The Flaming Lips -- At War With The Mystics

  ... so!  I was thinking the other night, why am I limiting myself only to my record collection?  Well I do know that answer ... anyway ... point is I have a couple of boxes of neglected CD's and a box of dusty old tapes, which I clearly love ... I've been lugging them around long enough!  Last night I jimmy rigged my laptop to my killer set up and decided enough with this format snobbery, records are still better, but I wanna listen to some music!

  At War With The Mystics, the eleventh Flaming Lips album is drenched in 70's style psychedelia mixed with a dreamy futurist Pop vibe.  What I love about this band, other than their live shows, is that they are totally arrogant, over-the-top, pretentious, hippie weirdos in all the best ways, and definitely will be a staple classic in years to come.

Genesis -- Live

  For starters I got this album for free, or else I wouldn't have given it a mere try ... and I can't say I was able to listen to a full track on this record ... maybe if there was something that resembled music on the album I would have been able to withstand one of their epic sh*t storms of sound.  I don't know much about the whole Prog scene ... and God knows I've tried ... but what I do know is that when it comes to this genre of music, only the German Krautrockers really know how to pull it off, maybe they weren't the first to invent it, but they are the only ones to execute Prog in a listenable fashion.  So f*ck Genesis and get that stupid triangle off your damn head!

In The Court Of The King Crimson

  A mish-mash of musical styles all colliding together to make one album, you've got Jazz-Metal, Synth-Folk and New Age Blues ... basically Krautrock not made in Germany, so we call it Prog.  Now when I got this record I was fully ready to bash it's gawd awful head to the ground, but I didn't hate it, I still don't really know what to make of it ... I do think it's got some bad 60's kitch that I'm sure sounded like future people music, but as time passes it just sounds dated and sometimes cheesy.  All in all I file this one in the not-quite-sure pile, where it's going to go from there, who knows, it's gonna have to go to the court of the King Jerm-son again!

ENO -- Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)

  Master sound manipulator, Eno's second solo release, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), is a precursor to so much music it's hard to name drop just who without leaving an endless list.  The best way to label this, according to me, is futurist experimental dada geek rock.  The album itself is a monolith of theories and ideas, from using oblique strategies (which he was co-inventor during this album, they are a set of cards presenting 100 dilemmas to help with creativity) in the recording process to being inspired by a Chinese Opera (Taking Tiger Mountain) in the writing process.  The good things about this record are endless and maybe hard to find to an amateur listener, but if you have a vast interest in music, I'd strategize to get this album right away!!

Jethro Tull -- Aqualung

  Aqualung is, in all fairness, just the ramblings of a vagrant mad man, which gives the band points for originality, but hardly makes this seminal classic, conceptual, prog, heavy metal, folk, celt, mishmash any good.  The strangeness of the album does make it a must hear, at least once, and for me, once was enough!  What made it even more bizarre were the notes on the back cover, tweaked from the book of Genesis for the character of Aqualung.  Side one focuses, and is named after, Aqualung, a sniveling weirdo, while the flipside focuses, and is named after God, now is it about Aqualung's relationship with God, I don't know.  There were a couple pleasant surprises on this record.  The first one, a folk number, Cheap Day Return, clocked at 1:21, this track has a Cat Stevens feel to it, and I'd go as far as saying a Elliot Smith vocal sound inbeded in the beginning -- I loved it.  The second surprise was in the song Mother Goose it stems in the same vein as the previous track, not as good, but gets murdered by intervals of flute solos which makes you think you were in Polanski's Macbeth.  Aqualung is just one of those weird thing in rock history, I didn't like it, but I respect it for what it is!

Pink Floyd -- Meddle

  This album is as if the Beatles continued in the Sgt Pepper/ Magical Mystery Tour direction with the spontaneity of the White Album, toss in some Kraut rock psychedelia and you've got yourself some Meddle.  The first three tracks all weave together in a clear circular direction -- smooth acoustic futuristic sound.  Fearless is the gem in this set, you can hear it's influential impact on bands like the Flaming Lips and Galaxie 500.  The simple but very cool guitar riff sets the atmosphere for what should have been thematic denouement ... but no dice ... lounge lizard track San Tropez was just plain awful, followed by bluesy Seamus, which I should have liked, but the damn dogs barking, over and over, totally ruined it of me.  The B-side is the 23 minute long Echoes, the song continues where Fearless left off, but these over the top extended rock-outs are way too much, I kept thinking, "Jesus, who cares, end it!"   You can't Meddle with it, this is a good album, they just needed to clarify their musical direction, somethings are better left on the cutting room floor.