Here we go again. Penultimate post from me and another selectic eclection of Sitar go lows.

I might be a redundant and embittered 41 year old penniless and pensionless, purblind, bald, impotent TEFL teacher with five unpublished novels mouldering in a bin bag in his parent’s garage whose resentful Leftist ranting serves merely to further reaffirm his myopia and flailing cluelessness, however!! there is one thing that you, the young, with your tangy, Zeitgeisty nowness and your shiny new bodies, in all their cock and cunt sure glory can never deny me….

I have seen World Domination Enterprises live and you haven’t.




LORD A' MERCY!!!!


The Impostume’s regular reader will know that I’m a fairly recent convert to Deep Purple but my love is no less fervent for its recency. This track would be fair contender for best everything. Drum break, riff, weirdest non/anti solos for guitar and organ, general space-age hyperkinetic souped-up rustbucket boogie thrust and metronomic momentum. I can do without Gillan’s vocals generally but they’re reasonably restrained her. Call me a tedious middle-aged contrarian with a comb-over in an ill fitting Asda suit at an Okinawan family wedding, BUT I don’t rate Smoke on the Water much, I think it's a bit dull, lightweight and grooveless, it’s a bit solemn and self important,the riff equivalent of a celebrity charity dinner.




RAM A LLAMA'S KING DONG!!!!!


Is this a transgressive taste move any more? Who knows? What I certainly know is that not only do I rather like Pink Floyd esp The Wall, I love Bat out of Hell. Bit of a Steinman fan in general actually, well.. .I can do without that Pandora’s Box stuff, but……

Bat Out of Hell is what it is, a wonderfully moving, witty and uproarious bit of epic musical theatre . I have a long post on Bat out Hell and Heartland rock’s appeal to the English working class to write at some point so I’ll save any further reflection for that, let’s just say it’s so good I had to post it twice, firstly so you can marvel at Mr Rundgren’s spectacularly disciplined production, secondly‘cos that’s an awesomely powerful live version.

Also Rundgren’s stuff on the track is some of the most moving, charged and dramatic guitar playing on record, a great emotional and narrative commentary on the tracks unfolding drama, a kind of mini-soundtrack within the song itself, adding ballast to its celebration/distillation of the rock myth. It’s miles better than anything he managed himself, innit? A Wizard a True Star’s got great tracks on it but it’s way too intent on being a showcase for Todd as apotheosis and culmination, bringing together all that ever was and shall be in one multi-instrumental, virtuosic bit of vainglory. But precisely because of the restrictions imposed on him here he does wonders, it condense his playing by putting him in a supporting role, forces it to articulate something more compelling than its own range and proficiency.





DAT IZ SUM PHATT SHITT!!