Desert Turkey

Beck and I more or less survived our first Thanksgiving weekend sans travel in our collective history. Beck had to work Wed-Fri-Sat-Sun, so booking it over to Texas or up to Rochester for a single day was out of the picture. We ended up having the meal proper with Beck's internet friend (now real life, brunch-going friend) Lorena and her family/friends which ended up being a nice little pot-luck affair. Beck made some ridiculously good sweet potatoes, one dish sweet and one savory, which received an onslaught of compliments. Unsurprising. No turkey-dancing, no potato-peeling, so it obviously suffered by comparison, but we managed to have an okay time. Football was not on, which struck me as sacrilegious / bizarre - what easier conversation-lull filler between people who don't really know one another than the pleasant drone of Turkey day football cheers? Ah, well.

Spent the bulk of the vacation grading essays, the final set of position papers for the Bio 311 Biology & Society course. I've got a collection of gems once again; maybe later they'll find the webs, but for now, here's the winning introductory sentence:

"Along with satisfying our desires and needs as humans, there comes the burden of its consequences."

Truer words, etc.

Last weekend brought a merciful end to VOTS Fall League. Justin's team May Cause Dizziness beat Cole's Huck My Life in the finals for the championship, so congrats to Dheintime again; we got nowhere near either spot. We had some attendance problems for the final weekend - we were pretty much eliminated already with the received shellacking the prior Tuesday, but on Saturday people came late, got injured, and didn't do a whole ton of running in the game besides. 'Twas a fairly exhausting couple games of effectively-savage for me; we tried to keep things close but couldn't do a whole lot. Beck played well - threw a forehand for a score despite a girl mugging her pretty significantly, so that was cool - but by the end of the day, I think she was just as tired of this fall season as I was. We had some good times, had a good run in the middle there, and the lesson is thoroughly learned - always draft your own team.

Between those three losses, a scrimmage loss last weekend and a scrimmage loss Friday, I've had a bad string of late. Pickup this afternoon, and men's league (which started last week, but we had a bye), so hopefully things will turn around before long.

A presentation and two papers due in the next week and a half. Shwank. I got quite a bit done yesterday by planting myself in a coffee house for six hours straight, and when I came outside to Phopenix rain, I was quite thoroughly disoriented. Beck and I have made the most of the time we've had this weekend - watched a few movies (Capote, Living in Oblivion), done some crosswords, eaten great food (including MoJo!) and dipped our head in the occasional can on paint. I am also told our banter on facebook is "quite funny." Go us.

Oh, and we have a little guest staying with us.


She's a super cute cat named "Sophie" (her old name was "Found," but Beck thinks that's lame). Incredibly social and having a grand ol' time locked away in our guest bedroom where Sparkles can't eat her. AND she hasn't made me explode with allergies yet, so that's nice. She does occasionally meow and cause World War III in our living room as S/W scamper to investigate, but otherwise no major issues. Anyways, if you'd like a great cat, she's hanging out in our pad for the time being.

Alright, enough breaking, more presentation preparing. Catch y'all soon, hopefully with more entertaining posts.

Live Up! Release!

In case you live in a cave or something, iPJames's band Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad released their second official LP yesterday, a nicely mixed live album of choice cuts from their '08 tours. I actually reviewed a demo version of it here, so now I'll have to revisit that review with the proper album cover, a fresh take on the tracks-as-remixed, and the changes that were made from the original playlist. It sounds absolutely great, and as the iPJ texted us yesterday, made its way up to the #2 Reggae album on iTunes. Behind Legend, for cripe's sake! That's awesome! Evidence, even:


So congrats to James et al.; great to see them topping the charts. If you need convincing that this fine disc is more than worth it, go grab the free mp3 of "Seasons Change" here. It is, yes, shwank.

(And if you don't know, the band recently parted ways with guitarist / lead-singer Matt and keyboardist Rachel and is proceeding as a four-piece. So this is a sort of document of the band-as-sextet. I.e., it's not just musically awesome, but historically important. Why are you still here; go grab your copy pronto!).

Careful with your lawnmower

A newly released report by the Journal of Safety Research says that over the five year period studied 66,000 Americans ended up in emergency rooms with injuries caused by lawnmowers. Nearly 100 people were run over by lawnmowers during that time, including children who had been riding on the laps of the mowers. An unfortunate six folks met their demise by lawnmower in the five years studied.

Be careful with the lawnmower, America. Read the whole story here in the BBC. (Over in England they have got a special Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents or RoSPA. Here in America, we have lawyers to sue the lawnmower company ex post facto.)

Bah

No wind tonight, so Confessions went down hard against May Cause Dizziness, 13-7. We were up 7-6 at half, our Z fell apart, we couldn't get people open, they threw a cup-o-saurus Z... and the rest is, as they say, Hx.

I can't really breathe right now thanks to a player (who will remain nameless) who decided that it was a good idea to set a screen on me from the blindside with a disc in the air. He, according to witnesses (after all, I don't know what the hell he did since it a blindside cheapshot), tracked where I was going, jumped out and set a basketball pick on me while I was running full speed looking back at the disc. Awesome. Something (elbow, forearm, ?) caught me right in the upper left pec and seems to have crushed that rib / set of intercostal muscles or whatever. Fun times.

We just didn't have enough against a good squad; Justin, Ryan and Emily tore our Z apart. Lindsey played really well at deep, too. Great play from them; their team spread the field well and I couldn't cover enough ground. I did have one big D over by the middle sideline into the crowd; on one of their women, of course, so I got heckled accordingly. I had another huge layout D on the above-mentioned screener who ran into my back - well after I had D'ed the disc, while I'm in the air quite obviously in the space before him - and called foul. Sheesh. Played my usual run my head off game and caught / threw some scores, but obviously not enough.

Huge, top-everish highlight of the night was a big hammer from Tim to the left corner of the endzone - he got fouled, so the disc came up short. I saw this right away, but Neon Deion Dheintime did not, so he was running pretty quick when he looked up and saw that I had stopped waiting for the hammer. Rather than run through me and deliver a shot to the gut, he slowed down. The disc came right at his back and he didn't have time to turn around; I jumped, reached over and caught the disc against his back. Totally ridiculous, and pretty much the only thing that didn't come up in his favor the whole night; a really funny moment. He dominated, unsurprisingly, and I will now go on and on about Trigger's excellent [CONTENT DELETED UNTIL TRIGGER PAYS TODAY'S NYET-JONES-HYPES-JUSTIN FEE].

Ah, well. Now Saturday will be more relaxed, hopefully. Very slightly disappointing, but we played a bit above our heads the past few weeks. We'll have some fun this Saturday and put a good cap on the season.

Thank You!

From a Boston Globe article, courtesy of Chris:

Sheer data, which Burke has compiled and stored like a librarian, argues the point. On average, an offense operating outside the red zone will make the first down on fourth and 2 60 percent of the time. When teams face the situation the Colts would have had if the Patriots failed - two minutes left, needing a touchdown, at roughly the opposing 30 - they score 53 percent of the time.

The Patriots would certainly win the 60 percent of the time they convert. They would also win the 47 percent of the time they’d stop the Colts. Overall, going for it gave them a 79 percent chance to win.

Now, what if the Patriots had punted? On average, the net punt would have been 38 yards, and the Colts would have taken over on their 34. Statistically, teams will score 30 percent of the time in that situation, meaning a punt gave the Patriots a 70 percent chance to win.

Burke is not the only statistically minded football source to draw the conclusion. The ZEUS program, developed by a pair of champion backgammon players, was made to simulate specific football situations and spit out probability. One of the developers told the New York Times that Belichick had made the right call, their numbers similar to Burke’s.

Critics of Belichick made two mistakes. First, they underestimated the chances of converting a fourth and 2 and overestimated the difference a punt makes. Playing with abandon against a preventative defense, an offense can typically pick up the yardage from a punt in a matter of three plays and 30 seconds, Burke said.

(Burke, it should be noted, did not wholly absolve Belichick. Burke believes Belichick, who knew he was going to go for the fourth down if necessary before third down, should have run the ball rather than pass on third down.)

“The one thing people aren’t looking at is that third-down call,’’ Burke said. “An unsuccessful pass on third down gives you fourth and 2. An unsuccessful run is going to give you a real short fourth down and make your chances of winning better.’’

I am not PEOPLE! I said this immediately after they went for it on fourth down. On Sunday night. Where's my extensive Globe article? Or my gold star / cookie / certificate? Huh?

Sprawl / ASU / Eskicensored / This is Pop! / BB / Walk

Still buzzed from some old school, late night Ultimate with the ASU club team. Diablos Captain (and Sprawl player) Brady asked if we could scrounge some guys together and give them some competition. We got about 11 or so together and played them from 9-10:30 tonight. Pretty exciting; this was kinda Justin's and my (nay, Justin and I's!) first official Sprawl event. Tough game at first; predictably, ASU came out running really hard and putting up some nice hucks. Didn't help that I started things off with an under-warmed up, too low huck to JD that got D'ed. Yeah, my first throw as a Sprawl cap'n was a turn intended for the other cap'n. Yikes. Anyways, we exchanged points for a bit, then pulled up by a break and took half 7-5, then busted out a trap zone that befuddled them. We ended up winning 13-5, and got some pretty heady play from a lot of dudes. I got my act together, too, playing okay on D but putting up quite a few hucks and scoobers/hammer for scores. Really fun night; ASU looks pretty solid / athletic, a little off with some throw-choices, but that's more or less par for the course for a college team v. club team. I like our farm team. :) I like our club team, too - great to get out on the field with Les Dudes again.

Other news: had a bit of an embarrassing moment at school today. A little background - there are lots of "fashionable" guys and gals at ASU, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. And as with generally any American style situation, the gals' fashion choices stand out quite a bit more than those of their male counterparts. The standing joke is that there are 65,000 students here, but only clothing enough for 40,000. Ha. One of the more interesting fashion phenomena is that the instant the thermometer drops below 78 degrees, a lot of the gals bust out their ASU hoodies (or even worse, fur-lined hoodies) and Uggs, aka ridiculous $300 fur-lined boots. Only they generally don't adjust the rest of their clothing to match and end up walking around in a sweatshirt, butt-length shorts / miniskirts, and knee-high furry boots. I don't think this is me being prude or unhip; they just look kinda ridiculous. Absurd, even. The moniker that has arisen for this ridiculous ensemble, or I suppose the girls who wear it, is "Eskiho." It's a name that's as ridiculous as the outfit, and generally grabs a few laughs. Note also that it's generally not said to people or even behind people's backs, but is a joke told about the fashion phenomenon. I.e., I've never heard anyone say (nor have I said), "Here come some eskihos," or anything like that. It's always in these abstract, what-the-hell-are-kids-these-days-thinking sense (which I suppose says more about us than said kids).

So today in lab, someone was wondering why there had been a camera set up immediately outside our building, and I made some crack about the photographer doing a National Geographic spread on the migratory patterns of the Southwestern Eskiho. One of my labmates then pointed out that she didn't like this word as it was a "sexual-habits slur." Ouch. I felt immediately bad, and I have to grant: this is certainly a gender-un-neutral derogatory term, and "ho" is certainly a gendered slur aimed at the sexual habits of women. I'm generally sensitive to these sorts of PC speech issues, but oddly, this offense hadn't really occurred to me - the joke is so much about the idiotic fashion and not about anyone's sexual habits that I hadn't thought of it. But yeah, point taken, pretty rude to call anyone a "ho" in any sense, even if it is more a comment on absurdity of still wanting to bare one's thighs while one's toesies are cold. I guess it fails to hide behind a sort of "hey, you are dressing rather unsubtly provocatively / like a sex worker in a way that is logically incoherent, unless you have come kind of weird circulation issue" claim. Oh, and "all that fur is stereotypically what you see Inuits wear." That, too, I suppose is breaching some sort of code.

So anyways, I pacified the offended by saying, "withdrawn!" and promising never to use the term again. But I demanded that we needed to come up with a new word for this phenomenon, because I still need to be able to talk about the goofy styles I see, just not in an offensive way. So - if you can come up with a solid term for this Uggs/Mini/Hoodie combo that doesn't involve sexual habits or Native Alaskans, let me know. In the meantime, I've devolved to groaning, "UGH!" every time the fashion comes up. And that will only work for so long.

Oh, also in lab today - LiJing gave a talk today on the history and science of the "Hayflick Limit." It's the cap on the number of divisions a cell line can undergo before the telomeres get too short and the cell enters senescence. LiJing pointed out that a poet, an indie band from Houston, and an electronica group had all used "Hayflick Limit" as a title in their works. This was somehow supposed to indicate a pop culture relevance external to the scientific study of the topic. People were arguing over whether this was worth including in the talk - L had gone about ten minutes over and was looking, as Andrew said, to use a hatchet, not just a scalpel. Some thought that this info was superfluous, some thought it was a good selling point and would get people talking. Huh? I pointed out that, strictly speaking, three random works including a term hardly makes it have "a pop cultural impact." And wow, some people in the room got this, and some SO did not. When pressed, I said that the point was that you can take almost any scientific term and it's virtually guaranteed that some indie band nerd out there has written a tune about it. I.e., not every slapped together reference to a topic represents an impact. This was met (again, by part of the lab - many people were nodding "Nyet's right" or pointing out the difference between popular culture and Popular Culture) with incredulity. The exact quote was "It's not like any band is writing songs about telomerase."

Au contraire...

Anyways, a weird interaction, because here we are on the one hand arguing about every little esoteric factoid, trying to be as historically rigorous as possible, yet we were about to advise L to make a unfounded claim about the social impact of this term to "sell" her talk. I'm not really down with that; I'm also generally against these sorts of "the zeitgeist" claims about pop cultural impact. We're fractionated, people; I don't care if the band is called "The Airborne Toxic Event." I'm not about to pretend that it's not just the hipster-namedrop of some indie-dude but really some sort of mass impact that Don Delillo is having.

Anything else? I spent two hours this morning getting continuously educated by my TA-job-employers. I theoretically learned some tips for teaching a large class. I submitted the proper forms and passed the appropriate quizzes. Competence indicated! Johnny spent a solid five minutes trying to convince me that Sting's solo career is superior to his work with the Police. He's obviously forfeited all rights to be taken seriously in future music discussions. (I mean, he might as well have said that "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" was a masterpiece). Beck and I got some delicious $4 cheeseburgers at Maizie's Bistro in central Phoenix for dinner (yes, pre-scrimmage cheeseburgers! I did not major in kinesiology). Fun date; Beck continues to do an excellent job tracking down and trying out all the good restaurants in our new hood.

Oh, and yeah - SHUT UP ABOUT THE 4th DOWN, TALKING FOOTBALL HEADS. I will never understand the non-existent intelligence baseline of sports commentators. *Some* people are at least clever enough to point out that given even a normal offense, let alone the Colts' high octane supershow, going for it on 4th down was the proper percentage play. What is extraordinarily disappointing to me is that no one is mentioning that if BB really had this all planned out and wasn't just shooting from the hip, then perhaps a run on 3rd down (if nothing else to take the clock down to the two minute warning) was in order. That's the weirder thing to me; not the BB went for it on 4th, that he acted as though he didn't plan anything in advance. How do you not have some sort of decision-tree set up in your head approaching that last series? Anyways, the game disappointed me badly; it's just terrible to be unable to defend that lead in the 4th. Blar.

AS long as I'm accounting for miscellaneous things here... Beck and I went on the Thursday evening Scottsdale Art Walk a couple of weeks ago, and it was MUCH nicer than the downtown First Friday experience. Lots of galleries, hip people, space to breathe, etc. We'll definitely be making that a biweekly experience. We've also been hitting up the outdoor film showings at the local mall; so far we've caught The Birds, West Side Story, and Diamonds are Forever. It's a fun time, and nutty - I got there an hour early for WSS and almost didn't get a seat. People show up way early and make a picnic of it. Anyhoo, good to be getting out and about in our community. Good also to have Beck bring calzones to the movie and follow it up with Mojo. The good life.

Alright, time for bed. Full day at school tomorrow and a VOTS-league showdown with Justin's* May Cause Dizziness. Should be fun. I'll let ya know.

* - Oh, btw, apparently I gushed a little too effusively in the Sprawl post. Justin asked how much he owed me for the writeup and said he was going to show it to his mom or something. Hey - I only blog the truth. Except for that speed of light thing; that was a little over the top. At least I haven't referred to JD as the "Hey There Delilah" of VOTS Ultimate yet. I imagine only Beck will get that one.

Gadget Release : Bantal Musik

Silahkan angkat tangan kalau anda pernah merasakan ”sakit” di seluruh telinga ketika headphone masih terpasang dan anda jatuh tertidur? Tenang saja, anda adalah satu diantara sekian banyak orang yang mengalami masalah yang serupa. Terkadang mendengarkan musik sebelum tidur bisa membantu untuk sedikit lebih rileks dan mudah tertidur.



Ada solusi untuk anda. Bantal ’Sound Asleep’ khusus didesain untuk anda yang tidak bisa lepas dari musik. Mendengarkan melalui speaker audio ataupun televisi bisa jadi sangat menganggu orang lain. Nah dengan bantal ini, dijamin hanya anda yang dapat menikmati suara yang keluar dari player musik anda.

Silahkan cari jek phone kecil untuk membuat bantal ini bekerja. Ada sebuah saluran lead yang bisa untuk menghubungkan dengan pemutar mp3, iPod, pemutar CD, ataupun komputer sekalipun. Jek ini terhubung dengan speaker integrated yang bisa memainkan musik melalui bodi bantal. Tenang saja, kabel ini bisa dilepas kalau anda hanya ingin sebuah bantal biasa saja.

Ukurannya bagaimana? Gadget ini memang dibuat betul-betul untuk kebutuhan tidur. Dengan model ”bantal” normal, sebesar 74 x 48 cm dan dijamin terbuat dari bahan polyester plus bebas alergi.

Ini dia waktunya untuk tidur dan terus mendengarkan musik kesenangan anda.

The Other End of Disc

In the midst of the Sprawl news, I shouldn't neglect to mention that my VOTS team has won four ina row to pull even on the season. You'll remember we were in dire straits after losing badly to the other division's last place team; we followed that with a win against their #1 team (Vince's Town Tricycle) and a wind-aided upset against Justin D.'s 3rd-ranked May Cause Dizziness. We followed that by fairly shellacking Keith's Inglourius Backhanderds and the number one seed from our division, BP, Paul & J-Ro's The Pen is Mightier. (I will leave detailed boasting aside, but with an injured Heart Attack, Nipar and a sporadically appearing Hoyt, I would claim that I deserve some sort of Andre Dawson-esque MVP. After all, I scored or threw a full 13/14ths of our team's goals in the most recent game ;)). That took us from the pit of despair to 5-5 on the season (and a +4 point differential), earning us the 6th seed on our side and an 11th overall ranking (based on the dubious Nabity all-league rankings). So in pool play (which starts this week), we've got a rematch with May Cause Dizziness, a new match in EBay's Jelly it Up the Sideline, and another new match in Disc-throw Inferno. Realistically, we should lose to MCD on Tuesday and be eliminated from real contention, but we'll see how it goes. I doubt I can pull off the same level of mayhem that I've been doing (taking next to no subs, cutting like crazy) for a full day of Ultimate on Saturday anyways.

Saturday morning scrimmages have been revived, now called the "Elizabeth Lambert Scrimmage-for-Lunch Ultimate Gauntlet" or EL-SLUG. (If you don't know who EL is, might I direct you HERE). My team lost a heart-breaker Saturday; on Universe-for-lunch point, JD threw a laser huck up the sideline, I laid out over / through Rob for the game-winner ... and couldn't get it. To be fair, he grabbed my arm right as I reached for the disc, but it would have been an utterly lame foul call given that 1, I laid out into him, and 2, it was double Ultimate point. We did get another turnover for a final shot at the OT victory, but Tom "A full two thirds of our overtime turnovers" V. gacked an easy disc at midfield to choke away the game. Ah, well, it happens. I hate buying lunch for people, but it would have been arbitrary either way. The two actual games went 13-7 / 8-13, so everything was balanced. I played okay on the day with some nice stuff here and there, a little over-adventurous with some throws to some of our "know your receiver" targets, but otherwise okay. I did have a nice layout grab for a goal and a goalline handblock, always fun. I'm generally disappointed that we can't get a *real* men's competitive scrimmage going - where the hell were all our handlers this weekend? - but hopefully that will get corrected once we get closer to NYF.

Alright, more on the non-Ultimate front later. I have a crazy school-week coming up, but nothing I can't storm my way through. And now, I have to go run a beginner's clinic.

AR: Wake of the Flood

Grateful Dead - Wake of the Flood (1973)

Most notable for being a cherished member of the Nyet Jones CD-Amp Series*, the Grateful Dead's 6th studio album (and the fourth GD album I bought) is a first step in the jazzier direction that the mid-'70s Dead would take. These tunes, more than most GD songs, are cited as being better in their same-era live incantations than these studio versions, primarily because (predictably) the concert medium allowed for much spacier, exploratory takes. That's fairly undeniable, but this set of studio takes does reveal some of the controlled, full ensemble intricacy the band was capable of - they are less adventurous, but hardly sterile.

* - It was a pretty big deal when, as a teenaged youth, I saved up enough money to get a nice six CD magazine Pioneer CD player for my bedroom. Of course, I didn't have money for a tuner/ receiver or speakers, so unless I was listening to my CD Player on headphones - inconvenient for, when example, taking a post-football-practice-exhausted bath - I had to run a guitar patch cable from the CD player headphone jack to my guitar amp. (Have I mentioned this before? Probably. Oh, well). You may or may not know that while both the player and the guitar amp use a 1/4" plug, the CD player's is a stereo plug while the guitar amp's end is mono. So you can really only get one of the channels to play through a guitar amp with the set-up I was using. 90% of the time this doesn't matter a whole lot, as most stereo albums have a significant amount of bleed from left to right channels - i.e., the stereo divisions aren't strict - so the whole sound comes through a mono speaker anyways. But there are elements that only come across in one channel, and so a few albums in my formative youth were encoded as missing particular elements. Even today, when I hear them now, it's striking to hear this brand new melody line or what have you. For Wake, it was the opening sax line from "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away" - the sax was absent, so all I would hear were these odd, popping guitar vamp chords. The sax came in later in the song, which is really weird - why would you start in just the left channel and then move it later? - but I swear that's how it sounded. Other albums in the series were Led Zepellin III, Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, and DSOTM. There were more, I'm sure, but those are the ones I think of when I think of the complete absence of certain instruments. Please be aware that I will probably repeat this story when I get to those albums, too.

"Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo" opens the album with a laid-back, fiddle-led groove backed by some excellent lead guitar lines and old time piano-tinkling. I love the lyrics of this one, too; "What's the point to calling shots? / This cue ain't straight in line..." and the opening Cain & Abel nods just beg for sing-alongs. At about the 4:00 mark, the song drops into a summer-breeze bridge that carries out to fade out. This opener is just SF cool, a marked departure from the folk-dominated tone of the previous albums. This vibe continues with the sax-led rocker "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away" (also featuring the signature back-up vocals of Donna Jean Godchaux) and the super slowed-down Garcia crooned cool classic ballad, "Row Jimmy." For lack of better adjectives, the opening tunes of WotF largely sound like 1970s California: electric smooth, cares-away cool, and very smooth.

"Stella Blue" follows; if you don't know, this is one of those slow, religious experience Jerry Garcia ballads that "real" Deadheads live for. I've always thought this tune functions in concert as a huge come down from gigantic jams, so placing it here on the album (after "Row Jimmy") seems like an odd choice. This version is quite lovely but probably exhibit 1a for arguments for the Dead's superiority in concert; this is plenty gripping and pretty, but for whatever reason it does not carry the same emotional depth as a solid in concert version. Dgmw, still a solid version and makes for a sit down and think section to the middle of the album; just doesn't have all the power I associate with the tune; the concert tapes have spoiled me.

Things pick up a little bit with the almost too-hippie "Here Come Sunshine," another mid tempo chill-tune with an adequately uplifting chorus. Really straightforward tune, actually - just VCVCVC with that nice, build-up chorus. This starts the segue into the jazzier side of the Dead; this whole album is removed in tone/genre from the Americana of Workingman's and American Beauty, but with "Eyes of the World" and (even moreso) "Weather Report Suite," things take an overt foray into more complex chords, intricate guitar runs, and odd time signature breakdowns. Something resembling jazz-rock. "EotW" maintains a certain pop sensibility / hookiness that would be *absolutely* perfected in the next album in "Franklin's Tower;" for now, you get another very good breezy number with some expert guitar runs and just enough sing-along / dance-along impetus to genuinely lilt. "WRS," on the other hand, is a 12:43 multi-passage opus. It opens with "Prelude," a classical guitar intro that gets backed by drums and an organ and slowly fades into the full band "Part 1", complete with an emotional, closed eye vocal that throughout the tune teeters on the overly dramatic. "Like a desert spring / My lover comes and spreads her wings" are typical, and I guess if you're in the mood for such romanticism it's fine. The vocals are well blended (kudos, again, to Donna); that is one advantage of this version over some concert flubs. "Part 2: Let it Grow" is a progressive accelerando that stays on the melodramatic but matches it with tense music; this eventually fades into a horns-tinged jam that runs to a final vocal section ("What shall we say / Shall we call it by a name?") that brings the extended composition to a fine close. It's probably easy to figure this out, but "Part 2" is the bit that often gets run out into the ether in concert, i.e. where Grateful Dead "magic" happens. So such an abbreviated segment in light of the other versions always sounds a bit odd.

So there are a couple of things working against this disc. One, as noted, there are better versions out there of a lot of these songs, so there's a pervasive sense that even though these tunes are not sterile per se, they are not as lively as one knows they can be. Two, it's a bit too clean / laid-back for its own good. I happen to love this disc as one of my nostalgic Dead collections, but I can definitely see how people might think some of these tunes are a little plain and/or steering in a smooth-jazz sort of direction. I'd be hesitant, for example, to introduce someone to the GD with this disc, unless I already knew they were really into jazz-rock (in which case, Blues for Allah would be a better choice besides).

Still, this disc is a personal love and well worth your time. The opening track is a killer, and the rest is great for a can't care sunset / beer combination. A qualified yes for this one, and that qualification is that you be in the appropriate low-energy mood for soul-soothing.

(Addendum: Dick's Picks Vol. 1 contains about half of this album in a show from December 1973, if you want to see what I mean about the vivacity of the live performances).

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo"

The Crying of Parking Lot Lines

Oh, Scottsdale, you inconvenient slut, you.

Last night, Beck and I trekked over to L.A. Minor to see the "Ultimate Green Scene," an open house event at "the mixed-use, luxury residential project, the Optima Camelview Village." It's a huge, flora-smothered complex smack in the middle of Snotsdale featuring over-the-top amenities, 1.4 million dollar condos, etc. For all the lushness (luxury- and plant-wise), they entirely failed to explain what was green about the place. Ah, well. Xtina had helped out with one of the art exhibits and sent us an e-mail about the event, but due to some miscommunications over text, phone and e-mail, we went down there at 4 instead of the 6:30 she had planned on. Beck got cold* and hungry, so we got back in the car and looked around Collagenland for a place to eat. We settled on Stax, a burger joint. Our troubles started in the parking lot.

* - B: "I'm cold!" N: "Here, take my sweater; I've got a long sleeve shirt on underneath." B: "No." N: "Why not?" B: "I'm fine with complaining." N: "HRC**! HRC!"

** - neologism courtesy of iPMeghan. It stands for "Help-rejecting Complainer," an apparent frequent feature of humans everywhere.

Beck parked her itty bitty and thoroughly plastic Prius *slightly* to the right of center in a parking spot at the end of a row. I got out of the passenger's side, opening the door slowly and sliding out so as not to touch the car next to us. We started walking to Stax when behind us, a loud, shrill voice announced to the night:

"I really hope you didn't door my jeep!!!"

We all but ignored the voice, primarily not realizing that it was directed at me but also subconsciously, I am sure, refusing to recognize the use of "door" as a verb*. Unsatisfied, the wobbly an utterly Slutsdale-clad lady repeated her invective:

"I REALLY HOPE YOU DIDN'T DOOR MY JEEP SINCE YOU PARKED SO CLOSE TO IT."

* - In drunk skank's defense**, I realized I have used the word "door" as a verb, too, but only in the passive construction. It refers to when you are biking in Boston along the right side of the lane and a parked car's driver opens his driver's side door to exit as you pass; the proper construction is "I got doored on the way to work this morning," and every biker in the world will know what you mean. Just for the record, the proper response to getting doored - should you anticipate the action in time - is not to slam your brakes but to deliver a 20 mph forearm shiver to the driver in question. This, hopefully, will serve as Pavlovian reminder the next time they decide to exit their car on a busy street without checking the traffic behind them.

** - Or, as Beck noted this morning, "You can verb anything."

Okay, she got our attention. She was a typical Scottsdolt specimen, free to yell anything as passers by on account of her beefcake date (who, to his credit, ignored this exchange entirely). Beck politely responded, "What!!?!?" and the lady continued yelling, "You parked way close to it and he got out so slowly, I'm just warning you better not have doored my jeep." Flabbergasting, and I especially like the suspicion based on the fact that I had done the appropriate thing and exited the car carefully. WTF, crazy lady. Beck had slowly unholstered the Iron Fist and was about to discharge her God-given right to bear arms when I pulled her away and said, "Don't worry, your car is fine." Eskiho slams her door shut; Beck watched them pull out to make sure they didn't do something stupid to our car. Just an idiotic exchange, and as Beck noted, it's bizarre when you're traipsing around the earth assuming people are going to be decent and they just open up on such unfounded, hostile notes. So thanks for putting a senseless damper on our evening, moron; really appreciate it. Maybe next time you can actually check for a scratch on your car before demonstrating your esteemed IQ to the public.

And many, many apologies for exiting my car carefully. How DARE I!

Paving the World

Big, fat, life-altering news from the Ultimate front: BP and Gries stepped down from captaining duties for Sprawl, leaving a void in 2010 Sprawl leadership. Six people were nominated, four declined; two had talked previously about captaining together, were psyched to combine their complementary talents, and accepted. The 2010 crew of World Pavers, aka the Metro-Phoenix men's club team Sprawl, will be captained by Justin "Neon Deion" Dheintime and your very own Nyet "the Lesser" Jones. Tres exciting!

Dheintime, aka Trigger, is the same Justin who was a raging tour de force on your favorite VOTS team EVAH and mine, The Royal WEfnuk*. He's one of the faster human beings I've had the privilege of being burned by. I am pretty sure one of the reasons he stays so young is the time he spends near light speeds. I know, I slay you. But JD is standout kinds of quick with incredible endurance. Add to that some killer instincts and an already thorougly developed knowledge of the game. Primo mid-receiver and defender, the kind of guy other teams watch score multiple times at regionals and ask, "He has to get tired eventually, right?" No, no he does not. I feel I've already mentioned that on these pages, but you get the point: fantastic player, and youthful; at 26, he's not even at his peak yet. It's difficult to imagine him getting quicker, but in the short year-plus I've known him, his jumping, reading, throws that were already good have gotten better. Sky's the limit - *literally*:

All of which is to point out that we are balanced as players - he's young, fast, athletic and has hops, and I, er, balance that. No, seriously, I've morphed into the aged handler prototype for club frisbee purposes, so it's good to have that end of things (handler cuts, dumps, disc control, strategies, etc.) in my domain while the other aspects of the game (athleticism, man D, open field cutting, troop-inspiring) in his. If we had a third guy who was a big imposing deep threat, we'd be a perfect trio. Oh, wait - what's that you say? Gries and Vince (and... Cole?) are giant athletic deeps who will fill that role by wearing the proverbial As on their jerseys and being auxiliary captains? Why, it almost sounds like we have bases covered.

Most importantly, Triggs is the nice-guy Midwestern ying to my nasty Texas-via-East-Coast yang. Not to put either of us in any stereotypical holes - DT is certainly not going to put up with anyone's crap in any kind of aw-shucks way, even if he does have the boyish charm to panty-drop many an unsuspecting waitress. But he is by nature more positive than I am. I think we'll present a balanced front to the TEAM, be able to figure out which players respond to whom better, as well as keep one another in check. We are, you might say, like a spectrum, or two sides of a coin.

I've probably guffawed enough and made my point, but suffice it - Dheintime's an awesome guy, awesome player, and brings a lot to the table that I don't; I hope the reverse is true. We are intensely invested in the upcoming year - Sprawl made a leap this past year, and all indications are that with some good recruiting, some tweaking here and there, and some dedication from the team, we can take the great situation that BP/Griesy created and punch it up another DFW-ian plateau. I've got one or two legit years left as a club player before I make the "leap" to the Masters division, and I really hope I can a, hold together, and b, use the past 13 years of club experience to drive this team up. More news obviously to follow - I know this blog was lacking in Ultimate posts - but for now, let's leave it that my brain overfloweth with ideas. First step is recruiting some dudes...

*We are actually running up on the one year anniversary of that team's shocking and dominant Fall League Championship, so now would be as good of a time as any to reminisce on that juggernaut. 9-1, +59 points, +5.9 ppg in the regular season. We lost our opener to Offshore Swilling 15-8 (without Justin, not coincidentally), meaning that +/- was actually +66 for the nine victories, or +7.33 per game... yikes. We ran off 14 games in a row from that point, also going 5-0, +33 in the playoffs, including a crushing 15-6 revenge victory on OS in the finals. Memories... it is highly unlikely that Justin and I will ever get to play together on a league team again (or Pat and I, or Genevieve and I, etc.), so here's a repeat of a great picture of a great team:

Diam

saya diam bukan berarti tidak mendengarmu,
hanya memang kepala ini sudah terasa penuh.

saya diam bukan berarti tidak memperhatikanmu,
hanya memang segala lakumu sudah menjadi hapalan wajib.

saya diam bukan berarti tidak memikirkanmu,
hanya memang hati ini sedang lelah.

maaf,kalau diam ini ternyata menyiksamu. karena ada semburat pekat yang menghalangi. tenang saja, saya masih ada disini untuk kamu.

AR: Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (2008)

As trendy in the late 2000s as, well, vampires, NYC-based Vampire Weekend erupted on the indie pop scene in 2007 / 2008 and, um, the hipsters didn't stand a chance. It will save a lot of effort just to list their utterly true list of oft-made-association words, so here goes: afro-pop, preppy, effortless, chamber-pop, ivy league, Paul Simon's Graceland, baroque, erudite, nonsense lyrics, clean, catchy, catchy, CATCHY. Beck, D/C and I were lucky enough to catch these guys in Tempe last year where they were kind enough to play their album in mixed up order (plus maybe one non-debut album song) for us. Amazingly, this is one of the few times when hearing a rather note-for-note take of an album in a live setting did not disappoint but entrenched the already head-entombed songs even deeper into my consciousness. Like I said, CATCHY - just ask the Beck, who keeps a copy of this CD in her car at all times (and puts it on the iPod whenever I ask her to DJ - given that VW is not an audiobook or NPR, this should be rather striking). Their live show brought a ton of energy, and since we were at the tail end of their US tour (on which I imagine they had played that exact set of tunes a hundred plus times), I was pretty impressed that they delivered such a gripping, memorable performance. Then again, they were not exactly lacking in the fawning female audience members department, so it's not like they lacked proper motivation.

VW impresses as an exceedingly immediate album; it reminds me a lot of The Strokes' debut in its first-listen memorability and quick, direct appeal. VW owns a clean sound - synths, strings, that trebly lead guitar, and the crisp drum/bass work all stand out brilliantly. They took their time crafting the album, and it paid off greatly - this is one of those "every note in place" efforts, and more importantly, there is nary a clunker tune to be found. In lieu of the usual track by track account of great albums, I'll just insist that you get a hold of this one and let it infect your brain, too. The only tune I don't just love on this disc is "One (Blake's Got a New Face") because of that shrill tagline; it's just too much afro and not enough chamber for my tastes. Everything else ranges from solid to great to excellent - I'm sure people differ greatly in their favorites, but given that I'm hooked on ten of eleven tracks, the ones that get me song-stuck the most are "Oxford Comma," "M79," and "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance." Even saying that is silly; there's not a one on here that doesn't transmit those uplifting essence-de-cool-breeze grins.

All of that praise deservedly heaped - something in the nonsense lyrics and the over-hookiness of this one paradoxically holds it down for me. Almost as if this were too easy - if they can just spit out these brain viruses with this afro-chamber-indie formula, then surely some experimentation could *really* kill. So that's both a very minor detractor for this disc and a selling point for the band - they absolutely owned this sound and crafted a debut package of gems; it'll be interesting to see what happens when they expand beyond this great but somewhat contained sound/style.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Oxford Comma"

AR: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner

Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999)

This surprising disc was the last release from Ben Folds Five and, incidentally, the last album with a title that doesn't start with "Now That's What I Call" or "Time Life Presents" that I can recall seeing advertised on television. One four AM night/morning at Rice ended with this memorable black, white and red album cover streaking across the screen while an insistent announcer requested that I call some 1-800 number to secure "Ben Folds Five's new concept album." I was intrigued, natch, but elected to spend local and not pay $4.95 in S&H fees. I specifically remember listening to this in the admissions office with Beck and Brian Adolph while stuffing recruiting letters. Good times.

This disc is notably more serious than the previous Ben Folds releases - plenty of wit and one-liners, sure, but the jovial triumphant-and-or-scorned-dork tone (cf "Underground," "Song for the Dumped," "Battle of Who Could Care Less," etc.) (which, incidentally, I will never dissociate from witty-triumphant-scorned-dork-and-recently-married-pal Jason Duke) is less upfront. Part of the impression is due to the album's operatic opening quartet of songs. "Narcolepsy" practically flashes a neon sign that says "Theme! Motif! Dramatic Narrative!," screaming "Musical!" much more than "piano rock album." Which is cool - off the bat, we get the feeling that this disc will be a stab at the (seemingly entirely Shimon-endorsed) EPIC album. It's an exceedingly solid opener, complete with a rollicking bridge and full band explosion.

"Don't Change Your Plans" is another somber ballad / mid-tempo rocker fraught with BF's signature sensitive-guy songwriting about breakup. Typical heart-breaking lines: "You have made me smile again / In fact I might be sore from it / It's been a while." It notoriously features a shmaltzy horn bridge (allmusic calls this Burt Bacharach-ish, and, um, yep) that you can either find exceedingly cheesy / played or hipster-ironic, depending on your sympathies. Outside of that, the song is effectively sad, only to be outdone by the self-pitying/blaming follow-up, "Mess." Hard to declare whether the narrator of this minor-key-ish rolling piano number deserves sympathy - the appeals of "I don't believe in God / So I can't be saved" are as teenaged melodramatic as they sound, but the repeated admissions of his own failure and the solitude it's engendered are sincere. It's another "big" song, and I'm always well-sucked into its disjointed, associative sad narrative.

"Magic" takes another turn for the operatic and reminds us all that we are in the land of strings and tympanis. "Saw you last night / Danced by the light of the moon" sections seem to borrow as much from REM as they do from your favorite Webber tune. More heart-aching follows in "Hospital Tune" which is as blue as it sounds (even a jazz fill can't life it). As you may have noticed, this big serious album hits a dramatic, romantic and tragic tone and spends its entire first half in a musically diverse but emotionally consistent phase. The ideas that are used to create this atmosphere aren't earth-shattering avant garde-ism, but these are risks that BFF is taking - there are no singles here, and the band seems happy sticking to its album-as-a-whole guns. Impressive stuff, and if you're in the mood for such story-telling, the first half of Messner can nail it.

Thankfully, though, the band does not overdo this mood. "Army" swoops in with uptempo, upbeat rock at exactly the right time, and the opening line - "Well I thought about the army / Dad said, 'Son, you're fucking high!'" - disturbs whatever was left of the dejected, somber mood. Horns blare in Chicago fashion, and a funny tale of misspent college, band breakups, and Chick-fil-A employment ensues. Some very "Rocky Raccoon" saloon piano work rears its head, too - in other words, the inner goof busted out. It's still a downer - "I say to my reflection / God please spare me more rejection!" - but the edge of cool self-loathing makes it fun/okay. And the end collapse / segue into "Your Redneck Past" is great, though, admittedly, anything that leads into a song with the lyric "Who do you wanna be? / Billy Idol or Kool Moe Dee?" is generally going to be great. "YRP" is another ironic take, a strident piano-banger in which the narrator laments his embarrassing beginnings. It again engages in cheesy piano fills and odd choices for a pop album. This fades into a somewhat eerie spoken word piece featuring a recorded telephone message from BF's dad (rambling about space atrophy) backed by some lounge music.

"Regrets" reprises the "I thought about ..." line from the end of Army and goes on to limn the narrator's childhood memories in a semi-monotone drone against a fast marching riffs. (Those riffs also underlie a laser-gun sounding synth lead that sounds a whole lot like something off BF's solo Fear of Pop album). The choruses in this one are spacey backup "ooh-oh-wah-oh-wah!" runs that continue the lounge feel from the previous song. The end of this song drops into nothing short of a Pink Floyd acme-of-angst scream a la The Wall or DSOTM (think "Great Gig"). It's jarring, and moreso since it's followed by the low-key "Jane," a piano hotel bar ballad that is decently "cool" but probably serves as the weak point of the album.

The album that opens up with the stereotypical (though good, dgmw) operatic number also pulls the classic closer with the tune un-cleverly titled "Lullabye." It's a bar-closing, sing-along waltz that's somehow both pitch perfect and incredibly cliched. It really makes no apologies for the latter fact, though, so I've always taken this bold-faced number with the appropriate salt and loved it despite its frivolity.

As is typical of the genre, Reinhold Messner doesn't really maintain its concept album all the way through - there are certainly a lot of introspective and lamenting tunes here, but its debatable whether there's any sign that they're tied to the same person or what on earth "Jane" or "Lullabye" have to do with any of it. The name "Reinhold Messner" was, according to the band, the name of one of the member's fake ID's in high school. So as autobiographical as some sections may sound (and, with BF's dad's voice recording, are), the patchwork may be just a great dreamed set of reflections for many invented identities. Fair enough; I admire the attempt and the willingness to divert from the indie-piano-rock vibe of their first two albums more than any idea of "perfect execution."

RM ends up being a great collection of non-"standard" BFF tunes regardless; BF would go solo soon after and indulge in more "biographical" songs that largely lack the grace of the ones here. I think that's what I like best of the album - it's got a lot of the same unapologetic geek-emotion of the first two, but unlike some of the later work, the tone comes off as measured/mature and not as overtly gushing. Not that I don't dig the unsubtlety of the earlier work and some of it from the later - those glowing reviews will come someday, too, and I'm sure I'll contradict myself thoroughly - but RM is a particularly good album from the mysterious-serious side of the BFF spectrum before solo BF trudged to its way-too-sentimental/goofy end.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Mess"

AR: Louden Up Now / Take Ecstasy With Me EP

Editor's note: Take Ecstasy With Me EP came up next in the reviewing queue, but since that's just a two track EP, I thought I'd combine it with the other !!! album I have, Louden Up Now. I've also noticed that these reviews are getting longer and longer, so with albums like this (to which I don't have a whole ton of attachment) I'm going to try to be more succinct. I'll probably fail.

!!! - Louden Up Now (2004)

Simply enough: this is aggressive, angry electro-dance-pop that wears its post-punk influence (think Gang of Four, early Talking Heads) on its sleeve. It's all about grooves and defiance and delivers a 53 minutes of beat-drivers. Two complaints - one, I prefer the sparser sound of the influences to chock-full spaces here. There's too much going on in the busy spaces here; because they have a dark, bassy sound, everything mushes together and ends up droning rather than pulsating. Two, I accept that they're pissed off, but some of the tunes - "Pardon My Freedom," "Shit Scheisse Merde Pt. 1" are unbecoming in their lack of subtlety. The repeated "Like I give a shit / Like I give a fuck" lines in the former are particularly grating, and I'm not willing to grant some kind of hip political consciousness because the latter namechecks Geroge Bush and Tony Blair. It's a cool enough album, and I might even cave to the allmusic claim that it's an "agit-pop classic." I guess I just don't care enough for that genre to be too jazzed by its classics. Not to say that it's bad - definitely interesting and flush with cool beats / electronica ideas, and it's got a couple of big time highlights in the opener ("When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Karazee" and the sprawling "Me And Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard (A True Story)." I just think there are better post-punk and electronic music albums out there, and so this "synthesis" doesn't entirely do it for me.

Status: Not Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Me And Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard (A True Story)"

!!! - Take Ecstasy With Me EP (2005)

Two covers comprise this seventeen and a half minute EP, the first a Magnetic Fields number and the latter one from Nate Dogg's (!) catalog. The first, "Take Ecstasy With Me," takes a lo-fi synth number and turns it into a pumping, majestic dancefloor remix classic, full of jangle and triumph. It's quite brilliant and could easily slide into a Depeche Mode > !!! > New Order sequence, which just trust is quite a note of admiration from me. The second song suffers from comparison to the original and comes off as a sort of hipster monotone take on a thumping hip-hop track. They do extend the song and jam it into the stratosphere, which is thoroughly interesting but isn't really enough to make the lackluster cover worthwhile. So the EP is a mixed bag, and maybe it's better just to think of it as the titular single, as that's definitely worth the price of admission.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Take Ecstasy With Me"

2016 West Club Boulevard

From the Watts-Hillandale house tour



The house was originally built in 1920 and 1921. It was once owned by the Dean of Duke's Law School Charles Lowndes. Lowndes time at Duke overlapped with that of famous Duke law school graduate, Richard Nixon. The neighborhood legend has it that Nixon once slept at #2016 W. Club. The house is still being remodeled.

AR: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)

The legend of Black Sabbath has always been a bit hazy for me. As I've referenced numerous times, Mr. Osbourne relieved himself on the Alamo* in 1982 and was banned from San Antonio** for some ten years, and I'm pretty sure he and Sabbath were consequently largely absent from my 1980s classic rock radio education. SA may love it some long-haired metal music, but it will not tolerate monumental micturation. Ozzy was more or less forgiven and invited back to perform somewhere around 1992, and some of the big hits ("Paranoid," "Iron Man,""Crazy Train") were certainly welcomed back to the airwaves. Still, a healthy part of the BS and OO oeuvres were absent from the KZEP-geist. So I figured out WAY after the fact (I mean, after "Mama I'm Coning Home" and "No More Tears," which, come to think of it, must have been the tour that got him back in SA's good graces) that this was pretty much the British grandfather band of metal. Their early catalog in particular is 17 kinds of dark, intense and powerful, the riffs are earth-shaking, and Ozzy is an insanely talented frontman. Woe unto thee who know only the drunken mind-wrecked clown on MTV; Ozzy was one scary, powerful dude, and Black Sabbath is listed by pretty much every scary, guitar-shredding metal legend as *the* seminal metal band.

* - Well, it was across the street on a monument commemorating the Alamo, but still.

** - Note: Not "banned from performing in San Antonio," but "banned from San Antonio." What kind of crazy Wild West @#$% is that? "I'm gonna let you ride your horse out of town, pardner, but don't you ever set foot in Bexar again... or else!" This was actually a huge deal in SA as you can imagine, though all I remember is that Ozzy Osbourne was sort of a scapegoat for all that is evil about rock and/or roll. I am sure my Episcopalean pastor-types had loads to say about OO and the occult. Suffice it: Ozzy ='ed BAD, and it's no surprise that his mid-'70s work got sort of deleted from the FM history books.

I know Black Sabbath best from Paranoid, their sublime 1970 LP that leads off with "War Pigs" and kills for 42 minutes straight. We'll leave that review for another day, but the point is that via that heavier-than-heavy album, I've always associated Black Sabbath with a dark, moldy castle dungeon brand of proto-metal. The three years between that album and this one did not leave the band stagnant - they play metal on this disc (this is frequently listed as a "metal masterpiece"), but ladies and gents, things have turned and this is a *prog*-metal album. Or at least a significant step in that direction. They already had a penchant for extended songs and face-melting guitar-work, even the occasional baroque mood-piece. But here, much more than previously, the songs are multi-sectioned, themed compositions that do not retreat from the dramatic - pianos, strings, overwrought synths, all manage to back Ozzy's wail.

Instead of just slaying faces with its signature riff, the titular album opener alternates between a grinding overdriven guitar section and a pretty, major-7 chorded, almost hippie-sounding acoustic chunk. In lieu of a final alternation into happy-land, the song takes a left turn into a bassed out grumbling new riff that might as well share DNA with every Pantera-breakdown segment. Really, dirty-heavy stuff. "A National Acrobat" continues this trend, opting for more multi-riffed sections that are so varied as to make it difficult to remember which excellent part of the song you're in. "ANA" in particular features astounding interplay from a multi-tracked Ozzy and an off the charts syncopated lead chunky riff. Badass stuff. Of course, this ADD style can't hack it for long, and the last two minutes of the song are dedicated to a very major key, honey-dripped sunshine riff that is as much of a departure from the "Iron Man" riff as I can imagine. Plenty of shreddage in these opening two tracks; the equally epic / great and stylistically similar "Killing Yourself to Live" appears later on the album, and these three are probably the closest to strict guitar metal the disc has to offer.

Other songs depart much more from that earlier BS sound. "Fluff" is an acoustic and piano and, I don't know, harp/harpsichord (?) ballad that sticks out sharply from the other material. It sounds like an homage to similar tracks on Surrealistic Pillow, which is precisely the last thing I would have expected from the most evil band in the land. "Sabba Cadabra" is a boogie-number that drops into a piano-backed and synthesizer-tinged section that anticipates a lot of G'n'R Illusion stuff; again, good, energetic stuff, some of my favorite kind of multi-instrument controlled chaos, but not in the expected mood. "Spiral Architext" takes all of these elements - the brighter sound, the multiple composed sections, the general grandeur - and adds strings on top of that! It's actually quite well executed, and while the only thing raw that's left is the scratch in the lead vocals, this still represents an interesting departure for the band that represents a real willingness to delve into artistry that does not genre-adhere.

Unfortunately, one instance of the experimentation goes too far. "Who Are You" is a plodding, overwhelmingly inorganic synthesizer tune that is frankly annoying / grating. It's, sorry, bad, and interrupts the album just like "Fluff," except this time additionally pleading that you stop the disc. The other misstep is the penultimate track, "Looking For Today," which pulls the odd trick of duplicating the idea of the "SBS" with alternation between distorted riff and acoustics. Only the riff sounds less like BS and more like some weird emasculated Cream cover band, and the acoustics (complete with flute backup) sound like generic San Fran psychedelia. "LFT" also resembles some of the stuff I recently complained about on Ace Frehley: generic riff rock that, sure, is cool because it's Ozzy o'er the top, but otherwise unspecial. These are a pair of bad tracks that each try to "mature" the band in opposite directions; the first is an attempt to get seriously artsy/modern, the second to write something pop-accessible. Neither try works very well, and BS ends up sounding like a band trying not to sound like itself.

It's just strange - there are moments on this disc where you'll swear that the inflections, instrumental combinations and alternations between riffs and choruses must have come from Rush (seriously - listen for "Spiral Architect's" opening "Sorcerors of madness" lines and try not to think about "Free Will"), not the godfathers of death and every other kind of metal. That album cover alone seems to advertise nightmares galore, and while you do get those nightmarish fractured narratives, you don't get the accompanying consistently terrifying tone. So it's a departure - historically a good one, as it worked them into more mainstream airplay and concert venues and the like. But one that takes this away from what I would term a metal masterpiece; the missteps hinder it more than a little.

Still, a very good album, full of interesting and energizing music, and another piece of evidence that this band that is missing from my pre-pubescent memories may be at their best when they're terrifying, but this intricate, more melodic-style is pretty impressive, too. (And once again, I've probably under-emphasized the obvious - the first three tracks I mentioned are four star, expert executions of interesting, aggressive prog-metal. Don't think that your heart won't get jolted when those riffs kick in. You've been warned).

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "A National Acrobat"

By the pricking of my thumb...

Something awesome this way comes - ladies and gents, your 2009 essay highlights. (Note that these are publicly available here, so it's not like I'm betraying anyone's privacy). Please take some time to really reflect on the grandeur at hand - some are funny because they're plainly wrong, whereas some have near-poetic constructions. Vote on your favorite! Enjoy, and be sure to read all the way to the end, as the last entry is my personal favorite.

Essay 1

"In this 21st century we live in, multifarious dire straights seem to embroil our world as we know it."

"Long ago before you and I were born and technology for the common sickness ceased to exist a hideous disease arose in the early 1300’s"

"Since the beginning, man has always wanted to be the best at everything."

"Millions of people have died from the flu and the fatality came from all different strains. The easiest solution of course would have been to kill off all the chickens and other birds.However, the money involved in this economy would simply not allow it. Also, one would have to include the entire animal rights activist."

"Sustainable energy is a concept that has aspects."

"Since humans have existed, they have been living off of energy to survive."

"The text filled with political figures and acronyms that are not properly introduced and to understand any references made one has to refer to footnotes or the index. "

"Beverages containing ethanol, namely tea and coffee, are also carcinogen enhancers."

"People are waiting on biological science to compose a cure for the deadly and heart breaking disease of HIV and AIDS and it is often said, 'I hope they find a cure soon'."

Essay 2

"The book, HIV/AIDS in Sports: Impact, Issues, and Challenges, addresses the HIV/AIDS issue in sports."

"A common disease that I recently discussed that requires its patients to experience daily use of vaccinations is diabetes"

"All organisms on this planet, whether they are eukaryotic (multicellular) ... "

" Dementia can then be really debilitating when AIDS is contracted, because it makes it harder for victims to walk and remember."

"The experiment conducted by cutting a gene out of one organism and joining it to a chromosome of another gene (38)"

"Smoking is one of the greatest causes of death. While smoking will not straight up kill you it is the leading cause of various sorts of diseases that will eventually kill the infected individual."

Essay 3 (Encyclopedic Entry)

"Sitting in traffic congestion, children’s Neurobehavioral functions have decrease in urban areas of China."

"According to Critical Condition by Barlett and Steele, health care is responsible for most deaths associated with disease."

"First, they prove that those without money are usually sick because poverty does not allow them to live in mediocre extremes."

"biology is an extremely broad branch of science that deals with a number of things."

"Anytime there is an introduction of a new law, especially in the field of biology and society, there is going to be a great level of application."

"Dietary intake is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle."

"Cancer is winning the war over heart disease which makes it the number one killer in the United States."

"Another theory is that cancer is a natural consequence of human evolution, and in order to combat cancer we would need to reproduce in a different way."

"Breast cancer is a cancer that originates in the breast."

"For humans, meat is tasty – no one would disagree with that."

"In countries such as Africa..."

"An earth without plants and animals would cease to exist."

"Only one disease throughout the centuries has been labeled as one which has killed more individuals than any other disease."

Last, and Yes, Least, the PAPER INTRO OF THE YEAR!

"According to the Encarta encyclopedia there are many different definitions for smoking. One definition is that smoke is a cloud of tiny particles. These particles are masses of tiny particles in the air that rises up from anything that is burning. Smoke can be from a cigarette or any other tobacco products. It can also be from anything that can be smoked. There can be vapors that resemble smoke. Vapors are something that resembles smoke. They usually contain minute particles that are suspended in a gas but they are not specifically considered smoke. Smoke can be something that obscures. It can obscure or obstruct (4). "

2310 West Club Boulevard

From the Watts-Hillandale house tour



This house was built in 1915. It is a classic one and a-half story, side gabled bungalow. The original owner was a local doctor, Dr. Baird Brooks. He was one of many doctors who originally settled in this neighborhood near Watts hospital (now the North Carolina School of Science and Math). Although he only lived there until 1921, he had the noted Durham architect, George Watts Carr, built him another recognizable Durham building, his medical offices. The apartments still at the corner of West Chapel Hill Street and Gregson Avenue were constructed for Dr. Brooks.

Heads Up, Seven Up

Just survived grading a whole slew of essays over the past few days (as well as helping many students write those essays in the first place). As I posted on facebook this morning, I had 94 students * 1700 words each / (50,000 words per 175 pages) = 559 pages of a rather confusing and repetitive novel. Took a while, but it's done, so I'm finally able to do productive stuff like blog and listen to Kiss albums. Ha.

The whole grading dilly was more harrowing than I'm letting on, mainly because of the crap that led up to it. I helped a bunch of students between Tuesday and Thursday, the vast majority of whom were working on drafts and trying to put something coherent together. The vast majority of whom are great students who are really grateful and appropriately respectful and all of that. Unfortunately, it just takes one bad apple to spoil the whole damn bunch (thus spake Axl), and it only takes one or two students to wreck a day. I had one student come into my office unannounced at 11:50 - not my office hours - ten minutes before I needed to meet with Jason. She was contesting her essay grades - she had received a C on each of her first two assignments. I had only graded the first one - a month before at this point - but I still (stupidly) offered to take a look at it. She had botched her citation (no date, publisher or site of publication) and had failed to format her essay, so it was relatively easy to convince her of the validity of the first 1.5 points (out of ten) she had lost. Unfortunately, the other point she had lost was due to grammar mistakes. I started to read her essay with about two minutes before my meeting with Jason; I told her it would probably be a good idea to go over this at a later date when I had more time to read everything. She insisted on seeing one grammar mistake. It turns out that her paper had 21 grammar mistakes (in 800 words), not counting comma and capitalization errors. A lot of them were obvious, and it would have been easy if I had just pointed to one of her many sentence fragments or subject-verb disagreements to justify the deduction. Unfortunately, having not read the essay in a month, I went with the first one I saw, which was:

"This also includes the other spectrum of hypothyroidism, which is hyperthyroid."

So, to my eyes, it should be obvious that this is wrong; she meant "the other end of the spectrum." At the very least, for consistency she should have said "hyperthyroidism." And it should be "the spectrum of thyroid disorders" or something of that ilk. I tried to point out the error; she contested mightily. Loudly, and in-my-facedly. I tried to explain why it was strange to use "spectrum" this way; she replied with - I am not kidding - "it was a spectrum, like the heads and tails of a coin." Um, okay. After yelling at me for a few seconds, she closed with "So, you're just taking off points for bullshit that doesn't matter," and stormed out. Awesome. More awesome is that it is thoroughly recommended that we *document* cases like this, so I got to spend a bonus hour writing down all of her ridiculous grammar errors. Ugh.

Later that day, the prof of the class we're TAing innocently asked the class "if there are any questions or concerns about the class before I start lecture today." Unsurprisingly, a couple of people, one jerk in particular, took the opportunity to carp at length about the grades they had received. Mind you that the averages Katherine (the other TA) and I have come up with for the assignments this far have been in the 8 range, more or less ideal for a big, normally distributed course. Still, they loudly complained about the grading process, and then several of them came up to me after class demanding feedback. Which would have been great and all ... had they done it throughout the course of the semester and not all at the same time when we had a paper due that night. I actually managed to accommodate all of them - miraculously - and the majority figured out exactly why they deserved the grade they got if not worse. So that was good, I suppose; still, it meant we spent a lot of our days the last week getting chipped at by students. Not awesome.

In the background of all of this have been three blatant plagiarism cases that have required meetings and documentation and general idiocy. There's an exquisite kind of awkwardness that accompanies meeting with a student to whom you have nothing to say beyond "You cheated, we know it, here's the proof, what do you have to say for yourself?" At one of these meetings, the professor got detained at a meeting, so when we showed up at 1:30, we ended up sitting there for fifteen minutes in the hallway with the perpetrator. That's fun. Small talk: "So, read anything interesting in NATURE lately?" Ugh. Anyways, these are not fun, and the university academic dishonesty policy basically puts TAs / profs in a position of either slapping someone on the wrist (0 for the assignment), marring their transcript for life (giving them an "XE," which means "F for Academic Dishonesty) (which incidentally, if the student is a senior taking the course to fulfill a graduation requirement, has the side effect of delaying his graduation for at least a semester), or seriously wrecking their life (expulsion, etc.). My impulse is to throw these morons to the wolves, as these are not cases of "whoops, I forgot to cite that" but cases where words were changed in order to disguise the thievery. The classic "it would have been less work to just write the paper" situation. But then that slave morality sets in, and you don't want to substantially alter the course of someone's life based on something idiotic they do when they're 21. Tough situation. And an annoying, time-consuming one.

So enough of that; the TAing has caused an extraordinary amount of work lately and I am glad to have hit a lull in the semester for that course. We really have been going a little bit above and beyond - helping with essay editing, designing a lot of the assignments, generally putting out fires behind the scenes. I'd write myself a good rec, I think. More importantly, a few of the good students who have made honest, heartfelt efforts to improve themselves through the course have been making great strides. That's fun / endearing to see. I.e., it's not a lost cause, even if it may be missing.

Sorry for the self-indulgence; just thought I would write quickly about that as it has dominated the Nyetscape lately. As a reward for your reading, I will post something awesome next.

AR: Ace Frehley

Kiss - Ace Frehley (1978)

It's bad enough that I grew up in the land of KISS and KZEP, Riff Capital USA, home of the hard rock, black concert-t-shirt style-sense, the urine-drenched-monument-housing San Antonio. Thank Hashem and whomever else that I wasn't born in approximately 1962. Had I been at that key impressionable age of 14 in the mid 1970s, I am fairly POSITIVE that Kiss would have eaten my poor impressionable soul alive. I would have carried lunch boxes and worn overly enthusiastic Halloween costumes. I am telling you, I am merely temporarily separated from a lifetime of leather-clad, makeup-wearing superfandom; nothing about my constitution necessarily finds that to be a bad idea. Close call, but dodged. I mean, I still got me some pretty wicked riff-rock transcribing DNA, and I will headbang and make devil-horn hand gestures with the best of them. Still, I missed the most theatric and ridiculous aspects of Kiss Rock, and that was a lucky accident.

In 1978, these guitar-as-unsubtle-penis-wielding marketing masterminds released four separate solo albums simultaneously, one from each member of the band. The biggest "guitar" of them all, Ace Frehley*, released what is generally regarded as the best of the four, sticking to the signature Kiss sound and rocking our collective faces off. Not a lot shocking here; lots of loud, guitar-led arena-ready simple rockers with drug-and-sex-oriented lyrics to keep the teens interested. Lotsa energy and sincere snarling, unsurprisingly; what is at least a little surprising is some of the melodic force that these tunes carry. And these tunes manage not to get mundane despite the repeated ownership of their genre. Yeah, sure, indie hipsters everywhere get over yourselves and admit it - this unrelenting dinosaur "cock-rock" is more than a little infectious.

* - Alright, i can rag on Kiss with the best of them, but 1, for a pop-rock band, they do bring it, and 2, I cannot hear the named Ace Frehley w/o immediately singing, "I've got posters on the wall / my favorite rock group Kiss / I've got Ace Frehley / I've got Peter Criss / Waiting there for me, yes I do!" And anyone who inspired Rivers Cuomo is cool with me. And let's not be absurd; I do dig the sound. Which is why I'm so frightened of alternate universe Nyet who was 14 in 1976. Yikes!

I'll go ahead and assume that you've got a firm concept of "classic rock" properly defined and that when I say, "Any of these songs could have sat comfortably on a Dazed and Confused soundtrack," you'll have a solid idea of what I'm talking about. Big guitar sounds, vocals drenched in reverb, dumbly hooky verses and choruses and some solo-driven bridges that catch big, obvious fire. The album opener is a little cliche in this sense; "Rip it Out" just ends up sounding like an Alice Cooper reject and every segment is predictable. "Speedin' Back to My baby" is no less predictable, but it's a high energy blues rocker that carries past its tired form by virtue of its enthusiasm. Both "Snowblind" and Ozone"are slowed-down, big screaming riff numbers that get dark and invoke BOC. The former features a long peppy bridge; the latter has nice acoustic splashes over the top and color-me-crazy, breaks down into a Zappa-esque middle segment. "What's on Your Mind" treads a little back into the played realm; it sounds like it could've been nonchalantly ripped as the That '70s Show theme and no one would have noticed. Catchy and memorable, not exactly earth-shattering or subtle in any way, the first half is adequately effective.

The big moments of the album are saved for side 2, unfortunately juxtaposed with some more the same (but serviceable) basic rock. "New York Groove" is a big deviation from the rest of the album with a clap-along sunshine soul feel; it weirdly sounds like a combo effort from Lou Reed and some kind of super-happy, white bread funk band. There is nothing hard rockin' about this tune - it really stands apart on the album - but it's pretty, beaming-smile-inducing and unashamed of its joyful stomp. The album closer, "Fractured Mirror," is an epic, instrumental feature tune, with Frehley balancing his soaring leads with a folk-pleasant acoustic. This is a nice, stand-out (if a little Journey-esque) closer to an album that otherwise engages in way too much comfort with its formula.

So: a highly enjoyable if somewhat safe album. Nothing is bad on this disc at all, and that's a big plus; I love me a top-to-bottom album. Still, enough moments betray risk aversion that I can't jump all over this one. If you've got a hankering for some larger-than-life, believe-in-rock-gods-again good times, you could easily do worse that Ace Frehley. That is what we in the business call a "qualified rec."

Status: Recommended (Solid)
Nyet's Fave: "New York Groove" (though, really, there are a number of good if not spectacular choices here)

2215 West Club Boulevard

From the Watts-Hillandale house tour



The house was built in 1923 by the prolific Durham builder, John T. Sally. It is a Craftsman style brick bungalow. Sally built another Craftsman style house across the street at 2212, as well as simpler houses at numbers 2405, 2407, 2409, 2411, 2413 and 2415 Club. The original homeowners, the Tottens, lived in the house during the height of the Depression with nine other people, including five nurses from nearby Watts-Hospital. The house towers above the street and is a spacious 3000 square feet.

2422 West Club Boulevard

From the Watts-Hillandale house tour



The house was built in 1914. It is the oldest house on the street. It was originally built by a Southern lawyer, Sumpter Brawley and his wife, the civic activist, Margaret Brawley. He served in the North Carolina House of Representatives and the State Senate. She is credited with staging a sit-in outside the Durham City Manager's office until he agreed to plant hundreds of trees along Durham's streets. Between 1970 and 1998 the house was divided into in a multi-unit set-up, with many tenants and even a day-care. It has since been converted back. It features a huge backyard and five bedrooms.

2301 West Club Boulevard

From the Watts-Hillandale house tour



The house was built in 1924. It is a classical revival cottage. The first homeowner, Dillard C. Mitchell, Jr., was the bookkeeper for the Durham Lumber Company which was owned by his father. The master bath features an original commode with 1924 stamped into the lid. The garage, never used for automobiles, was moved to the property from another location in 1967. Side note, Club Boulevard used to be called E Street in this part of town.

1111 Iredell Street

From the Watts-Hillandale house tour



This house was built in 1922, in the Craftsman style. Iredell was known as 8th street until 1960. The original owner Andrew Dennis was also the owner of Dennis Grocery, which was started by his father. It was once located at 1110 Broad St. The house cost less than $2,000 to originally build. It has a beautiful back garden.

Mish Mash

One of the Clarion Content's favorite things about chili is its flexibility. Surely we have recipes we follow and adore, but some nights when we want chili it is simply a matter of grabbing some ground beef on the way home from the office, seasoning it to taste, and finding the right mish mash of ingredients in the pantry.

This experiment in pantry chili went over fairly well at a Monday Night Football gathering.

2 lbs ground beef, cook in a skillet with 1/4 stick of butter until meat is full browned. Season to taste throughout with salt, pepper, garlic, and chili powder. Our recommendation be liberal with all the seasonings but the salt. (This is the base for most of the Clarion Content's chili recipes)

Drain most of the grease from the frying pan and combine cooked ground beef in a large soup pot with two cans of drained black beans, one can of refried beans, and one can of tomato paste. Keep over low heat for at least thirty minutes, stirring occasionally. Continue to season with black pepper and chili powder. For extra kick, we added a couple of healthy dashes of habanero sauce.

Don't eat the meat in the tube

A dear friend of the Clarion Content's editorial board works as a butcher in our local Durham, North Carolina area. The butcher says, "Don't eat the meat in the tube." If you are buying ground beef, get the stuff that is saran wrapped on the white tray. The difference? It is packed locally, whereas, the meat in the tube is mass wrapped in distant locales, hopefully kept cold, and shipped to your local grocery store. (In Durham, that would be a Harris Teeter, Kroger and Food Lion or retail giants Wal-Mart and Target.)

Africa splitting

And no, we don't mean that figuratively, Africa is literally splitting in two according to geologists from the University of Rochester. A thirty-five mile long gash opened up in Ethiopia as recently as 2007, it is twenty feet wide in places. Scientists say the process mimics rifts that open on the bottom of the ocean floor. Fox News reported, "the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began 'unzipping' the rift in both directions.

The African and Arabian tectonic plates meet in the remote Afar desert of Northern Ethiopia. They have been spreading apart in a process that moves at a speed of less than 1 inch per year, over the past 30 million years. This rifting process formed the 186-mile Afar depression and the Red Sea.

Read more here.

AR: Live/Dead

The Grateful Dead - Live/Dead (1970)

In honor of 2009's Day of the Dead, I thought I'd throw some GD on the metaphoric spinner for the evening. L/D is, along with Workingman's Dead, the first GD album I owned. I had read a feature piece in Entertainment Weekly (courtesy of Aunt Pat - happy BDay!) - this must have been 1993 or so* after Garcia had collapsed and forced the cancellation of the fall 1992 tour - that included a review of their entire discography. This was back when I thought (naturally, being a music-citizen of San Antonio, whose radio stations remain KZEP and KISS) the Grateful Dead *had* to be a "death" metal band. Much to my surprise, the review made references to "Americana" and "folk" and "blues" and a slew of other non bat-head-eating, Alamo-urinating-upon terms. Workingman's and American Beauty received A+ grades, but Live/Dead had received an A along with the recommendation "if this doesn't hook you, nothing will." Okay, EW, I'm sold - I took my hard-earned (yeah, right) $30 to the CD Warehouse and grabbed the two aforementioned albums. L/D went in the player first, and a -Head was born.

* - Actually, it's March 12, 1993 to be exact - here's the EW cover in question:


And here's a link to the discography review I mentioned. And the cover article, while we're at it. Ah, the interwebs.

The disc is a double album that emphasizes the exploratory live aspect of the band. The first track originally took up the entirety of side 1 - 23:16 of bassy, loosely jazzy and mind-blowing space rock. It's the definitive version of "Dark Star," a Dead tune that carries all of the band's mystique and is a veritable litmus test of fandom. Even though it sounds quite unlike anything else in the band's catalog, it's a great feeler - the spirit of it either entirely captures you (it's cool, interesting and entrancing to focus on a strange tune that spirals all over the place) or will, frankly, piss you off and inspire the term "noodling." I obviously had the former response. The song slowly yawns into existence and goes on an obscure lyric-laden, melodic-but-freewheeling journey. Highs and lows, jumping excitement and meditative slumber; the song's got IT in a big way. Just a fascinating, murky and odd tune; one for the ages.

If "Dark Star" hooked me, then "St. Stephen" bought my lifetime membership card. I would describe it, if pressed, as soaring acid troubadour Renaissance rock. A screaming lead guitar is juxtaposed with bubbling keys and followed by a sing-songy verse that sounds as though it's being canted out of a sacred, gilded text. And then a free-rhythm vocal / bassline bridge continues the mythic feel, only for the original melody to come back in and slide into a rambunctious short jam. One more verse, an odd vocal coda, and then... a military march? And an all-band assault jam? Yes. The tune is a deliciously weird seven minutes and stands out even above "DS" in the unique song catalog; again, this is the best-of, definitive version. The song segues into a soaring (mostly instrumental) ten-minute jam called "The Eleven," named after the song's wacky 11/8 time signature. Some lyrics pour out ("Only time will tell..."), but this song is really about an all-out, paradigmatic, driving jam. Another stellar showcase for the band's live energy that, incidentally, segues into

"Turn on Your Love Light." Another definitive version - have I mentioned that this album is an absolute gem of 1969 Grateful Dead? - this is a throaty blues / soul / gospel number that tears the roof off. The vocals are superb, the joke is great - this is not, um, the typical religious method of letting one's light shine - and the guitar work is thrilling. Even the snares and borderline drum solos that get worked out here are dance-inducing. Things drop down to just drums and vocals - gospel revival tent style - eventually guitars sneak in, the rest of the band creeps along, and an extended call and response freeform jam goes down. Maybe a little much at fifteen minutes - no one accused this band of restraint - things eventually wrap up to a triumphant close ("And leave it on!"), and you've just experienced three of the best sides and one of the best extended fifty-four minute, four song openings of any album out there.

Side four is a decidedly more reserved affair. Jerry Garcia takes the lead on guitar and world-weary vocal for "Death Don't Have No Mercy," a much darker, slower gospel-blues number by a fella named Blind Gary Davis. This song is an emotional rager with trickling organs balanced against slow, minor key leads. Cool, somber-soulful work from Jerry, and a welcome respite from the mayhem of the rest of the album. It's followed by "Feedback," a song that is just what you think it is: an extended (7:49) psychedelic freakout that explores the acid-laced soundscape one can achieve by limiting the distance twixt pickups and amp. As far as the severely experimental rock genre goes, it's actually a quite interesting listen - the feedback is controlled such that it is not just annoying noise for annoying noise's sake, more like a beast trying to escape. I won't lie and say I dig this one out frequently, but still - while it's got a decidedly different vibe, I'd place it at about 11,756 times better than, say, "Revolution 9."

The album closes on the traditional a cappella hymn, "And We Bid You Good Night." As opposed to other recently reviewed albums with songs bidding the night adieu - cough, cough - this is a lovely lullaby close to the disc. Just 36 seconds, but it nicely caps off the freakout session of the previous track and brings things to a graceful close.

I can't emphasize enough what a seminal disc this was for my formative middle and high school youth - I'll forever associate, for example, "St. Stephen" and "Love Light" with my black Jeep Cherokee and rolled-down windows, blasting the Clark country-pop masses for all they were worth. And I played this one, too, late at night, letting the smooth licks of "Dark Star" lull me. You can pretty much pin all of my tastes for extended, exploratory, not-necessarily-so-focused music on this album, so all that followed - Phish, Miles, Coltrane, Zappa, you name it - can be traced back to that fateful day with an EW mag. So for all the Hollywood pandering, it can do good work in this world! L/D was and still is my favorite GD album, yes, even better than WD and AB, so it'll be the one packed in the suitcase. Find a dark room and listen to it prone; I did, and it was definitely a move for the better.

Status: Desert Island Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "St. Stephen"