So, thanks for returning the favor.

And I still have that fucking El Shaddai garbage stuck in my poor little head.

After yesterday’s version of The police’s “Roxanne” beating my head to a pulp, with the entire song being sung in an overdone mexican accent.. I thought today’s song couldn’t be worse…

But it is.

When I was a kid, i took voice lessons from this lady down the street from my house. After a couple of months of training, my coach decided that the world was ready for me. She took me to her church, and I sang Amy Grant’s “El Shaddai”. I think I had a fucking perm too. My mother has a picture of me holding the microphone and looking earnest, standing next to a piano with my instructor beaming…. GOD. I was so proud to have mastered a cheap verse of Hebrew.

So, thanks for that Doug. Thanks for making today’s song so much worse than yesterdays.

You’re probably right, but I’ve completely forgotten.

Two – Since the pedals are meant to be played with the foot and the door’s only closing because the bass is so loud, I don’t think it’s a huge issue. I mean, unless you played barefoot and were agile like a mongoose*, you wouldn’t be changing them on the fly.

Three – The tip jar’s for the Big Money.

*I pray someone gets this reference.

One
It strikes me that it must take some kind of foolish bravery to look that stupid in something you plan to show to millions of people. I have to wonder whether they had a moment of self-reflection at any point which might have led to misgivings about doing it. Then I imagine some slimy producer type–possibly with a leather jacket, a little pony tail, and a plateful of blow–coming around to reassure them that they are totally hip. He even mentions that they will throw in a bunch of impossibly short edits that are all the rage on MTV at the time. He claims that these edits imply movement and will make them seem young and “with it.”

Through some long series of clicks, I ended up at Ann Wilson’s MySpace page, listening to her cover if “Immigrant Song.” If you weren’t already convinced that John Bonham was the most important part of Zeppelin, listening to this cover will do the trick. This song is about Viking raids and Bonham knew just how to make his drums sound like a melee. Ann Wilson, by contrast, turns the rhythm into a controlled staccato. Boo. Where’s the fun in that?

Two
Was anybody else bothered by that little door that kept falling down as the guy was demonstrating this? What were the people at Moog thinking when they designed that? I mean, I get that they wanted a way to prevent those settings from accidentally being changed, but they seriously under-designed that door.

Three
Why does Geddy have a tip jar? Are members of the audience supposed to come up and put bread in it (to paraphrase Billy Joel)? Or is that for stage personnel only?