Georgia on my mind...

What were those chuckleheads in Georgia thinking when they "liberated" South Ossetia? Has Putin given the impression of being a wimp? Here's the best analogy I can come up with. Suppose Hawaii decides to break away from the USA. (and given the history of our heavy-handed occupation of Hawaii, they have every moral right to do so). Then let's say there is enough tension there to where the whites and natives tend to migrate into separate neighborhoods, a sort of de facto segregation. Now further imagine the Hawaiian national government opening discussion with the Chinese for a mutual defense pact. And last of all, they move against the white settlers in Hawaii, in a Zimbabwe-type "land liberation" grab. At some point, you just sorta expect the US to give those Hawaiian upstarts a forceful military response in order to show them who's who. So it goes with Georgia deciding to force the issue in South Ossetia. They've whopped the bear across the nose a couple times, and now one very p*ssed-off grizzly is on the rampage. I can sympathize with Georgia's present predicament, but for Pete's sake, what did you expect when you slapped Putin's face?

Batman - The Dark Knight

With Christian Bale and (the late) Heath Ledger. 2½ hours. Rating : ****½ (out of 5*). This Weekend We Saw... Actually, it's been a couple weekends. No need to give background on B:TDK, since everyone and his brother has also seen it. We went the second weekend (at 4:30 Saturday afternoon), and surprisingly, the theater was only half-full. What's To Like... Great action. Great acting. Great city shots of Chicago and Hong Kong. A very dark treatment of Batman, but hey, that was true in the previous film - Batman Begins. The 2½ hours went by very quickly. Oh, and the "wannabee Batmen" were a nice touch. Heath Ledger is superb as the Joker. There's nothing funny about him, as opposed to the way Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero played him. He steals the spotlight from Bale's Batman, but then again, that's been happening since the TV series. There are some nice twists, such as when the Joker kidnaps both the promising DA and Batman's ex-GF, and puts them in two widely-separated warehouses with (of course) bombs. Batman (seemingly) only has time to save one of them. Guess how this gets resolved. Wrong! Oh yeah, and there's no Robin. That's a plus. What's Not To Like... It was best not to try and make logic out of the plot. The Joker knocks over a mob-run bank, and offs its mob-manager. The ethnically-diverse (yeah right) mobsters meet, only to find some Chinese guy has inexplicably taken all their money to Hong Kong. For equally obscure reasons, Batman takes it upon himself to go there and recover the money and bad guy. The Chinese miscreant is eventually done in by The Joker. The mob forgives the Joker for robbing them, and agrees to give him half their money. Confused yet? Me too. Who wants to think anyway... Okay, see all those plot problems? Forget about them. Nobody goes to a Batman movie to critique its plausibility. B:TDK is great entertainment. I don't think I'm ready to claim it's the best movie of 2008, and I won't automtcially concede the Oscar & Academy Awards (what's the difference between those two anyway?) to Ledger, although his untimely demise certainly improved his already-good chances. Come the end of December, B:TDK will surely be in the Top Five movies of the year, so we'll give it four-and-a-half stars, only cuz I'm mighty stingy with my 5-star ratings.

Rounders

This is Rounders. Believe it or not, there are some people who think it compares favorably to major league baseball. Hey, that guy in the light blue shirt in the picture above is about to get whacked right in the.... yeah, well, pretty much anywhere he gets hit is gonna hurt.

Stay tuned. Sometime soon we'll discuss Britain's other baseball-wannabee sport - Conkers.

Perfect Day

Texas Rangers 15 - Baltimore Orioles 7

Arizona Diamondbacks 6 - Atlanta Braves 1

Philadelphia Phillies 6 - Pittsburgh Pirates 3

Los Angeles Angels 4 - New York Yankees 3

It was a perfect day of baseball for me. My Rangers, Diamondbacks, and Phillies all won; and those dastardly Yankees lost. That's Marlon Byrd in the photo, hitting a double in the Texas victory.

She's a doppelganger!

Or maybe they're twins, separated at birth. Alternatively, they're one and the same, since you never see Cruella and Cindy at the same time.

BTW, the author of this cool association is not me. It was originally posted at www.dependablerenegade.com a truly awesome website.

I've been here!

Only once, about 8 years ago. It was night when we visited those towers in the background, and drizzling. I'll let you guess this place. At the bottom of one of the towers is a three-story shopping mall that we wandered about in. At the time, IIRC, the public didn't have access to that walkway you see in the picture below. They opened it about a year later.

More Xkcd

This has been me once or twice. See more at www.xkcd.com

Perfect Time for a Breakdown

Artist : Sharon Little

Album : Perfect Time For A Breakdown (2008)

Genre : Blues (White Girl Blues)

Rating : ***** * (out of 10*)

. This Week I'm Listening To... Sharon Little was the opening act at the recent Robert Plant/Alison Krauss concert. As mentioned in the review for that, Sharon gave a solid performance, albeit nothing that would make Plant/Krauss fear being upstaged. Perfect Time For A Breakdown is her accompanying CD, and you can find all her concert tracks on it. This is her debut album, other than a demo, Drawing Circles, issued in 2006. . YouTube Links... You can hear/see Sharon singing Try, which IMO is her best song, here. And Follow That Sound, another good track from PTfaB, is here. There's another half-dozen or so SL clips out there at YouTube, so you can get quite familiar with her. . What's To Like... PTfaB exists to showcase Ms. Little's singing abilities, and it does a good job at that. All the songs are done in White Girl Blues style, but there's a nice variety of sounds within that sub-genre. . PTfaB can be summed up in two words : "Not Bad". The songwriter is not bad. Sharon's singing is not bad. Her stage-show is not bad. . Her publicist is doing a not-bad job. In addition to the YouTube videos, someone has recently (last couple weeks) added a short entry on her at Wikipedia. 12 of Sharon's family and close friends have posted rave reviews at Amazon.com. OTOH, the RateYourMusic entry is badly out-of-date, and has no entries. . What's Not To Like... Well, PTfaB can also be summed up in three words : Not Bad, But... The fundamental weakness noted at the concert carries over to the album - Sharon shares the spotlight with the rhythm guitarist, Scot ("one-T") Sax. The CD blurb says he co-wrote a lot of the songs with Sharon. And for all I know he might also be her main squeeze. But folks, the last time I saw a rhythm guitarist in the limelight was REO Speedwagon, and there at least he was also one of the lead singers. . Accordingly, the lead guitar is relegated to the shadows, both musically and personally. Sorry, Sharon, you're not bad, but to make it to the top, I honestly think you need to be complemented by a b*tchin' lead guitar. Hey, maybe you can persuade T Bone Burnett to join you. That would be quite the pairing. Perfect Time For A Wannabee... White Girl Blues is not one of my favorite music types, so I polled a multitude of other people who attended the Phoenix concert. I can't tell you their exact number, but both of them agreed with me - there are other artists who do this sort of stuff better. . Personally I felt Sharon was a Melissa Etheridge wannabee. Liz, who knows this genre far better than I, called her a Tracy Chapman wannabee. My co-worker friend suggested she was a Susan Tedeschi wannabee, who in turn has often been called a Bonnie Raitt wannabee. What does it say about you when you can be summed up as a wannabee wannabee? So we'll give PTfaB six "not bad" stars. And check back with her when her next album comes out. Here's hoping there will be a next album.

Bumper Sticker for the Day

Gotta get me one of these. BTW, my brother who lives in Los Angeles, for many years had a "Support Your Local Police...State" bumper sticker on his car. I wonder how many times he got pulled over because of that.

Where in the world?

This is on Bill Clinton Boulevard, which is in.... well, I'll let you try and guess that. A friend of mine just returned from there and took this picture for me.

Happy Ending

Our miniature pinscher saga had a happy resolution this morning. At 7:00 in the cotton-pickin' morning our phone rang. It was the owner of Mimi and Pepe; whose real names are Clovas (sic) and Garth.

He drove over right away to pick them up, and the resultant tail-wagging confirmed that he was indeed their owner. He lives a couple blocks from where Liz found them. When he came home Wednesday afternoon to find them gone, he said he didn't know where to look. So he didn't look. I think someone's a few fries short of a happy meal.

His mom saw Liz's "Found Dog" signs this morning when she was putting up "Yard Sale" signs. That explains the early intrusion on my weekend sleeping. But the guy has a 9-year-old son, who I am sure is overjoyed to have his puppies back.

All's well that ends well. Our three dogs said they won't miss Clovas and Garth one bit.

To Be Visited...

Here's one of the places I still want to go to someday. More specifically, Izmir, then down to the Anatolian coast. Gotta work on talking Liz into it.

She's done it again...

My dog-napping (or dog-rescuing, take your pick) wife brought home a pair of runaways today. They appear to be "mama & son", and are Miniature Pinschers. Which I am told are rather expensive dogs.

The pup has a tag, which even has a telephone number on it. Alas, the lady who answered tells us she's only had that number for about 3 months, and gets lots of calls for the previous number-owner.

So, the "Found Dog" signs are up, and here's hoping these two weren't dumped. If they were, hopefully we'll have an easier time unloading them then Liz's two previous "acquisitions", which were both Pit Bull pups.

We'll call these two Pepe and Mimi. BTW, I never gave the final outcome of Poochie, Liz's last bring-home. After 10 days of no one claiming him, I finally persuaded a friend of Jason's to take him. They hit it off immediately, but alas, said friend had to move into an apartment a week later, and it was a "No Pets" deal.

This had the making of another family crisis, as Liz wanted to bring Poochie back here, and I, along with our three resident mutts, said "No!!" But there was a happy ending to the story, as the friend found a relative to take Poochie. So Poochie, who is now named Mustache (don't ask. it's a long story), did finally get a happy home. For you sentimental dog-lovers, you can see a picture of Poochie/Mustache here.

Escher Tribute for the Week

Salvador Dali is my favorite artist. But Escher's in the top three. I love it when people do tributes like this.

Emmylou likes Chemistry !!

At least that's what I thought when I got Emmylou Harris' new CD (All I Intended To Be), and on Track 09, she calls herself a dimer. Now just why she'd refer to herself as a "chemical compound made of two smaller identical or similar monomers that are linked together by hydrogen or covalent bonds" is beyond me. Maybe she means she has a split personality. By that line of thinking, I'm a polymer.

Alas, it turns out Emmylou wasn't talking chemistry at all. The title to Track 09, "Old five and dimers like me", refers to her being a geezer. Or something like that.

Which reminds me - do you know how to tell if someone you know is a chemist? They think "unionized" is a four-syllable word. ;-)

The Smear Campaign

I work with a guy who is convinced Obama is a militant Muslim with direct ties to an anti-American mosque in London. He knows this, cuz someone sent him an e-mail saying it was so.

In other news, we saw Batman : The Dark Knight yesterday. It is very good, but I wouldn't put a label like "best ever" on it. A more-detailed review to follow.

Well, Hello Dolly!

Dolly makes our Arizona monsoons look rather dinky. And I'm looking forward to seeing storm pics on lots of Texas blogs.

For Bibliophiles only...

I have a grudge against the "Flo & Friends" comic strip, because it was a (presumably) cheaper replacement in the Mesa Trib for Doonesbury. The humor is bland, at least IMO. But if you think Dennis The Menace is funny, you'll like F&F.

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Be that as it may, today's strip was way kewl. Someday, I'm going to face this very same problem.

Just Wrong - July '08

I think we'll start a new semi-regular theme here. "Just Wrong". Some humorous. Some serious. All blatantly wrong. Babs gets to lead things off.

Dali Fix for the Week

A Worth1000 tribute to my favorite artist. Left-click on it for a better view.

The True False Identity

Artist : T Bone Burnett (Joseph Henry Burnett, b. 1948)
Album Title : The True False Identity (59:30 minutes)
Genre : Rock (50's & 60's)
Rating : ***** *½ (out of 10*)

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This Week I'm Listening To...

T Bone Burnett is a guitarist, songwriter, and producer, who was one of two awesome lead guitars at the recent Alison Krauss/Robert Plant concert. The True False Identity is his 2006 solo release, and was his first new studio album in 14 years.

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What's To Like...

There's a wide variety of musical styles and influences here - some blues, some ballads, and even a teensy bit of Jimi Hendrix-sounding stuff. But it is all tied together by an overlying 50's-60's Rock beat. Unsurprisingly, the guitar-work that takes center stage. Simply put, T Bone is a guitar god.

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YouTube Links...

You can hear track #2, Palestine, Texas (audio only) from tTFI here. A live version of track #10, Earlier Baghdad - The Bounce, can be seen/heard here. In fact, this latter live track is IMHO better than the studio version.

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What's Not To Like...

His guitar-playing may be fantastic, but T Bone's voice here is strictly so-so. But it's the lyrics themselves that are the weakest link. The rhyming schemes are for the most part, unambitious. One example :

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Joe wasn't slow

But didn't know

How to blow

All the dough

From the show...

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And while there are some catchy phrases scattered throughout the songs, they somehow are either too esoteric or too vague to give the song lyrics as a whole much coherency. Example #2 :

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When you're out for revenge

Dig two graves,

When you run from the truth

It comes in waves.

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Nice sounding, and the meter is good. But on further analysis, that verse doesn't make much sense.

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I'd Like My T-Bone Rare, Please...

Not only is he spectacular on guitar, but T Bone also has the Midas Touch when it comes to producing albums. His resumé includes Krauss/Plant's Raising Sand, and the soundtrack O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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It's a pity then that The True False Identity isn't a better effort. Perhaps T Bone should have someone else do the arranging of his songs, re-write the lyrics, and double the length of all the guitar soloes.

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In the end, T Bone's marvelous and complex guitar-playing (slightly-more-than) compensates for the shortcomings of the lyrics and song-arranging. We'll give this a "medium well" 6½ stars, and try to find his "20-20" album, which reportedly is an anthology of his 20 years of solo work.

One less planet to visit

Huqurrum-6, a star in neighboring Andromeda galaxy, went nova with almost no warning last week. Which unhappily toasted one of my favorite vacation planets, good old, balmy Huajixi. While I was there, working on my tan, no less. Luckily, I never leave home without a towel, a toothbrush, and a portable wormhole.

Night Lights

I'm pretty certain both of these pics are phony. In theory, they are NASA satellite images. This top one seems questionable to me. I don't think Greenland and the North Pole ice would show up that well in a night-time image. Also, the "tail" of Alaska seems to extend loonnnggg way towards Siberia.

This bottom one's even shakier. Lots of red lighting for no discernible reason. Ditto for the blue lights, especially those clusters between Scotland and Norway.

Still, these are way-cool pics.

Mission Accomplished

Isn't it curious - we invade and occupy the country with the 3rd- or 4th-largest oil reserves (depending on whose data you're using), yet gas prices are spiraling out of control. I guess it's true - "GOP" stands for the "Gas & Oil Party".

Trivia question for the day : from what country do we import the greatest amount of oil?

XKCD in Foxtrot

There, in the lower left-hand corner, is Foxtrot's most excellent parody of www.xkcd.com. And a fine bit of xkcd humor it is, too. I'm sure the other three offerings are also webcartoons, but I don't recognize them. As always, left-click on the image to get a larger view of it.

The Monsoons are here!

Actually, we haven't had a lot of dust (so far) with the 2008 monsoons, which is quite unusual. We've had rain three times this past week, which has helped our lawns immensely. Of course, it's also koncked a gazillion more pods out of the two frontyard trees. Still, I'd rather have 100°F and Houston humidity than 115°F and Death Valley dryness. Our dogs agree.

RIF

I admit it. I am a biblioholic.

The Mysterious Production of Eggs

Artist : Andrew Bird

Album Title : The Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005)

Genre : Baroque Pop

Rating : ***** **** (out of 10*)

This Week I'm Listening To...
Andrew Bird is a Chicago musician, formerly of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and who plays a bitchin' electric violin, as well as mandolin, guitar, and (of all things) glockenspiel. Oh yeah, he is also one superb whistler. You can read more about him here at Wikipedia.

TMPoE is his 2005 solo release. It's hard to classify this album. Wiki calls it Baroque Pop, and that's as good as any appellation.

YouTube Links...
You can hear the album version of the fantastic track, Fake Palindromes, (audio only) here. For a live version of him doing FP at Bonnaroo (whatever that is), click here. You can see another video from Bonnaroo, A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left, here.

What's To Like...
Simply the best electric violin-playing since the early days of ELO. Excellent arrangements; bizarrely surreal lyrics (with a chemistry bent!); skilled musicianship; and nice rhyming schemes. The best way I describe him is as a slightly-psychopathic Mensa nutcase version of (Tiptoe Thru The Tulips) Tiny Tim.

Bird is also a techno-geek, who uses some cool devices to allow him and one other performer to sound like a 4-piece band. You can read about this at the above Wiki link. The main thing to recognize in those two Bonnaroo videos is that none of that music is piped in.

Oh yeah, the album cover is très cool, too.

What's Not To Like...
Not much. His guitar-playing is a notch below his virtuoso voilin performances. And while it is impressive how many instruments he and the drummer can play at once, one wonders if things would be easier if they added a keyboardist and a guitar player to the band. Still, this is mere quibbling.

"I like long walks and sci-fi movies,
You're six foot tall and east-coast bred;
Some lonely night we can get together,
I'm gonna tie your wrists with leather,
And drill a tiny hole into your head." (from Fake Palindromes)
Andrew Bird brings an original sound to the music scene. He's everything Britney Spears is not. You'll have to give it a close listen in order to appreciate the strange, subtle, and intellectually-stimulating lyrics. In spite of the somewhat psychotic atmosphere to TMPoE, this is not a depressing album.

With 13 cool, catchy and complex tracks (only the last cut, The Happy Birthday Song, dips to being merely "mediocre"), we'll give TMPoE a solid nine stars, and see if we can find his 2007 (and most-recent) release, Armchair Apochrypha.

Rights?! What rights?

It's nice to see someone in Fort Worth sees it the same way I do. Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are political hacks, not justices. One more Rethugnican-appointed bozo in the SCOTUS will give them a majority. This is why we have to win in November.

Catch-22

Title : Catch-22 (1961, 455 pages)

Author : Joseph Heller (1923-1999)

Genre : Literature

Rating : B

This Week I Read...
Oh, the absurdity of war! John Yossarian is a bombadier, stationed in the Mediterranean during the last half of World War 2. He spends his time bombing the northern half of Italy, falling in love with various whores in Rome, agonizing that his next mission will end in his death, and trying to figure out how to convince the military to ship him back to the states.

There is a way out, of course. If you're found to be insane, that's an instant ticket home. Alas, by attempting to show that you're insane, you demonstrate your sanity. That's Catch-22, and that means it is impossible for Yossarian to ever get himself discharged.

What's To Like...
Yossarian is a classic anti-hero : full of faults, scared of dying, and anti-establishment. The group he's stuck with (the "Fighting 256th") has country bumpkins, back-stabbers, buxom nurses, milquetoast chaplains, incompetent Generals (anyone remember the Peter Principle?), ambitious Colonels, capitalistic Majors, and a host of other engaging characters to become acquainted with.

If you like paradoxes, there are a couple billion of them in this book. Then there are the Catch-22's themselves, which are similar to, yet different, from paradoxes. BTW, a "Catch-22" is entirely fictional. FWIW, there were quite a few numbers tried prior to the book being released - Catch-11; Catch-14; etc.

I suspect if you've ever been in the service, you'll find this book hilariously close to how things really were. I'm not a vet (both the Army and me are stronger because of this), so there's a limited amount of relevancy here for me.

What's Not To Like...
It's a slow read. As with the other Heller book I've read ("God Knows"), its way too repetitious. You could slice 150 pages out of C-22, and it would be much better. You'll find yourself skipping "text" paragraphs to get to the dialogue parts.

There's no plot for the first 75% of the book. It's like watching a 24-hour M*A*S*H marathon - there's humor and wit, but no progression in the tale at all. To be fair, Heller wakes up around page 330, and things finally begin to unfold. The book gets markedly darker after that, which IMNSHO is a plus.

Finally, the ending just plain sucks. I know this is a farce, but it was a believable farce until... well, no spoilers here.

It's The History, Stupid...
If you judge Catch-22 solely on its literary merits. it doesn't stand the test of time very well. Joseph Heller was destined never to repeat his initial smash hit. I'd go as far to say that the success of C-22 was due more to good timing than good writing. Of course, I say that about Seinfeld too.

But Catch-22 is a breakthrough opus. Along with authors like Kurt Vonnegut, there was finally something distinctive about American literature. Yeah, the Brits figured this out before we did, but hey, they've had more practice at this sort of thing.

You can see the influence of Catch-22 in M*A*S*H, and maybe-just-maybe, even in Dilbert. So we'll remember its time-period, and give it a shaky B. With Heller, Vonnegut, and Hunter S. Thompson all now departed, maybe it's time for a new generation of talented American authors to emerge.

Finger Art (part 2)

Gone, but not forgotten...

From the site www.thinkingapeblues.com

Finger Art (part 1)

Unintended Consequences

This is a legit article from Chemical & Engineering News, a publication that one gets by paying one's ACS dues. Left-click on it for a readable image.

Happy 4th of July !! (a)

Happy Independence Day! Or, as they call it in the UK, Happy You-Ungrateful-Rebels-We-Never-Wanted-To-Keep-You-Anyway Day.

This is a holiday unique to the USA, where our culture takes center stage. In baseball, the Yankees are playing the Red Sox, which is as American as it gets. So I turned on the TV to ESPN, and what did I find?

A hotdog-eating contest. Indescribeable drama as Takeru Kobayashi tried to retake the title from last year's winner and upstart, Joey Chestnut (pictured above).

So I switched over to CNN (Channel 38), and what was their headline news-story? You betcha, the hotdog-eating contest. Indeed, if you go to the MSNBC website, you'll find this is also one of their top stories for the day. Click here.

In case you're dying to know, Chestnut and Kobayashi were tied at the end of the 10-minute contest, each having eaten 59 hotdogs (including buns). In the 1-minute "dog-off", Chestnut retained the title by downing 5 more.

Happy 4th of July !! (b)

Here then is the face of American culture. Bon appetit!

The Pods Must Be Crazy

Question : What do you get when you cross two pod-pooping trees with a monsoon wind? Answer : 30 gallons (*) of pods strewn out across the cul-de-sac. To say nothing of our roof, our swimming pool, the bed of my truck, the neighbors' yards, etc.

Fortunately, I'm off this week, so I had time to buy a push-broom and sweep the street. In 112° heat and monsoon mugginess. What fun.

I blame my Druid persona for this. Him and his cotton-pickin' fertility rites. Those trees were sterile for the first 10 years we had them. A few leaves; no pods. But oh no, Mr. "Viva Vercingetorix" just had to perform some sort of Druidic ritual. And since there are no oak groves in Phoenix, he was forced to make do with the two trees in our front yard. Sheesh.

(*) : Yeah, I know. "gallons" is a liquid measure. But I filled my 5-gallon bucket 6 times with those &*#!$% pods you see in the street.

Alison Krauss & Robert Plant Concert

Who : Alison Krauss and Robert Plant

Where : Dodge Theater

When : 01 July 2008

Rating : B+

- VENUE -

Dodge Theater is in downtown Phoenix. It is relatively new; part of the urban revitalization program. The acoustics are so-so; better than American West Arena or any outdoor venue, but nothing compared to Grady Gammage Auditorium and/or Celebrity Theater. You were allowed to take pics, but no flash photography. We complied, and our pics came out sucky, so I had to scrounge the internet for photos from their earlier concerts. Rating : B-

- PRICES -

$80 a ticket got us in the first row of the 2nd-floor balcony. That's about 30 rows back from the stage. There were two additional balconies above us.

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$4.50 got you a regular-sized bottle of water. I cringe to think how much a bottle of beer cost. T-Shirts and other concert paraphrenalia were going at the usual prices - $30 for a regular shirt, etc. Rating : C

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- CROWD -

The crowd, not unexpectedly, ranged from old hippies to country & western fans, and everything in between. No metalheads or goths to speak of. For the most part, the mood was mannerly. Some standing ovations, but not many. Very little dancing in the aisles.

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About 3/4 of the way through the concert, one woman felt compelled to declare her love for Mr. Plant from the front row. She was cordially escorted out.

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About 15 minutes later, some clown felt compelled to pledge his love to Ms. Krauss. He even managed to crawl onstage, before Robert signaled for Security, who carried the nitwit away in a most uncordial fashion. Plant never even missed a note in his singing. One gets the feeling this happens on a regular basis. Rating : C+

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- OPENING ACT -

Sharon Little is a Melissa Etheridge wannabee who, at the beginning of 2008, was working as a waitress in Philadelphia to make ends meet. Since then, she has signed a record contract and put out an album. She was thrilled-to-goodness to be opening for Alison and Robert.

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She and her band did about 6 numbers from their CD. Her songwriter plays rhythm guitar and gets equal time in the spotlight. He is weird. One sees some personnel changes in this band before the next album comes out. Sharon was okay, but Krauss and Plant don't have to worry about being upstaged. Rating : C

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- MAIN ACT -

Sharon finished at 8:15; apparently Krauss and Plant had no intention of starting before 9:00. Gotta sing a few more songs, Sharon. To be fair, we then got two hours of good music from the headliners.

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In addition to doing most of their numbers from the Raising Sand album, they did a bunch of Krauss' bluegrass stuff. The back-up musicians were awesome, highlighted by one T-Bone Burnett who, uncoincidentally, produced Raising Sand.

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My main beef with the album is that it's just a bunch of nice duets. Charming, but nothing to get excited about. The concert renditions were quite different - lots of showing off by Alison and the band. I'd go as far to say that if the second Krauss/Plant CD turns out to be a "Live in Concert" issue, it will be much better than the studio effort.

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Krauss got to show off her bluegrass fiddle skills, which are superb. Alas, that left Plant as the "weak link" - a middle-aged rock-&-roll geezer trying to be relevant among some gifted bluegrass musicians, and whose only contribution is singing. They did allow him to do one Led Zepplin number - Battle of Evermore, but the basic structure of that song is well-suited for a bluegrass treatment. It should be mentioned that the chemistry between Krauss and Plant seemed quite weak. She seemed much more comfortable interacting with T-Bone and the rest of the backing band.

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In the end, the strengths of Alison Krauss and (more importantly) the session musicians more than made up for Robert Plant. Go to this show if you like Raising Sand or if you like Bluegrass. The only reason to skip it is if you are uneasy about over-the-hill rock stars not knowing when to quit. Rating : A-.

For chemists only...

Something quick from the genius that dwells at www.xkcd.com , as we're off to see Alison Krauss and Robert Plant tonight.