Detritus

Here's Kevin Smith's review of Revenge of the Sith. Lots of spoilers, so beware. Best quote: "Look, this is a movie I was genetically predisposed to love."

Before tutoring yesterday, I stopped in at Mad City to grab a copy of Deadwing since I failed to do so at lunch yesterday. (I had lunch with Dogger instead.) Of course I couldn't buy just one CD so I bought 3. And a DVD. In addition to Deadwing, I grabbed Marillion's first album, Script for a Jester's Tear and Impending Ascension by Magellan. Script was a necessity missing from my collection so I grabbed it up right away from the used bin. (It is the 2CD remastered version.) I've heard a couple Magellan tracks which were covers of prog faves ("Aqualung" and "Man of Our Times") but hadn't heard any of their original material. So far I find the album to be mediocre but I'll give it a chance. Finally, I bought Tull's latest DVD, Nothing is Easy: Live at the Isle of Wight: 1970. I've only watched the performance of "My God" so far and it is fucking killer! For anyone ignorant of Tull, "My God" appears on the Aqualung album which was released in 1971. So what we have on the DVD is a good performance of the song before it was actually laid down on magnetic tape. Excepting the flute solo in the middle, the song is musically the same as it would be on vinyl. However, the lyrics have some substantial differences. You'd think I'd know them by now as I have 2 live versions of "My God" that were recorded before the song was committed to vinyl but, alas, no. The original lyrics went after the Big 3 world religions whereas the final recorded version seemed content with the C of E. Up until very recently, Tull performed the song live with an improvised flute solo in the middle replacing the flute/Mellotron chorus of the recorded version. On the DVD, we get Mad Dog Fagin in all his glory. He does the flute solo with his Rashaan Roland Kirk influences on his sleeve. All the snorts, grunts, and whoops. At one point, Anderson is grunting into the flute and he rubs his naughty bits. At another, he taps out - was it "Yankee Doodle"? "Pop Goes the Weasel"? - on the flute. The performance on the whole shows Anderson running around the stage like a crazed vaudevillian performer hopped up on cocaine: flailing his arms, pointing his flute all about, putting it between his legs, standing on one leg - it's all there. Like I said, Mad Dog Fagin in all his glory. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of it.

And lastly, I've finally gotten a hold of last week's episode of Doctor Who - "World War Three". Haven't watched it yet, though. I'm looking forward to this weekend's episode as it features the return of the Daleks!