John: Wither?

One more day and I will be off once again for the land of the origin of my over-powering ethnicity: ENGLAND! No, not the U.K., though there are some stray strands of Irish, Welsh, and Scot floating about my Deoxyribonucleic acid.

Yes... off once again to witness the works of the Bard in authentic accents, though this does not have to be a barrier to superior performance. Off again to gaze in disgust at crumbly vestiges of weary Imperial gianthood, long passed into reactionary folklore. A question I shall probably ask myself time and again is, "Prevaileth Engelond?" And after a few hours in this land my answer will undoubtedly be, "It Doth."

Conversely, I have recently been reflecting upon my dwelling musically in the years 1965-1979. A good friend of mine made clear her disapproval of this etat d'affaires, admonishing me to live in "the present" and make it my own. I shall, I say. I will live in the present, and make it my own with barrels of pearls from the past.

The fact is, she told me firmly that there were many good non-mainstream acts wandering about these days, but that I simply lacked the wherewithall to seek them out. She then dutifully directed me to the work of an genre-meshing ensemble from the down-underworld, called "Cat Empire" aiw. Their music, I will admit, would have been enjoyable had it not been for the tenaciously hard-to-ignore SPOKEN (and not very well either) part of a particular song. Why? Because one of the genres they have unceremoniously shoved into their orchestrational kitchen blender is... rap. Lovely.

Despite all this, I was still wondering whether I should give the music of the present more attention...
...And then I listened to Bold As Love, by Jimi Hendrix...

Sorry Lor, I'm irrevocably pinioned to the past.