The Daily Brief

Just sayin’…the man can SING.

Say what you want about American Idol…they found a real deal.

I’ve never bought anything Idol. I’ll buy this guy’s album.

It’s like Christmas. You know it’s coming. Can you feel it? Just three more days. Three more days until the very last Star Wars movie ever. Yeah…whatever.

Everywhere you look there’s Star Wars. The front caps of aisles in Target, Walmart, you’re local grocery store is full of Star Wars tie ins. Pepsi, Pez, GIANT Pez, M&Ms. Chewie’s selling ringtones and Yoda’s drinkng Pepsi. If you have a nine year old you also know that the tie-ins have invaded Cartoon Network. A Star Wars themed Kids Next Door, Star Wars Clone Wars in heavy rotation, Star Wars Legos cartoons. Which brings me to the toys. My son now has two light sabers…his choice with his money…and he wants one more…he wants the one that changes color for when Anikin becomes Darth. His Dad’s avoiding that one for now. Of course if you have Star Wars Legos Cartoons…ya gotta have Star Wars Legos.

You’d think with all the tie-ins that it would be enough. Everyone and their freaking brother will be going to see this movie. It’s what they call a genuine media event. Next Monday everyone will be hanging out by the water cooler talking about the light saber battles and the transformations.

And you can’t argue with the man’s sense of timing, I mean my GOD it opens on the last day of school here.

Well…almost everybody. There are those who think it won’t be cool to see Star Wars. It’s not part of who they are. They get they’re kicks either bashing liberals or bashing Bush. Politics is their gig. It’s serious stuff. Not like Science Fiction.

But wait! What’s this? George Lucas has put some topical political dialouge into the movie and he’s been talking about it at Cannes? From the right the cries of, Liberal Bastard! From the left a hearty, Right On! Oh you know when the political farts are let loose the theater will go crazy. And so…the politicos who were too serious to see the movie are now planning on going…maybe the second week…avoid all the scifi geeks. But now they’re going.

Mr Lucas…I salute you sir. Just a few more lines of dialouge and you’ve added what? A few hundred thousand? A million or two more bodies in the seats.

Political M&Ms…wow…that’s just good…or pure evil…hard to say…seems to be a grey area there doesn’t it?

I was shocked to see Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation have a new album out this week. Since I haven’t completely blown my music budget for the month I had to see where he was at.

Another Tribe: Nice drum attack at the beginning. Kasmir 2005? …Plant’s not letting loose here…softly phrasing…lilting…those Moroccon drums from Kasmir and the curtains of strings flowing over you. Very nice. An anti-war theme here.

Shine it All Around: Nicely layered vocals here. Kind of a Ragdoll beat happenin’. Again with the MidEastern curtains of strings…BIG hard drums in the back of this once, crunching and cracking like Bonham. Bassline struts through this one too…you can imagine Plant shaking his ass up to the audience here.

Freedom Fries: Yeah…it’s a shot at us…but it’s a nod at our music too, this is pure American Rock. Rockabilly, some more crunch here. The drums are synchopating some kind of weird off-beat here. Building to harder rock…Black Doggish.

Tin Pan Alley: Synth? Whoa…trippy. Kinda talky…trippy…not trip hop but…something building here…Plant’s doing that moan thing that only he can get away with and keep a straight face. WHAM! Audio Orgasm! Way to mix it up.

All the King’s Horses: English Pastoral Country…think Over the Hills and Far Away…but I’m liking this much more than I ever liked the Zepplin acoustic. The words are easy to listen to. Guitars are simple but BIG here, not overpowering Plant…supporting and even lifting his vocals.

The Enchanter: John Lee Hooker? meets…Peter Gabriel…meets The Honeydrippers…meets The Doors…and this is working for me. The end is pure…Zep…sorry…When the Levee Breaks? Is that the riff there? Woops not the end, more synth…where’s that going? A heartbeat? Whoa again…the last minute is some stuff the house mixers are going to have a freaking field day with.

Takamba: African rythms and strings into Zep crunch and grunge. Plant’s vocals just damn fine here.

Dancing in Heavan: Layered vocals and acoustic rythm guitar again going into trippy moaning, another layer of vocals in second verse…sweet electric lead guitar on the break there…there’s still a Morrocan thing happening here.

Somebody Knocking: African again but a different flavor..less curry. More grits…bluesy…funky acoustic lead riffing there…under that weird sitar thing…no, not the sitar…that weird instrument where it makes noise depending on how you mess with the field around it…can’t remember the name of it.

Let the Four Winds Blow: What should rockin’ blues sound like in 2005? Here ya go. Let’s take a walk…

Mighty Rearranger: Last song was a lead into this one…they really shouldn’t be played on their own. For those of you non Zep fans, this is one of Plant’s nicknames. And he’s wearing it proudly on this one. Jethro Tull meets Paul Butterfield meets ZZ Top? That was FINE.

Brother Ray: Barrelhouse blues, a short sweet nod to Ray Charles…well done.

Shine it all Around (The Girls Mix) (iTunes only? don’t see it listed on the playlist for the disk): House mix of the above and the producer’s spent too many nights in raves…and I mean that in the best possible way. I wanted to start trancing out and I haven’t been on a rave floor in 20+ years. (For you youngsters and anyone else who has a problem with that last sentence, rave and house music started in Chicago in the early 80s, I was there. There’s nothing to argue about. Let it go.)

The question is do you like Robert Plant when he’s not worried about being Robert Plant? Because this is Robert Plant. It’s big, it’s ballsy, it struts, it moans, it crawls, it growls and it soars. From what I can see this is his second endeavor with The Strange Sensation and good on him for adding them to the credits. They simply freaking rawk.

Looks like “Shine it All Around” is the first single and it’s already up to 23 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock List. I may have led with the title track but if that, Freedom Fries, Tin Pan Alley or The Enchanter is the followup with one of the others closing out the summer then I think rock radio is in for a wake up call.

One of the masters is back and he’s throwin’ down, daring, no…pleading for anyone to match him.

By the way…if you HATE Zepplin or Robert Plant and want to spew…don’t do it here…I’ll delete you…you’ve been warned.

UPDATE 050517: iTunes has added six live tracks under their “Sessions” header. Black Dog, Mighty Rearranger, Shine it all Around, The Enchanter, Tin Pan Valley, and When the Levee Breaks. Suwheeeeeet. I am SO dead if Beautiful Wife ever sees our iTunes bill for the past couple months.

says Darth Vader in “Revenge of the Sith.”

Obi Wan replies, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,”

…sigh…am I supposed to hate this movie or just enjoy the fun and sneer at Lucas’s spiral into relativity?

smiling…I love it when the question answers itself.

IndieWIRE.

Fun to play once I get it to work. It doesn’t want to run with Disk 1 like the instructions say so you have to start with Disk 2 and then switch to Disk 1 when it stalls and asks for Disk 1.

It also rewrites my keyboard map, turning the right half of my letter keys into a virtual number pad but not turning it back when the game is over. May not be able to play it well on my laptop.

Otherwise, ’tis the Pirates of old with better graphics and some interesting additions…like dancing with the Governor’s daughter.

Buggy for my laptop, I’ll let you know when I can get on our regular PC how it runs there.

UPDATE: After playing for about an hour works without a hiccup on the PC. If you spent way too many hours playing this easy to learn, hard to master classic, you’ll be spending some late nights in the future with it’s grandson…well, at least I will. Arrrrrrr…

FURTHER UPDATE: After 3 solid hours on the PC, played just like I remember the classic version only much more entertaining…it translates well…with the possible exception of the “Dancing with the Governor’s Daughter” part of the game. That’s just kind of weird…but dance with all of them, them’s that you don’t want to marry, give you valuable information anyway.

So far we’ve watched the pilot and the Train Robbery.

All I can say is, Wow! I wasn’t much of a Buffy or Angel fan, what I watched I enjoyed but I never went out of my way to watch them, but this is just plain good stuff. None of the SciFi is new or ground breaking. I thought the wild west thing would bother me more, but it fits.

The characters are larger than life. They’re heroic. Practically Randian in some ways…Faustian in others. I’m interested in all of them.

Other random things I’ve noted/learned so far:

I’m afraid if I watch too much of this at once I might start calling cool or bitchin’ things “shiny.”

Government stooges threatening disturbed teenage girls should be shot and dumped out the back as soon as they become annoying enough.

Shiny is a way cooler word than cool or bitchin’ especially when uttered by Jewel Staite playing Kaylee Frye.

Morena Baccarin who plays Irana the professional companion (working girl with a LOT of class) is a beautiful woman.

Hitting someone with a closed fist can hurt, but it is, on occasion, hilarious.

A man learns all the details of a situation… Well, then he has a choice.

You can live on prepackaged food indefinitely with a sufficient supply of dried rosemary. (Anyone who’s lived on MREs can attest to this one or any of it’s variations.)

I expected trains would have changed more in 500 years, but when you think about it…besides the tracks and propulsion, what’s to improve?

When a doctor tells you you’d better sit down after giving you anything…probably a good idea to listen…unles you LIKE falling on your face well then…carry on.

Seriously evil bad guys still seem creepier with an Eastern European accent. Does that make me an ol’ fart cold warrior?

My heroes are still cowboys…I don’t know why…don’t much care.

I much prefer Mal Reynolds’, “Do it my way or I will kill you.” to Jean Luc Picard’s sitting around a table asking for “Suggestions?” When the shite has hit the fan, someone’s got to lead. Asking for suggestions isn’t leading, it’s whimping out on your responsibility.

Always have a plan B for when plan A goes bad.

Threatening the man who’s beat you senseless, tied your hands behind your back and has positioned you near a sub-light-speed turbine engine intake is a very-very bad choice…I don’t care how creepy your accent is.

Girls who know how to use tools and/or guns are sexy as hell. Can’t explain that one either.

but I’m actually starting to look forward to Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. The trailers have had something to do with it…what’s being shown looks quite good.

Of course…it could just mean that all the hype has done what it’s supposed to do and I’m just as large a media whore as I fear I am.

I wonder which light saber battle will be better, Anikin and Obi Wan’s or Yoda vs the Pope…errrr…The Emporer?