Odd thoughts for a day off...

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

I have decided that unless that prodigious prestidigitator and pudit, Crispin Dimebox Sartwell writes it, I am through with music criticism. There have been a lot of signs that the people writing that level of journalism are tonedeaf, and probably didn't listen to the stuff or read anything but each other's crap in a masturbatory orgy of self congratualtion. I think the end for me was a review in Slate describing T-Boone Burnette's influence on Robert Plant as bringing out his darker side. Darker side? Really? Owlsley, satanism, withcraft and kabbala aren't dark enough for you?   Exactly where is the sunlight in The Immigrant Song? What's so optimistic about Over the Hill and Far Away? Ramble On? Kashmir? Evermore?I love "Raising Sand," largely because of the contrast between personnas. If all you know of Allison Krause is the stuff that occasionally gets on to country radio, it's possible to think she's just a sweet little fiddle player. Plant, the rake and rambling boy who has experimented with a lot of stuff including types of music as well as other types or recreational things, seems like what Mick Jagger could have been had he a better and more interesting voice and hadn't wanted to be accepted by polite society. In fact, Plant's pretty reflective, well read and visionary, and Allison is talented and introspective talent who has that high lonesome thing going on -- which includes a lot of darkness, tragedy, and despair. I always get the feeling listening to Led Zepplin, the Plant-Page collaborations and some of his other stuff, that Plant is always on the verge of trying to break through to some other side musically and existentially. Allison Krause is similar -- there's always the feeling with her work both in collaboration with her own band, with others or the odd occasional thing she's done, the feeling is one of yearning and grasping and not quite getting there.