This month I’ve been listening to Fiona Apple‘s new album The Idler Wheel … (1) (I think I like the song “Hot Knife” the best), and I’m taking a second look at My Bloody Valentine, who I never really got the first time around. They didn’t make the February Seven due to my ignorance of their work rather than my dislike of it.

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I also discovered this Kennedy Center tribute to Led Zeppelin (by Heart, Jason Bonham and others). Robert Plant was moved to tears at the end, and so was I, although I’m not the best barometer for such things as music always moves me (2).

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I grew up thinking Heart were rubbish. This was because I first heard them in the late eighties when they were singing power ballads. Off the back of the Kennedy Center performance I dug a little deeper and it seems as though they were a much more interesting band in the seventies than I ever realised, quite like early Jefferson Airplane.

Here’s a great version of “Crazy on You” from 1977.

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Notes

1. The full title of the album is “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do” which is a return to her use of very long album titles last seen for 1999′s “When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing ‘fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right”
2. I cried like a small baby for the first hundred or so times I heard Johnny Cash’s version of “One”.

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