Heard It On The XM

"Once Bitten, Twice Shy". Ian Hunter's original version was clunky and awkward. Great White took that song and made it their own. I'm amazed I forgot to mention that one in my first post back on the first page of the thread, and even more amazed that no one else here has picked up on it instead.

Didn't they record two or three more albums after Jim Morrison died? (And didn't those two or three albums pretty much completely suck?)

Today was a big day in satellite radio as the recently merged XM and Sirius finally combined their channel lineups. Not surprisingly, the move was aimed at cutting costs by combining and/or eliminating redundant channels. Needless to say, as an XM subscriber (what, you didn't know?) for almost seven years now, this is going to take a lot of getting used to. Even many of the channels that are sticking around have been rebranded (e.g. the channel once called "Top Tracks" is now "Classic Vinyl" but has more or less the same radio-oriented classic rock format) and/or moved to another spot on the dial. Anyone else here subscribe to Sirius or XM? What do you think of the changes?

My 2-year-old niece is a Wiggles freak. And didn't they make more money in one year (2005, IIRC) than the next two biggest entertainment acts from Australia (AC/DC and Nicole Kidman) combined? It'll be interesting to see if they can outdo AC/DC again in a year when the latter group has a new album out.

I checked every band except Aerosmith and AC/DC, and even those two I left unchecked on the basis of their "classic" material. If the question only related to their music of the last 10-15 years, I would have checked them all.

"Stairway To Heaven". Robert Plant himself introduced it as "a song of hope" in The Song Remains The Same, so who am I to argue?

U2 usually opens their shows with "Where The Streets Have No Name". Rush's opening number changed from tour to tour, but they've typically used "Three Blind Mice" followed by the Three Stooges theme as their intro music as they took the stage. Yes used an excerpt from Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" for the same purpose.

Weren't all the girls on Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy album cover originally nude?

I bought a PS3 a few months ago, mainly for use as a Blu-Ray player, and have been slowly building up a Blu-Ray library, so far mainly upgrades from my standard DVD collection. My latest acquisition is U2 Rattle And Hum, which has always been my favorite music-oriented film, and has recently been released in the Blu-Ray format. As one would expect, the film itself is just as good as it's ever been. For those unfamiliar with the film, it depicts U2 at (IMHO) their peak, during the Joshua Tree tour of 1987-88. The music is a tour de force through the band's 1980s catalogue, plus a few "new" songs like "Desire" and "When Love Comes To Town", consisting mainly of live performances filmed at various venues. Interestingly, most but not all of the film is in black-and-white (more on this later); only the Tempe concert footage is shot in color. The concert footage is interspersed with conversations and vignettes with the band members, including backstage with B.B. King and a visit to Graceland. If you're like me and enjoy U2's early material but couldn't care less about most of their later stuff, Rattle And Hum is an essential film. (20 years on, I still get goosebumps watching the intro to "Where The Streets Have No Name".) But is the Blu-Ray version itself essential? I'm not so sure about that. The HD capabilities of the Blu-Ray format seem wasted on a movie shot mostly in grainy B/W to begin with. Visually, only the Tempe color footage is a marked improvement from the standard DVD. Now, that footage does look awesome, but then again we're only talking about roughly one-fourth of the whole film here. The one key feature added to the Blu-Ray version that's not on the standard DVD is a 6.1 DTS soundtrack, but unless you have a high-end home theater system that doesn't mean much, and in any case the 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack (also available on the standard DVD) sounds just fine. My verdict: a qualified thumbs-up. Again, if you're a fan of early U2 first and foremost, Rattle And Hum is a much better choice than U23D - but if you already own the standard DVD, there's really no need to upgrade to the Blu-Ray version unless you're a completist, an audiophile or, like me, just a big fan of this particular film.

Q: What do Deadheads say when they run out of drugs? A: "My God, what is that awful music?"

Or the songwriting front, for that matter. Back on topic, don't forget the drum solo in Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". Also, someone mentioned "Moby Dick", but an even better John Bonham drum song is "Bonzo's Montreux" (from the Coda album). And I'm not sure if this counts, but Frank Beard is tapping his drumsticks on something (probably the edge of one of his drums) during the first part of ZZ Top's "LaGrange".

"Time Table" - Genesis "Mr. Radio" - Electric Light Orchestra "The Rock/Love Reign O'er Me" - The Who

"Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco is another song that refers to itself (not to mention the artist) by name: 1985, Austrian rock singer Falco records "Rock Me Amadeus"

"Hang On To Your Life" by The Guess Who ends with a spoken quote from Psalm 22: They gaped upon me with their mouths As a ravening and a roaring lion I am poured out like water And all my bones are out of joint My heart is like wax It is melted in the midst of my bowels My strength is dried up like a potsherd And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws And thou hast brought me into the dust of death

Actually I'd stop at New Adventures In Hi-Fi. I thought Up was hit-and-miss, and Reveal was lackluster all around.