line from the distribution box up to my house.

But, progress!

From John Mendelsohn's December 1969 review of Zeppelin II:

"Whole Lotta Love," which opens the album, has to be the heaviest thing I've run across (or, more accurately, that's run across me) since "Parchmant Farm" on Vincebus Eruptum. Like I listened to the break (Jimmy wrenching some simply indescribable sounds out of his axe while your stereo goes ape-shit) on some heavy Vietnamese weed and very nearly had my mind blown.

Hey, I know what you're thinking. "That's not very objective." But dig: I also listened to it on mescaline, some old Romilar, novocain, and ground up Fusion, and it was just as mind-boggling as before. I must admit I haven't listened to it straight yet — I don't think a group this heavy is best enjoyed that way.

And from John Mendelsohn's March 1969 of Zeppelin I:

The popular formula in England in this, the aftermath era of such successful British bluesmen as Cream and John Mayall, seems to be: add, to an excellent guitarist who, since leaving the Yardbirds and/or Mayall, has become a minor musical deity, a competent rhythm section and pretty soul-belter who can do a good spade imitation. The latest of the British blues groups so conceived offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn't say as well or better three months ago, and the excesses of the Beck group's Truth album (most notably its self-indulgence and restrictedness), are fully in evidence on Led Zeppelin's debut album.
...
The album opens with lots of guitarrhythm section exchanges (in the fashion of Beck's "Shapes of Things" on "Good Times Bad Times," which might have been ideal for a Yardbirds' B-side. Here, as almost everywhere else on the album, it is Page's guitar that provides most of the excitement. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" alternates between prissy Robert Plant's howled vocals fronting an acoustic guitar and driving choruses of the band running down a four-chord progression while John Bonham smashes his cymbals on every beat. The song is very dull in places (especially on the vocal passages), very redundant, and certainly not worth the six-and-a-half minutes the Zeppelin gives it.

Or, the Dec 68 review of The Stones' Beggars Banquet, which doesn't mention the album at all, instead gives a meta-history of the Stones' career.

And, from the earliest review I could find, a Nov '67 review of The Doors' Strange Days:

As was strongly hinted in their first album, the Doors conceive their efforts primarily in terms of drama rather than in terms of music. The music is not meant to be particularly virtuoso or experimental. It is played to be dramatically meaningful. Before they formed as a group, the Doors were, individually, students at the UCLA drama school.

It was a unique qualification. Beginning with long hair and patterns of dress, rock and roll has become increasingly visual. Jimi Hendrix and the Who seem practically primitive next to the Doors. Rock and roll has become theatre.

I have downloaded My Bloody Valentine's new album. But I am afraid to listen to it because I don't want it to retrowreck 'Loveless'.

First world problems.

tar? try 'find'!

Of the many things I thankful for, today I'm thankful that I'm not gay; for I would hate to have to worry that Andrew Sullivan might not approve of how I presented my private life to the world.

I suppose I'd also have to be famous for him to notice. And I'm not that, either. Whew.

I just don't I mean what?

I Write Like says I write like David Foster Wallace. Which sucks, since I'm currently reading DFW's "Girl With Curious Hair" and am not digging it entirely. And so I was doing a search on "David Foster Wallace wordy" to see if anyone else thinks DFW often overdid it, as I do, and ended up on I Write Like.

But things will change. I will use fewer words. Shorter sentences. Ideas will stand up straight, and not sprawl on the rug like drunkards, babbling. Rock-jawed, but not marble-mouthed. Phrases sheared, high and tight, march down the page, delivering meaning at knife-point. Boo. Yah.

(I Write Like says the preceding paragraph sounds like... DFW. I was going for something more like Cormac McCarthy or Faulkner or something. Perhaps I should ignore that site.)

Here is Rolling Stone's 1979 review of the Talking Heads' Fear Of Music.

I'm going to spoil the read by quoting the kicker:

For me, Fear of Music's least interesting track is the rock-disco-like "Life during Wartime," which sounds almost live. The problem isn't the production but the song itself. While "Life during Wartime" is both structurally and harmonically conventional, boasts a silly chorus lyric and even adds a conga player to the group, the tune's real trouble is that it lacks Talking Heads' usual counterpoint. On the other hand, some of the words are arresting: "I got three passports, a couple of visas/You don't even know my real name."

Here's a bit from their review of Zeppelin's In Through The Out Door:

As you might suspect, In through the Out Door's best number is the one in which you can understand the least words. This is "In the Evening," a classic Zeppelin orchestral guitar rumble halfway between "When the Levee Breaks" and "In the Light." The only line I was able to understand was "Oh oh I need zoo love." Judging by Plant's convincing orgasmic moans on the rest of it, I would rather guess at the remaining lyrics.

Zoo love. Hah.

How did they like The Police's debut?

As entertainment, Outlandos d'Amour isn't monotonous—it's far too jumpy and brittle for that—but its mechanically minded emptiness masquerading as feeling makes you feel cheated, and more than a little empty yourself. You're worn out by all the supercilious, calculated pretense. The Police leave your nervous system all hyped up with no place to go.

Ouch.

Tons of fun, reading the old reviews.

And, for some reason, the writers were frequently concerned about what the album at hand meant given the that it was almost... 1980!!.

About The Stones' Some Girls:

...well, if you want to survive the Seventies and enter the Eighties with something more than your bankbook and dignity intact, you'd better dredge up your leftover pride, bite the bullet and try like hell to sweat out some good music

About Fleetwood Mac's Tusk:

Plagued by internal conflicts and challenged by New Wave rock, this psychedelically tinted folk-rock tribe might well be the last and most refined of a breed of giddy celebrants who, from the early Sixties on, prospered on the far shore of the promised land as they toasted the pure splendor of a beautiful and possibly frivolous pop dream.

Can this dream survive the economic chill of the Eighties?

Oooohhh... The eighties!