DUH-DUH-DUUUH DUH-DUH-DA-DUUUH!! DUH-DUH-DUUUUUUH-DUH- DUUUH!!!!!

DUH-DUH-DUUUH DUH-DUH-DA-DUUUH!! DUH-DUH-DUUUUUUH-DUH- DUUUH!!!!!

12.22.05 (9:12 pm)   [edit]
Currently listening to Dylan's Nashville Skyline. The Bobster in country mode.

But earlier tonight I took a trip back to when I was 17 (half a goddamn lifetime ago) and cranked up one of the seminal albums from my youth.

Deep Purple's Machine Head is etched into my soul. I used to play bass along with the whole fucking thing. Everything wonderful and ludicrous in rock music can be found in this work.

It amazes me to look back and remember how clueless I was. I was 17 in 1987. I was VERY sheltered, finding my way through the back-history of rock music in a very erratic manner. At this time (a decade after their best work was released) I barely even knew anything of Zeppelin. I knew almost nothing of Sabbath. I was a prog-rock geek, convinced that metal was complete horseshit (and in 1987, most the shit being inflicted on the public WAS horseshit) and I barely had a clue that the true pioneers of hard/heavy music were so fuckin' great. I was a high school kid with my head up Peter Gabriel's ass in 1987. What the fuck did I know of Smoke On The Water?

But I found out. I got into Rush and Deep Purple because I was told they had kinship with the prog-rock I was worshipping at the time. I went insane over Rush and started learning Geddy Lee bass lines like a motherfucker. Roger Glover is Deep Purple's bassist, and I stole many a lick from him too. Like Geddy, he was a Rickenbacker player with a bright tone. He was also rather active, not as much as Geddy, and usually buried under the pyrotechnics of Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord, but he remains one of my favorite bass players. I learned Highway Star when I was 17. A couple years ago, I went back and listened and realized that I had only SORTA learned it. Roger played a LOT more notes than I had worked out.

There's a reason guys like Jack Black have jobs. Why Spinal Tap was so popular. Purple put out an album called In Rock with a cover featuring the members' faces carved into Mount Rushmore. How Spinal Tap is THAT shit? They had severe classical influences, yet they could write mongoloid-level gee-tar riffage with the best of them. Gillan's voice gets so over-the-top sometiems (Child In Time? PLEASE.) it's no wonder he played Jesus H. Christ Himself in an Andrew Lloyd Weber epic.

But it ROCKS. I love it as much as I ever have. It makes me feel like I'm 17 all over again. It's full of sweat and balls and jizz and stuff I can't even name. It makes my cock hard. You listen to this album, and you just KNOW that Ian Gillan has had more pussy than you ever will. It and the stunning double album Deep Purple In Concert (with an ungodly 18-minute Wring That Neck, which taught me more lessons in full-on jamming than even a box set full of Cream tunes could have) are part of my musical psyche in a way that cannot be denied.

Tonight I heard the newest Purple album for the first time. Rapture Of The Deep. Very nice. Not great, but very nice. It's weird to hear a Purple without Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore, but it works. Don Airey is a great player. Steve Morse is a FREAK of a guitar-mutant. It's good stuff. Even has another Zappa reference.

I wrote this a while back:

http://www.geocities.com/eraserhead667/machead .html" title="http://www.geocities.com/eraserhead667/machead .html" target="_blank"http://www.geocities.com/eras...

I found a few typos, (it's been a few years since I read it ) and the whole thing is a tad awkward and silly, but what the fuck. I hope you like it.

Space truckin',
Dougie