The latest installment of DEATHSTORM 2015 fizzled out for Mondoville. The ladies of the house are still abed, beneficiaries of a precautionary two-hour delay that was declared last night. I, meanwhile, remain on a regular schedule. Good thing I love what I do.
On other matters, I’ve mentioned that I was something of a metalhead in my undergrad and M.A. days, an era that shaped my book, among other things. One of the constants of my listening back then — and one of the few bands from that era that stays in heavy rotation to this day — was UFO. (As a matter of fact, it’s UFO playing in the background during a rather critical sequence in chapter ten.) While I suppose they had a second-division career in terms of commercial success, they had a strong sense of songcraft, and the added bonus of archetypal guitar hero Michael Schenker, which set them apart from the Foghats of hard-rock history.
At Deadspin (which, a la Grantland, seems to be expanding from a sports site to a more general pop culture review), Joel Reese looks at the band’s history, including the creation of one of rock’s great live albums, and the internal and external factors that kept them in that second division I mentioned a few sentences back. It’s worth your time.
So as a song for the day, here’s a favorite UFO song of mine, the soundtrack to a heartbreak in my early twenties. Things got way better, but I didn’t know they would back then, and this felt right in 1988. Stay warm!
A tip of the Mondo Mortarboard to FUDD, via Facebook.
