I have not come to refute the claims of editor-in-chief Jeff Giles, because it would be pointless. NBC is slowly finding out just how pointless, in fact, as they proceed to take a pounding from their advertisers and affiliates for their penny wisdom. “Jay Leno is beloved,” they said. “Jay’s fans are loyal, ” they said. What NBC brass feared was losing Leno to ABC, who probably would have snapped him up right quick, dumping Jimmy Kimmel like, well, like Sarah Silverman dumped Jimmy Kimmel (What, too soon?) With the costs rising by the year for scripted programs, the nighttime dramas leading the charge with more explosions, dead body mannequins and pricier locations, the Peacock network sought to kill two birds with one formerly skunk-haired stone. Talk shows are cheap. Run one five times a week and tell David E. Kelley to take his tired crap elsewhere. And with Jay, you get an instant audience! Win-win!
Only now, NBC has to wonder if the sponsors clamoring to back out of the 10 PM timeslot, and the money they represent, is more or less than the expenditure they would have otherwise incurred. Jay Leno, it seems, has become an albatross around the network’s neck, and if you think the added pressure would have caused him to step up his game and liven up the show, you probably were thinking this was originally a pretty good idea. No, the show still sucks.
But give Jay the teeny-tiniest break here. What would they have run in that slot if they hadn’t taken the big gamble? As I’ve said many times before: lawyers, cops and doctors. If for no better reason, give the big man a pat on the back for at least momentarily derailing the same old hackneyed, worn out and blood-drained train of thought that has plagued these “wonderful” nighttime dramas lo these many, many moons. It has been a long time since St. Elsewhere
Out of the rarefied list of truly classic progressive rock bands, King Crimson stands as the thorniest of the lot. You can ask someone on the street to name a Genesis song and they should be able to oblige. A Yes song, maybe. King Crimson? Not hardly. And yet of those three names, it is Crimson that has had the heaviest impact on modern music, specifically metal. You can hear the threads of building, breaking down and then rebuilding a song in groups like Tool and Porcupine Tree. The sinister heaviness underneath Robert Fripp’s guitar constructions was a major component for the downtuned nu-metal of the late ’90s and early 2000s, even if Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi got most of the lip service. Even so, they never had a top 10 hit, which given Fripp’s somewhat contrarian nature, probably pleases him to no end.
If Ray Bradbury decided to form a prog metal band, it would sound like Jupiter Society, and that really wouldn’t be a bad thing. There are several things in common: Bradbury was never one for believing in the benevolence of the unseen, a perspective shared by main Jupiter Society songwriter and keyboardist Carl Westholm. Bradbury enjoyed a sense of dark grandeur in his stories — a tainted nostalgia, if you will — and was not at all worried when his space stories went a little noir, with bad things happening to good people. Westholm’s musical bombast loves the dark corners of minor notes, big choral backups, dramatic shifts from quiet to loud. Both creative minds can be a whole lot of fun.
Well, you can’t say they didn’t warn you.
and 
, you may well be horrified. The easy hooks and gonzo soundscapes once reined in to support the songs are broken open like a squeezed sausage. You’ll hear the potential in tracks like the very pretty “Evil,” but wonder if the tune was sacrificed to this hi-fi/no-fi aesthetic. It is followed by the instrumental “Aquarius Sabotage” which, if you’re not prepared for it, is just outright shocking to the ear. 
(2001)
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Musical sound doesn’t frighten me anymore. It did once, when I was young. The sudden, jarring strangeness of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” once freaked me out to no end, a veritable boon to all who wanted to tease a chubby, overly sensitive child. Whenever she felt like being evil, my sister would turn to me and shout, “Mamma mia, mamma mia, let me go!” which would send me running out of the room in tears.
is down there on the 
or 
. If I am in a really regressive state of mind and nostalgia has me by the nosehairs, out comes 
and the 
CD are like instant mud – just add water. Some of these tunes are fondly remembered, some barely remembered and still others come from the “what was I thinking” file, but in combination, this constitutes the strangest mix I think I’ve ever achieved and, quite rightly, I’m afraid of it.
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I say this with only a slight bit of embarrassment; The Cars’ debut album is my most-purchased title ever. I received it on vinyl one Christmas (way back when humans licked scum off the rocks for sustenance… 1978?), wore that out, repurchased it a year later, bought the CD at the dawn of the digital era, rebought the Rhino remaster because that initial release was horrid, and finally it has come to this — the Mobile Fidelity half-speed mastered vinyl edition. Can you imagine?![41KwE8vxMcL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/41KwE8vxMcL._SCLZZZZZZZ_1.jpg "41KwE8vxMcL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]")
(1998)
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