The String Cheese Incident is all about community. Sure, the bluegrass-inflected folk/jazz/whatever-the-heck-it-is music is what's most important, but the support structure radiating from the tunes, the band and the fans is truly inspiring. Just check out the side-projects: Madison House Travel, a travel agency that helps fans (and bands) travel to show locales; SCI Fidelity Records, the home-grown record label which releases all of String Cheese's material as well as records from other deserving artists; SCI Ticketing, handles direct artist-to-fan ticket sales for the Cheese as well as other groups such as King Crimson, Keller Williams and Charlie Hunter (plus, they sued Ticketmaster for extra indie music karma points); Footprints Foundation, the band's 'heart', helping organize food drives and, as they like to say, other 'gouda' causes. String Cheese's DIY attitude puts them in the same camp as someone like Ani DiFranco - they're artists who've gone outside the corporate music machine and have forged a new business model.

Equally multifaceted is the music. Acoustic rock, folk, bluegrass, jazz and who knows what-all blend to produce a pretty unique brew. Rhythmic twists and turns, surprising choices for cover material ("Walk This Way"?!), tightrope improvisation - yea, this band is full 'o ideas.

So how did String Cheese go from the experimental Untying The Knot to the more concise songsmithery of their current One Step Closer? Well, it seems as though the guys have been in a more reflective mood of late. Hey, it happens. People get older and have to find ways of dealing with that inevitability. Guitarist Bill Nershi:

"Things have changed a lot in the last few years, both with the music and our personal lives. Some of us have families, babies and houses now. We're right in the middle of re-assessment, re-evaluation, coming up with a new game plan, imagining where we want to be in five years. It's an interesting time."

The songs on One Step Closer may come as a shock to some of the fans. The focus is on melodic development and hooks as opposed to the usual extended solos and jamology. I see this as a bold move. They had something to say and, rather than play it safe, they followed their instincts. Sure, it's funny to think that the same group who bluegrassed up Weather Report's "Birdland" can turn around and write "The Big Compromise", a lilting song that wouldn't be out of place on a John Hiatt record. Still, all of the usual String Cheese musical tasties are there...but toned down a bit (check out "Drive", "Betray The Dark" and "Rainbow Serpent"). But have faith people, as Keith Moseley says:

"...And starting this summer, when we play the new songs live, a 3-minute song may turn into a 6-minute song or longer. On stage is a great place for the improvisational vibe and the hook to co-exist."

That's what I like about this jam band's musical ethic. String Cheese takes a decidedly jazz-like approach, using the songs as source material for the improvisations to follow.

Ah, and those long, 'noodling' solos? A player is riding on top of a tune's structure and coming up with interesting ideas that tie the song's parts together. He's both extending and completing the song. And while it's for the musician, it's for the fans too. If that's not community, I don't know what is.


(For more on One Step Closer, check out Blogcritic Aaman Lamba's fine review here.)

• A one year old cocker spaniel can NOT chew a barnacle off of the side of a rock
• Very entertaining: watching a one year old cocker spaniel bark at the one-inch waves
• Lobster ice cream (yes, you read that right) doesn't really taste very much like lobster
• Fried clams not being good for you is (as my friend Ty likes to say) further proof there is no god

Hmmm...I think that's it.

I bet it'd be a little unnerving to live or even spend much time out in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. I mean, none of the people look 'real'.

Dead.

That's what modern life can do to the creative side of the brain...and that's what happened to me over the last few months. Too much work pressure. Too much money pressure. Too much maintaining-an-antique-house pressure (see previous entry). Too much what-am-I-gonna-be-when-I-grow-up pressure.

Too much.

So when the music played, usually a refuge from exterior noise...nothing. No physical response. No emotional response. Very worrisome. I must have 'listened' to Johnathan Rice's Trouble Is Real at least three or four times. Nothing. Not good. Not bad. Not anything. It was like an aural version of neuritis, a lovely optic nerve inflammation that causes vision loss.

That first day of vacation just couldn't come fast enough. I was more than a little worried that too much was riding on the time off. What if nothing changes? Have my ears gone on permanent holiday?

It was the lupines that did it. Normally, time spent on the Maine coast produces the required tonic. The mountains, tides and delicious breezes tend to work their combined magic, resulting in loosened nerve knots. But at this particular time of year there's a special treat to be seen. Lupines. One of nature's most beautiful flowers, they're popping up in bunches as far as the eye can see: in little front yard patches, in giant color bursts in fields. Man has created some true wonders, but nothing to match what mother earth has put out there.

A day or so of drinking these images in and the ear chemicals upstairs finally began to flow again. I gave Trouble Is Real another try.

This is the kind of voice that doesn't immediately register with me. Breathy and more than a little earnest, Rice brings a slightly less forlorn Nick Drake to mind. In fact, it was Drake's sound floating in my mind as the pensive "Mid November" played. And like Drank, I initially wasn't sure about the voice. Do I like it?....Hmmmm....not sure. But then the rollicking "Kiss Me Goodbye" tumbled out and, supported by some jaunty guitar arpeggios and musical atmospherics (mandolin and mellotron), Rice's voice came to life.

Now that the door had swung open, I was ready for the simple and unadorned beauty of "Break So Easy", the country field recordings of "Lady Memphis" (written with Jesse Harris) and "Put Me In Your Holy War" and the Dylanesque "Behind the Front Lines".

Credit must be given to producer Mike (Bright Eyes) Mogis who, in addition to some fine knob-twiddling, plays a bunch of instruments. Talk about your "Mr. Sound Textures": electric bass, electric guitars, piano, toy piano, wurlitzer, mellotron, air organ, keyboards, samples, loops, mandolin, hammer dulcimer, vibes and theremin. Mogis helps Rice turn in some fine combinations of sound, my favorite being "City On Fire", which contrasts a stripped-down singer/songwriter vibe with the majesty of sorta-Bjork orchestration. For me, Mogis is edging into Jon Brion territory.

It's funny how this musical resonance stuff works. Sure, "resonance" implies a natural response to something. Well, now when I revisit "Mid November" I have an entirely different reaction to it. Strange.

And maybe that's OK. I'm just chalking it up to being too stressed out to notice the first time around. Heck, I think I might have even missed the lupines for the first couple of minutes or so.

I feel a gigantic sneer coming on. Or something.

Well, now we live out in the moutaineous and woodsy region of southern New Hampshire so the distinct lack of suburbia is a good thing.

But....it's freaking HOT!!! Forehead dripping, armpit-sploopin', nut-wigglin' HOT.

How can anybody like this stuff?!

Oh, and I did get a bunch of reading and listening done....about which I'll commence to yakkin' shortly.

It's not often that I can predict what CD I'll be listening to an entire week in advance. But on vacation over the last couple of years I've become a creature of habit. First thing in the morning there are two equally strong cravings: coffee and music. The black water doesn't exactly "win", but it does get first attention. While the water is heating (we use a French press, official equipment of TrueCoffeeSnobs® everywhere) the first CD of the day is selected.

Pat Metheny released New Chautauqua way back in 1979. As an initial solo offering, it's just amazing. I've been listening to it for over twenty years and have come to love its shifting and morphing acoustic textures. There's something very calming about the music. The words I'm looking for are meditative and introspective. What my brain needs on vacation. Time to unplug and reflect.

Yea, a bit of reflection has gone on by this time. I'll have poured several books and magazine articles into my head, written a few reviews and essays, sat atop Cadillac Mountain, enjoyed a few 'beverages', cooked some dinners and annoyed the wife with an obscene amount of twisty and weird instrumental music.

Except for New Chautauqua, which she loves.

Even better? I don't want to be able to recognize the song at all (at least at first). Examples of this are the Cowboy Junkies slow and sultry take on "Sweet Jane", Marc Ribot's complete deconstruction of "The Wind Cries Mary" and Devo's classic and otherworldly "Satisfaction".

Now I've got to add to the list Secret Machines' brilliant version of "Money (That's What I Want)" (as if the Flying Lizards weren't cool enough). Elongated and slowed to a crawl, the Bradford & Gordy Jr. classic is transformed from a pop music ode to the green stuff into a foreboding, ruminating dirge. This is somewhat like the 9 Beet Stretch project, where Beethoven's 9th symphony is stretched (via software) to fill a twenty-four hour timespan. The original music i still there, it's just been reshaped.

Secret Machines recasts Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" (gee, I wonder what Lester Bangs woulda said about this?) and Dylan's "Girl From The North Country" in a similar manner. Be prepared. These songs are nothing like the originals (and since Dylan sings his own tunes using completely different forms, nobody should be 'offended').

There are two Secret Machines originals on the EP (one swiped from a previous release) but, to be honest, they're overshadowed by the covers. It's not that they're bad tunes (quite the opposite, in fact), it's just that the intensity of the other material drowned 'em out.

Secret Machines is really growing on me. They've got some interesting ideas going on and don't seem to be afraid to take chances. I used to say that that was a rare thing, but I'm here to report that just maybe we've turned a corner.

No matter how old I get, the act of leaving the building on the last day of work still gives me the same feeling as when school got out when I was a little kid. Back then thoughts leaned toward the seemingly unending stretch of days before me sure to be saturated with bikeriding and baseball. Now, of course I've only got a week, but it will be full as well. It's just the "stuff" that's changed.

Music that makes people think of the start of summer? Surely different for everybody. Maybe some Jimmy Buffett...or maybe a little Bob Marley. For me, wacko and guitarist supreme David Lindley tops the list. Like Ry Cooder, he's the kind of guy who can play any stringed instrument placed before him. While not a household name, you've probably heard Lindley in his role as sideman for people like Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon. Perhaps his most 'famous' musical moment is the falsetto verse he turned in during Jackson Browne's version of "Stay".

Ah, and Lindley the man also makes a sort of fashion statement. He's known for wearing eye-twisting color combinations of polyester. When I saw him open for Jackson Browne he came out in pulsing baby blue Hawaiian shirt, neon orange bell-bottoms and white shoes. You want to not take him seriously but when the guitar playing begins there's no doubt he means business.

My favorite David Lindley record is the Linda Ronstadt-produced Very Greasy. It's packed with great and summery tunes including "Do Ya Wanna Dance?", "Texas Tango", "I Just Can't Work No Longer" (yea, tell me about it!), "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" and "Tiki Torches at Twilight". The styles are all over the place but include two-step, reggae, calypso and slack-key. It's just about perfect.

Aloha.

No, wait...I'm goin' ta Maine...."Ayuh!".

Just this week, Sony BMG and EMI announced their new DRM scheme, including plans to roll the stuff out as fast as possible. Without going into the technical details (mostly because I don't know them) the gist is that the CD's may only be copied three times. Also, the copies may not be copied. How did they accomplish this? I don't really care. Hey, they don't really care about their customers, I don't care about their pathetic machinations.

To quote the most infuriating bit of the article:

"Executives at EMI and Sony BMG said the point was to rein in copying by the everyday music fan, not to stop determined bootleggers."

Uhmm...hello Ms./Mr./Miss/Mrs. Executive! For how many years now have you managed to ignore the fact that people who download tend to purchase more music? For how many years have you convinced yourselves that downloading (as opposed to weak product offerings!) is killing your bottom line? How much money have you spent on these ridiculous technological "fixes"? Yes, 'fixes' in quotes because every copy protection scheme has been broken. That will never change. That's right. You will never see a return on that 'investment' because it won't work. It can't.

In the meantime, you are further pissing off your customers while adding (and in all likelihood subtracting) nothing to your bottom line. NOTHING. Think about what I'm saying here. Think of the following scenario: I just paid good money for an iPod (I know, I know...you wish they didn't exist. The same thought occurs to the rest of us about things like cancer, mosquitoes and Michael Bolton). Then, on a quick visit to the local CD store, the latest Foo Fighters disc makes its way into my hands. Now, at work my laptop's CD player is usually busy with things like software installations, Encarta data, etc. So I figured that the iPod is perfect. I can keep working AND listen to the music that I love...that I just purchased with my own money. But your new scheme makes it difficult (but not impossible) to get those music files onto my lovely iPod.

I can't make use of your product, but you've got my money!

Now, if you can just figure out how to get me to send in money with no product exchange. That'll be the perfect solution. You'll be rich and I'll get nothing.

Just how many non-injured feet do you have left?

(For more reading on this brillant business maneuver, read on.)

However, once in a while some of it makes it through. I just received one a minute ago with the oh-so-clever subject line of "What's up, ,this is my new profile" (what's with the extra comma? is that there to trick a spam filter?). The email contained the usual junk about dirty pictures, hot high-schoolers, etc. The funny part was the url they wanted me to go to: www.clarinet.opposite.architectbodhissatva.skankmouth.com.

Nice!

1972. Ben. I never did see that movie (or maybe it just creeped me out so much that I've blocked it out) but the song was all over the place back then. Since boys were attracted to the more disgusting aspects ("rats?!!! gross!!!"), we probably liked the song more than we would have liked to admit. I sure did.

1979. A couple of my best friends in high school were a pair of brothers who were best described as, well, advanced for their age. Andrew, the older of the two, was a natural athlete, music aficionado and out & out movie snob (he once spent what seemed like hours describing to me in deep and exquisite detail the technical aspects that made Citizen Kane great. Years later, when I finally saw the film, I realized that he was right).

Andrew's brother Eric was closer to your typical nerd, with interests in math and drama. I spent many nights hanging out at their house (gotta love early-to-bed parents) discussing what I'm sure we considered 'important' matters. While the ideas were tossed about, we ingested a steady stream of pepperoni pizza and music. With Andrew, the music was more adventurous. Some of our favorites were things like Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene and Tangerine Dream's soundtrack to Sorcerer. Andrew and I even had plans to make a film. Andrew providing the writing and cinematography with me signed up for score duty. The year Andrew went off to college, Eric toned down the seriousness of the music by trying to convince me of the charms of Saturday Night Fever, Fame and Michael Jackson's Off The Wall. I can't say that "Don't Stop Till Ya Get Enough" did much for me then, but there was no denying that the production was fantastic and the tune had hooks 'a plenty.

1982. MTV. An explosion of images and music. Me and a friend spent way too many afternoons sitting around and letting this stuff wash over us. When Michael Jackson came out with Thriller his command over the world of pop music seemed complete. I really wasn't a fan of the music (OK, that "Beat It" guitar solo was cool...shhh, don't tell anybody) but the videos were a blast.

1984. "State Of Shock". This was the big single from a mostly forgettable Jackson's record (Victory). A rockin' duet with Mick Jagger, it pushed all the right buttons for me. I've still got the 45 around here somewhere.

1992. "Black Or White". Pretty much the last interesting thing that Michael has done. The twisty melody was super catchy and, sure, the video-morphing thing was kinda fun.

I realize that the presentation of these memories carries a whiff of eulogy. Honestly though, it seems as though we've been watching Michael Jackson die before our eyes. This transformation has been gradual and steady. I'm not here to absolve him (or make excuses for) of any crimes. Clearly, I don't know what he's done. A jury has found him not guilty. Still, there's no doubt in the eyes of many. I don't know. I mean, the guy has become so weird that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he had done something with those boys...or that he hadn't.

When I see the media circus that makes its living pitching its tent next to cases like this, it just makes me sad. I've often thought about how I would be able to handle the amount of fame that has clearly crushed Jackson. What would happen if I was no longer able to drive to the store for a few things...for fear of being mobbed? Would the isolation change me? Would I push past it to remain in healthy contact with the real world?

A few years back there was a story about Michael Jackson trying to acquire the bones of John Merrick, the "Elephant Man". It's more than a little depressing that the public has come to treat Jackson very much like the Elephant Man: as a freak, as the butt of many jokes, always good for a snicker.

Just last night I watched David Letterman deliver the "#1 Thing Overheard During The Michael Jackson Verdict": "Another case of a white guy getting preferential treatment".

Yes, I laughed...but it made me sad too.

I have no idea why.

Avenged Sevenfold reminds me of my Darkness experience, mostly because they pull in several rock sub-genres while avoiding the smell of retread. Well, OK, drop the camp and the platform shoes too.

City of Evil plays around with the punky thrash of Megadeth and early Metallica, the theatricality of Queensryche and even the dual guitars (thank you Tipton and Downing) of Judas Priest. This isn't to imply that Avenged Sevenfold have nothing of their own to say.

See, the thing that's most noticeable about truly recycled music is the lack of passion (Kingdom Come, anybody? OK, I admit it...I bought that record too. Now let's move on...). Not here. The blistering "Bat Country" (dedicated to the late Hunter S. Thompson) is stuffed full of careening drums, chunky guitar riffage, stuttering start & stop passages, full-throated singing (M. Shadows reminds me of a deeper-voiced Gary Cherone), and good 'ole snarling lead guitar.

Chops display in any form of music can force some bad alchemy onto the artist. "Too much", whatever that means (and we seem to know it when we hear it) and the band risks being ghettoized as "math rock" (or even "progressive", but I'm avoiding that here because of the term's current schizophrenic and overloaded nature). Well, these guys can indeed find their way around their instruments. More important, something interesting and fun comes out. More than any other criterion, its the fun factor that wins me over. I'm tapping' my toe, bashing the steering wheel and suppressing the urge to play air guitar. Sure, I spend a lot of time gettin' the "big wow" out of snazzy instrumental interplay and and jagged rhythms, but when a band makes all of that seem effortless, the fun takes over...and i reach for the volume knob.

Longtime fans of bands like to cry "sellout" when their cherished group makes a major label debut. I've never really bought into that reaction myself. If this record is a sellout, I'll be in line to get the next one.

Check out the Michael Jackson Master Post.

And, NO, I'm not jealous or anything.

Gross. I've gotta move to the Arctic circle or something.

So in a bit a musical synchronicity, I just happen to have been making my way through Bobby Previte's ode to Joan Miró, The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró. Bobby Previte (drummer/composer extraordinaire) walked into the Museum of Modern Art one day and was smacked upside the head by a Miró retrospective. In particular, Miró's Constellations.

Created during the tumultuous years of 1940 and 1941, Miró's process was begun in the small town of Varengeville, France and then moved (a survival tactic, avoiding the Nazi approach) to the island of Majorca (Miró was a native of Spain). These paintings were, as stated in this recording's liner notes, Miró's "...life raft, and on them he floated away from the misery and evil of war and the increasingly brutal social order."

Previte's compositions, one for each painting, are his 'emotional translations' of the artist's work. The music contains both written and improvised elements and is played by a large ensemble of varying textures. Some of the instrumental 'weaves' make my brain waves crest: the descending marimba figure in "Awakening In The Early Morning" is a perfect counterpoint the the flute and the rising trumpets to follow. Great stuff. I have stated in the past that I tend to "see" music in pictures, so it's been interesting to sit and take in Miró's work while listening to music that reflects somebody else's emotional response.

Shortly before this suite was recorded, Previte's producer pointed him to an article by composer Georges Antheil. This is a fantastic summation of Miró's work and, some seventy-one years later, might be applied to this music as well:

The classic world of music, in vogue up until today, with its exact limits and placings, and its taste always within a certain classic geometry is a music made up of wood and plaster colored with the imitation colors of a faded Athens. This exactness and lack of play does not permit the music to dream. The lesson that Miró has taught us is not be afraid of music, or its bite, even if the line doubles back upon us, and perhaps in certain cases annihilates us. Here we have a rubber music, dreaming unashamedly, delicately breathing, inflating and deflating, like a being sleeping or the suns cooling. Let us examine the objects in the sky, abolish the constellations, and consider the light years between each and every planet. I love Miró's music and I hope that he might like my attempts at drawing lines such as his own, or at least to forgive the plagiarism.

Previte's response? "Amen to that, brother."

The next morning I arrived late to work to discover the Beefheart CD on my chair, affixed with a short Post-It note:

This Is Not Music

Well, that certainly left no room for debate!

Seriously though, it's fairly easy to hear why Trout Mask isn't for everybody. In fact, there's a whole world of music with limited appeal that I like to refer to as 'difficult listening'. That categorization for me has always pushed forward the mystery of why things sound 'good'. That's a giant problem best left for another essay. A more basic question might be: what is music?

Dictionary definitions tend to bring up melody, harmony and rhythm, all of which are categories of organized sound. Folks in the West like to think that melody is the most important aspect of music (read: if there's no melody, it's not music). This 'rule' leads to heated debate (OK, shouting matches) about the musical validity of certain forms. Rap music takes the most heat here.

After years of pouring (maybe too much) music into my head, I've come to the conclusion that none of the "big three" are necessary for sound to be music. Nosir. Instead, it's closer to the following dictionary entry:

An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds: the music of the wind in the pines.

Think of it as: perceive it as music...and it is. I'll admit that this is a sort of over-intellectualized stance (go ahead, call it eggheaded) but if it was good enough for people like John Cage and Frank Zappa then it works for me.

What, a sensible person might ask, does this open door policy do for me? It doesn't really work like that. See, the reason I've adopted this 'rule' is that it appears to explain, and I suppose legitimize, my hankering for odd sounds. So, periodic thunking tones of mallets on stalactites of ice? Music. Electric guitar strings being scraped behind the bridge with a spatula? Music. A snare drum struck crisply in a cavernous room? Music. The human voice rhyming a story on top of a shattering beat? Music. Definitely.

Of course, none of this means that other folks have to like (or even appreciate) any of this music. It's just a framework that I use to justify the honks, shrieks, and clanks that ooze by my earbuds or out from under my listening room door. I will say this though...when a person declares that something is not music (let's use Rap as an example, where the most conflict occurs) maybe they should stop and think about the parallels to legitimacy being ignored. A spoken phrase, no matter how aggressive, has a contour to it - not unlike a melody. The syllables form a rhythm. Hey, we're two thirds of the way there!

I didn't blame my old work associate for pullin' the ripcord on Trout Mask Replica. The psychotic jazz/blues/field recordings presented there easily quality as 'difficult listening'. I can only hope that the seeds of the tree of odd music had been planted.

(For more thought-provoking ruminations on the nature of music, check out Blogcritics own mpho and the recent series Soothe Me, I'm Savage).

"there's nothing heroic about breaking faith with your people, breaking the law, sneaking around in garages, putting stuff from an investigation out to a Nixon-hating Washington Post."

Those were the words of Patrick Buchanan on W. Mark Felt being referred to as a hero. Does the guy just about drip irony or what?

Nixon broke faith with the American public AND broke the law. I guess that didn't matter.

The approach of the end had some interesting effects on Zappa. In particular, it seemed to bust a hole in his wall of loner-ism. Partly a way to "cheer Frank up", his wife Gail began to invite folks over for dinner, Margueritas and music-making. Near the end of his life, Frank made some interesting (for Frank) friends including Paddy Malone of the Chieftains and Tom Jones. Yes, the Tom Jones. Jones' version of "The Tennesee Waltz" appearing on the Chieftains Long Black Veil was recorded at Zappa's home studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen.

One of the goals Zappa had throughout his life was to see some of his 'classical' works moved from the paper to the orchstra. He wanted to hear what all those dots sounded like. Perhaps the most successful Zappa orchestral event was The Yellow Shark. The music was played by the Ensemble Modern, an outfit known for their willingness to attempt the most brutal of scores. If you give Shark a listen, you will hear them play (and humanize) one of my favorite Zappa Synclavier pieces, "G-Spot Tornado". I tell ya, it's a thing of beauty.

So yesterday, I went out for a drive to get lunch. It has been mind-numbingly cloudy and rainy in the Northeastern US for most of the spring: but yesterday's bright blue sky and crisp, dry air made an extended lunch pretty much mandatory. After scarfing down a most yummy egg salad on wheat, I made a visit to a local emporium-du-CD's. It's a little store, so I didn't expect much in the Zappa bin. I was right, except for this way cool Ensemble Modern disc, Ensemble Modern plays Frank Zappa. Subtitled "Greggery Peccary & Other Persuations", the CD features a nice selection of music from way back when ("Revised Music For Low Budget Orchestra" and the featured "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary" (Lather), "Peaches En Regalia" (Hot Rats) to 'modern day' Frank ("The Beltway Bandits" from Jazz From Hell and "A Pig With Wings" from Civiization Phase 3).

I can't say that this record would be a good introductino to what Zappa's all about, but...if you think that Frank was just a novelty tune guy, the Ensemble Modern will correct that in a hurry.

It turns out that this band (a duo really: Michael Harris on vocals, Daniel Anderson on just about everything else) manages to glue together their influences in such a unique way as to, in the end, sound nothing like them at all.

Take for example the opening track "Losing Color". Creepy electronic figures (think Nine Inch Nails) lead into the long and drawn out melody of the lead vocal...which drops away (or maybe it was pushed) to reveal huge, distorted guitar chord swells which give way to cleaner variations of those same chords...before returning to the voice. Not your typical pop/rock song here (and maybe another area of commonality with Radiohead but, hey, it's not like they invented odd song structures).

So, after that first song, I was pretty sure that the 'D-word' was to be queued up by a reviewer out there somewhere. But...

"A Day In The Life Of A Pool Shark" begins with a 'happy' synth go-round that wouldn't be out of place on a Human League or even Devo record. It's a left turn from the moodiness of the first song. The bridge heads even further out with a combination of skewed, dissonant chords and some throat-grinding (think The Used) screams. That explosion pushes the momentum of the final chorus (or is it a verse?). At this point I'm beginning to wonder where this band's musical center of gravity is located.

"Open Register" starts out in a very pop-oriented manner with its strummed acoustic guitars but then punctuates the opening of each chorus with unnerving screams of "We're trying to help you!!" Y'know, I'm almost never a fan of the giant uvula flap, but the way these outbursts just, well, show up, really puts a new spin on the use of dynamics.

"The Violent Tango" (love that title) illustrates how Idiot Pilot seems to love dealing in multiple textures. Morse code-like opening percussion is followed by some artificial harmonics floated over an almost jazzy kick drum and rimshot pattern. Two guitar interlock before the spacey vocal line takes over. The chorus blows all of this up with exhilarating power chords, an ear canal-disturbing shard of feedback and some more Drano vocals.

After a while, I decided that the search for this group's center of gravity was a waste of time. The usage of metal fragments, progressive structures, ethereal vocals, violent screams, techno (yes, it was 'blurpy'), Brian Wilson-ish harmonies and even a a touch of hip-hop (I won't say where, but it was definitely a "What the...?!" kinda thing)...well, it kept me off balance. After so many years of mainstream conformity, it's nice to hear somebody take a few chances.

This morning we were all sittin' around the kitchen table (me, the wife and stepson #2) and the dog, being doglike, was begging. All I had to give him was my cup of coffee, but coffee appears to be on his (very) short list of things he's not interested in. Then I noticed that we had the bag of 'dog jerky' on the table (it's made from turkey and venison).

After giving him a couple of pieces (they're really small...maybe the size of a nickel, thin too, more like a dime) it made me (hold on edgy catholics) think of priests handing out the eucharists during communion. So I started "doggy communion" during the next few pieces:

body of scooby doo
body of rin tin tin
body of lassie
body of dog (I think that was John Wayne's dog's name)

Gees, what a silly moment. We were all laughin' 't tears.

Maybe ya had to be there.