I was honored to be asked to do some vinyl record reviews for a seller/website www.lprevival.com. This weekend, I made a couple videos and when they’re finished and posted to youtube I’ll link to them here. Meanwhile, check out www.lprevival.com!
A phosphorus inked vinyl record, and the needle replaced by an LED emitter, the record actually displays current news headlines in the ink and it fades away to be written again and again.
Check it out:
I have simultaneous batches of an original recipe of honey mead (recipe consisting of a bunch-load of clover honey from Walmart, some tea, cloves, and water), and a California Cabernet Sauvignon bubbling nicely in their respective fermenters. I made the mead before I left for 6 months, and it didn’t finish fermenting, so after six-months in the keg sitting on gas, I poured it into a primary and added champagne yeast and a bit of yeast nutrient and it’s off, cooking like a beast.
The Cabernet is smelling up that whole corner of the house. Man making wine is super super easy compared to beer and even mead. It’s just sterilize, pour, pitch yeast and cover. And, the best part is that at the end of a month I’ll have wine at 2.00 a bottle that costs 25.00 and up at the store. Yay!
Them Crooked Vultures is a supergroup with Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), and John Paul Jones (Led Zepplin). First, anyone must admit that this is the most amazing mash-up ever. We all love it when Dave Grohl and Josh Homme get together, like they did for Songs of the Deaf.
I just love Dave Grohl. He’s got the Midas touch, and a gift for choosing which bands and musicians to work with. The addition of John Paul Jones is such a mind-blast. Jones also appeared on Foo Fighters In Your Honor.
The songs on the album are a slight departure from Homme’s usual Queens style, but remain a bit as if it were a new Queens album. Of course the addition of the other two performers add a different style to the band, and it seems at times that Homme is trying a different style more akin to early Zepplin and even one vocal melody is almost identical to Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, and another song, Scumbag Blues, a melody is just about identical to Strange Brew by Cream.
The only thing that would make this even better? Raise John Bonham from the dead and bring Grohl out from behind the drums and sing with Homme. The album even sounds as if the other two guys joined Homme in the Desert for Desert Sessions Supergroup Vol 1. The songs are a lot like Homme’s side project Desert Sessions, they seem free, creative, and sound as if they were written in one pass.
Elephants, the fifth song on the album sounds as if they fast forward through all the Zepplin albums all at once. What a great album. I mean it’s not fantasticaaahh like early Grohl, early Homme, and early Jones, but these guys have matured in their own ways to bring us this outstanding rock and roll. This may just be a great year for music, first the incredible Shrinebuilder, now this! Come on 2010, BRING IT!
When the Levee Breaks is a book about the making of Led Zepplin IV. That’s an entire book, albeit small, about the making of one album. What sets out to be a great 200 page blog post about the making of Zep IV was found by some critics to be lacking in the fundamentals. One Amazon.com reviewer states:
“Nothing new or the slightest bit insightful can be found within these pages. Anyone who’s read a decent book or two about Led Zeppelin (not counting the terrible Hammer of the Gods or Richard Cole’s travesty) already knows everything supposedly “revealed” here. There’s a lot left out, and Fyfe seems to attribute every good idea the band had to drugs. He keeps calling them “hippies,” and has the nerve to claim that they never went on to release an album on par with the fourth. Excuse me?”
I found the book at a book warehouse for 4.00 and decided to pick it up. It just intrigued me that someone would write a book about a single album. I suppose if everything’s wrong in the book, well, that’s not cool. I’ll still give it a go and read it, it’s fairly short.
The company who published When the Levee Breaks also published books on these albums:
Looking at the reviews of these books on Amazon and other sites, I saw a recurring theme. ” The author didn’t do his research…” “Hire a proofreader…” “What I thought would be an interesting microscopic book about a great album ended up being like a High School Term-paper…” So, it looks as if the publisher, whom I cannot find on the internet, hired some trade writers to write a long article on a single album and call it a book. The articles/books aren’t very well thought out, researched, or written, and sell based on the title and included pictures alone. The bibliography for Levee is only 9 long at least 3 of them are not about Led Zepplin at all. It’s really too bad, because the publisher suckered me into buying the book based solely on, of course, the title and included pictures. It’s really too bad, too, if the publisher would have sought out some really top-notch writers, these could have been really excellent books, they did choose the right albums!
