les is mor

Here goes...

Lamb of God - overly unintelligible-screamy metal. Ergo, their studio material isn't the most interesting shredding out there. However, one of their live albums, cheerfully named Killadelphia, is great. It sounds like they're pretty talented all around in the live setting, and the screaming is even slightly less incomprehensible! Most importantly, just like Pantera's concert recording 101 Proof, the 'tween-song interstitial commentary is a riot. Duh, none of it is appropriate for quoting here, but let it be known that the most frightening metalheads are intelligent, funny, normal people too. Sort of.

Laura Fleming - a college friend with an album out! I'm beyond jealous. Check her/it out on that giant digital music store, or appreciate high quality music and get the real thing.

Le Tigre - mmm, anti-folk/indie-something/???, whatever genre you feel like at the time. I enjoy what appear to be interspersed recordings from feminist protests. No, not musical performances at protests, just protesting. [compound sentence fragment!] Truly riotous.

Led Zeppelin - a pillar in my musical Pantheon, and a muscle of the Atlas carrying classic rock. Insert other analogies as necessary.

On that note, I've been disappointed lately upon discovering that a rather large heap of Zep songs are covers. For the longest time, I was under the impression that these guys were magical with absolutely every aspect of music (sure, every artist covers Bob Dylan at some point)... Turns out that some of my favorites that I thought were pure Led Zeppelin are nearly exact covers. Sadface. I'm not going to list any because having the wool pulled over my eyes was much better than knowing the facts, so spoiling Led Utopia is your decision.

To their credit, they covered sufficiently obscure songs that even music dorks like me don't catch them right away, though this may be different for people who were around a few years earlier than I. Also, Jimmy Page + anything = amazing.

Led Zeppelin IV aka Zoso aka Symbols aka The One With Stairway To Heaven was the first non-kiddie CD in my collection (long after my Nirvana tape died, if you were paying attention)... Houses of The Holy was the second. HOTH (not the planet) is still one of the most common players in my library. These discs accompanied me on every fresh/soph basketball bus ride, back in that strange world where I hadn't heard of Primus yet. They were probably better days, eh?

---Les at the end!---

Lightning Bolt - rare bass-focused metalish stuff. From the assortment of people I've interrogated about the Bolt, I gather that only bassists like it. Prove me wrong!

Liquid Tension Experiment - part of the quasi prog rock sleep music arsenal. Their technical skills are a bit sleep-distracting, though.

Liszt - ha, another classical composer! Surprise. Liszt earns a mention several times over. As is almost mandatory, he focused on piano work. Further in that direction, [I assume that] he was possibly the most skilled ivory-wailer in existence: note that much of his work that he would play solo, i.e. the Hungarian Rhapsodies, appears in still-difficult duet form today. For that matter, note Hungarian Rhapsody #2 again, which you know from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Finally, observe his wide variety of "evil" compositions; he wrote all sorts of Faust-related stuff, as well as the funeral dirge. Yum.

Loggins and Messina - because once upon a time, mothers didn't dance, and fathers neither rocked nor rolled.

Louis Armstrong - quite sufficiently famous trumpeter and growly crooner, such that I need not elaborate. Louis and Ella Fitzgerald tagged to create some monster jazz, too.

Louis Jordan - beans. Cornbread. Repeat.

Louis Prima - points for cranking out some impressive jazz, even though people only care about his role as the orangutan in Disney's "The Jungle Book" cartoon movie...

The Lovin' Spoonful - did you ever have to make up your mind? Do you believe in magic? They sure asked a lot of catchy questions.

Ludacris - also rare on the radar, here comes some more rap. I quite dig the constant humor (gasp, wit!), as well as his technical skill at simply cranking out English clearly and quickly. Of course, there's the offensive tax, but that's part of the comedy; such is the same with regard to the brag quotient. Take it as you will/must, I suppose.

Les Claypool ["solo"] - hmmm... Purple Onion has rewritten my life. That's a pretty good summary.

Way too many stories to shoehorn into this space. Maybe I'll dodge the task with a photo or two? You can find a Claypool tale here just about any day...



Right-o, some whamola. Fancy Band, June 2007, courtesy of the blurry Treo.



Have I mentioned a million times yet that we killed time after that show?



And that he signed my sixer? Ahoy!



Finally, a gorgeously blurry shot from the darkness of the show LAST NIGHT.


PS, that's my excuse for such a poor post today. Rocket.