IT'S A SIMPLE QUESTION...OR IS IT?

While feeding the kiddo yesterday I had the XM 80's station pulled up on our DirecTV. Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie" came on and I made the comment at what a distinctive opening the song had. By opening, I meant from the first note through the first line of the first verse. Sheer synthesizer brilliance with a rare kill of the music leading directly into his acapella vocals. This immediately led to a conversation about what the best musical intro of all-time is.

Folks, it's definitely not a clear-cut answer. I pulled up my iTunes playlist of the top 500 songs ever as determined by Rolling Stone and quickly scrolled through the classics. No fewer than 169 struck me as fairly remarkable. Clearly this list need to be cut down. A second run-through of that smaller selection yielded 52 potentials.

It's not a comprehensive list, because I only worked off that Rolling Stone list. How could it be, when there was no Van Halen included in my list of finalists? "Running With The Devil," "You Really Got Me," "Ain't Talkin' About Love," "Dreams," "Right Now," "Jump," "Panama," "I'll Wait"...there might be no group better at grabbing you by the throat and pulling you in right off the bat.

No Def Leppard either. Consider the intros on these hits: "Bringin' On The Heartache," "Pour Some Sugar On Me," "Hysteria," "Photograph."

But if we're looking at the best intros to the best songs, how do you decide from a list that includes:

Satisfaction...Johnny B. Goode...Smells Like Teen Spirit...London Calling...Purple Haze...Born To Run...Layla...Stairway To Heaven...Gimmie Shelter...All Along The Watchtower...Hotel California...When Doves Cry...Superstition...Whole Lotta Love...I Heard It Through The Grapevine...Every Breath You Take...Brown Eyed Girl...I Want You Back...Won't Get Fooled Again...While My Guitar Gently Weeps...Kashmir...Foxey Lady...Let's Get It On...Dream On...Back In Black...Sweet Child O' Mine...Good Times...Sunday Bloody Sunday...Walk This Way...One Way Or Another...Iron Man...Heartbreaker...We Will Rock You...Spirit In The Sky...Beat It...Baba O'Reilly...Pride (In The Name Of Love)...Bitter Sweet Symphony...Ohio...Roxanne...(Don't Fear) The Reaper...Sweet Home Alabama...Sweet Emotion...The Boys Of Summer...Nuthin' But A 'G' Thang...Piano Man...Smoke On The Water...Paradise City...Welcome To The Jungle...Eighteen...I Love Rock 'N' Roll...How Soon Is Now?

Can't be done, folks. If I had to only pick a half-dozen for myself, it would probably have to be London Calling, Born To Run, Layla, Superstition, Pride (In The Name Of Love), and Paradise City (no particular order).

DARK SIDE OF THE RAINBOW? THE WIZARD OF PINK FLOYD?

It was winter term my freshman year at Franklin College. Just another uneventful night of sitting around with my fraternity brothers while watching basketball games in the upstairs chapter room. Then one of the guys came up the stairs with copies of The Wizard Of Oz in one hand and Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon in the other.

I suspect it was Jason Scheele who was the culprit, if I had to use deductive reasoning. He's the only one off the top of my head that I know was from the Ft. Wayne area. That fall, there was an article in one of the newspapers up there that was the first on record to detail the phenomenon I'm about to describe. I had not read the article so I had no idea what was going on when the CD was cued up and they pressed play when the MGM lion roared for the third time.

Now I must preface this by saying that the comsumption of five or six beers (none for me, thank you, but well beyond that for some of my fellow Tekes) has a great way of making you more susceptible, more receptive to seeing things that may or may not have happened over the following hour. But even in my stone-cold sober state, there were a number of things during "Dark Side Of The Rainbow" that flipped my lid.

There are over a hundred documented places where you can see eerie things when the movie and music are synched up, most of which fall into two main categories. One is that the lyrics of the song seem to be describing events taking place on the screen. The other is places that the mood or tempo of the music provide an impressive soundtrack for the movie. In particular, there were a handful that, when seen in the context of the first run-through of the CD, were pretty mind-blowing.

The best symbolically is when the house lands in Oz and Dorothy is making her way to the door to see what's outside. The soundtrack falls silent as she tentatively walks to the door, then as she steps off the front porch (and the film transitions from black and white to color) the familiar slot machine sound of "Money" kicks in.

The eeriest for me is the intensity of the shrieking of the female singer in "The Great Gig In The Sky" as the storm picks up and the tornado starts sweeping onto the farm, then fades off as Dorothy rolls over onto the bed after being knocked out (this leads into the scene mentioned in the paragraph above).

The most jarring comes with the Wicked Witch makes her first appearance (while still in Kansas), riding along the dirt road on her bicycle as she comes to the farm to take Toto away.

One of the more subtle coincidences comes as the album ends for the first time, with the rhythmic sound approximating a heartbeat while the gang are meeting the Tin Man ("if I only had a heart") for the first time.

Taken out of context, these clips probably seem rather random. Which watched in the flow of the movie and album, it's well worth taking a few hours out of your busy schedule. BTW...if you set your CD to repeat, you can make it all the way through the movie and see more incidents. Personally, I think one time through the CD gives you a good enough idea.

THE FIRST IN A SERIES

Simple explanation. Twenty-five example of why 1984 was the greatest year in music history. You must judge on the merits of the music itself, not necessarily the music video (that's an entire different posting). So here we go with my evidence:

Turn Up The Radio (Autograph)...always thought this could be a great Def Leppard song
A Fine Fine Day (Tony Carey)...great story being told
Drive (The Cars)...and not just because of Paulina in the vid
Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) (Phil Collins)...on every breakup mix tape
Relax (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)...banned in many nations, great drive to it
I Can Dream About You (Dan Hartman)...pure 80's
The Boys Of Summer (Don Henley)...maybe the finest of this collection, an all-time classic
Rebel Yell (Billy Idol)...fantastic intensity to the bridge
Original Sin (INXS)...underrated early effort
I Feel For You (Chaka Khan)...music and lyrics by Prince, harmonica by Stevie Wonder
Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)...absolute tear-jerker, very evocative
Cool It Now (New Edition)...early rap experimentation, nice fusion of pop and bubblegum
Sister Christian (Night Ranger)...if only for its use in "Boogie Nights," but also great piano
Oh Sherrie (Steve Perry)...love the acapella to start, this guy has got some pipes
Wrapped Around Your Finger (The Police)...the final massive hit before their breakup
Let's Go Crazy (Prince & The Revolution)...alright, maybe this is the best song of 1984
When Doves Cry (Prince & The Revolution)...the absence of any bass is, well, revolutionary
Rock You Like A Hurricane (Scorpions)...guitar rock at its German best
Love Somebody (Rick Springfield)...won't get the credit, but better than "Jessie's Girl"
It's My Life (Talk Talk)...severely underrated tune that was remade recently by No Doubt
What's Love Got To Do With It (Tina Turner)...Grammy winner for Song of the Year
Pride (In The Name Of Love) (U2)...their first mainstream U.S. hit
Jump (Van Halen)...this just screams summertime staple
Missing You (John Waite)...a jumble of perfectly conflicted emotions
Careless Whisper (Wham!)...written when George Michael was just 17 years old

And, in the issue of fairness, let me present ten songs that make the argument against (no explanation necessary for any of them):

Strip - Adam Ant
Robert DeNiro's Waiting - Bananarama
Blue Jean - David Bowie
Stay The Night - Chicago
Sexy Girl - Glenn Frey
Method Of Modern Love - Hall & Oates
Centipede - Rebbie Jackson
Wonderful Christmastime - Paul McCartney
Operator - Midnight Star
Mr. Telephone Man - New Edition

HOW DID THIS MILESTONE COME AND GO WITHOUT MORE ATTENTION?

This month was the 25th anniversary of the release of the best-selling album in history, Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Given the general freak show that Michael has become over the past dozen years or so, it's getting harder and harder to remember a time when he was just about the damn coolest person anyone had ever seen before.

The Guinness Book of World Records puts the total number of copies solid to date at north of 100 million copies. That's absolutely ridiculous to think about, considering that the next highest in terms of worldwide sales is less than 50 million.

There have only been a handful of genuine phenomenon's in music that seemed to come out of nowhere. Elvis in 1955. The Beatles in 1964. It's a pretty short list. Stuff like New Kids On The Block in the late 80's or Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears a decade later, the hype around them seemed forced, artificially manufactured, media driven.

Michael Jackson had been on the public stage for over a dozen years since the Jackson 5 had their first hit in 1969. So while it sounds strange to say that he came out of nowhere, there could have been no way to predict the way he exploded on the scene starting December 1, 1982.

It was a perfect storm. For starters, MTV had been on the air for just sixteen months and the medium was still fairly primative. The technological leap forward for music videos was staggering, compared to the junk that was on the channel at that point. He became the biggest star on the channel; cable was a fairly new revelation in its own right, and MTV quickly joined ESPN as the most relevant options in this new world. His look, with the parachute pants and the sunglasses and sequined gloves was totally different from other performers, something new and fresh that kids could latch onto. Pop music was en vogue at this point in the post-disco, post-punk New Wave era that had emerged, and he did it better than anyone else. Still, there was no way to see it coming.

"Thiller" is not the best album ever, in my estimation. It could have been, if there had been one subtraction. "The Girl Is Mine" is simply a terrible track that completely doesn't fit in this collection. Proving that there's no accouting for taste, this worthless bit of tripe was the first release from the album and promptly spent three weeks at #2 on the charts. The far superior Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney collaboration "Say, Say, Say" would enter the countdown nearly a year later off of a McCartney solo album and spend six weeks at #1. If these songs would have switched albums, I could comfortably put "Thiller" ahead of "Joshua Tree," "Rubber Soul," or "Zeppelin IV."

"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" has a hypnotic synthesizer intro that grips you immediately, one of the best kickoffs to an album ever. Accomplished bass player Louis Johnson, who figures ever more prominently later on, weaves in and out, and the first examples of ear candy, the short trumpet bursts that pop up, are very distinctive. And Jackson is singing in a much more mature manner, not messing around with a lot of the falsetto that he utilized on "Off The Wall" several years earlier. A lot of the same elements pop up on "Baby Be Mine," but in a much less frenzied manner than the prior track. It has some very slight funk elements, but is much more of a pop song. What follows next is the abominable "The Girl Is Mine," which I believe my good friend Lonnie would lump into the category of craptastic or craptacular. Seriously, why could "Say, Say, Say" not have been in this place?

There's no denying that the single "Thriller" is pure camp. I can't possibily fathom anyone else doing a song like this and pulling it off. It's kind of like trying to imagine someone else doing "Bohemian Rhapsody." The interesting thing for my is always trying to pick out the different layers to the song. It seems pretty minimal if you're listening superficially, but there's always four or five different things going on underneath the main structure and Jackson's singing. Of course, as fun as this song in on the album itself, nothing beats seeing it in video form.

The album is already picking up steam at this point, but goes into a completely foreign direction with "Beat It." Never before had an R&B act attempted a foray into guitar rock quite like this. Eddie Van Halen's searing solo shot during the bridge (rated the 67th best guitar solo in rock history by Guitar World) attracted the bulk of the attention, but Steve Lukather's guitar work during the remainder of the song is solid as well. As for Jackson, it was probably the most aggressive vocals in terms of both content and delivery thus far in his career. The fusion of rock and R&B served as a template for future cross-genre collaborations, starting with "Walk This Way" three years later.

"Billie Jean" is quite possibly the perfect pop song. I simply don't hear any flaw in it. The only other potential heir to that throne is U2's "One." The bass line is seductive, the ear candy is plentiful and yet not overdone, the subject matter is far weightier than any that Jackson had previously tackled...hell, the lead vocals were done on one take, with no overdubs or editing. It wound up as a much-deserved #1 single, arguably the best song of 1983 along with "Every Breath You Take."

A slice of weenie rock, the confectionary "Human Nature" comes down from the heaviness of the three previous tracks. Still, the melody is impressive and this was another top 10 hit. The album picks up the tempo with "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." Backup vocalists included Janet Jackson and James Ingram; this single was another impressive combination of pop with a funk undertone. I would have liked to see "P.Y.T.," yet another of the seven top 10 hits, be the song that had wrapped up the album. However, Jackson and Quincy Jones opted for "The Lady In My Life," a surprisingly effective love song. Its impact is a little diminished because of all the rumors and innuendo regarding Jackson's sexuality over the years...it rings a little false today in a way that it wouldn't have in 1982. But it's very good as far as 80's ballads go, and I remain surprised that it was never released as a single.

It goes without saying that the impact and achievement of this album will never be surpassed. No one will every churn out a trio of videos as groundbreaking and legendary. No album is going to top seven top ten hits. No album is going to sell 100+ million copies. And yet the lack of note that was taken took me off guard.

THE HIGHWAYMAN

Meg is amazed sometimes when we're listening to the car radio some of the songs that I claim never to have heard before. It does strike me as a little odd sometimes, because I'm an avid fan (and collector in massive amounts) of virtually all popular music of the second half of the 20th century. I'm rapidly approaching the need for a second iPod once this one fills up...and yet occasionally I come across something I'm ashamed to admit that I'm not familiar with.

Enter "The Highwayman" by the group of the same name. Individually, they are four of the central figures in the "outlaw country" music scene of the 1970's: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. Not many supergroups in history can match that combined starpower; I'd place them ahead of even the Travelling Wilburys.

I was combing through some of my Johnny Cash music over the summer and stumbled across this track. It pulled me in due in large part to the fact that it sounds so unlike anything else on his greatest hits collection. Now, I consider it one of my absolute favorite singles ever, for a number of reasons.

1) What originally piqued my curiosity was a guitar bit that wove throughout the middle portion of the track. As I heard it play (primarily during the verse sung by Jennings) I could have sworn that it was Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. There are certain guitarists that are instantly recognizable when you hear them, and Knopfler is chief among them. Whether it was his early 80's/pre-"Brothers In Arms" stuff or as recently as "Walking To Philadelphia" back in 2000, he's very distinctive...and it screams out to me in this song. All the searching I've done has come no closer to actually confirming his presence on this album. The only connection I've been able to find is a lot of work Knopfler did with Emmylou Harris (who also worked closely with many of the members of The Highwaymen") and the fact that Knopfler and Nelson teamed up for the soundtrack of the movie "Wag The Dog."

2) There's no chorus! I can't come up with any songs with lyrics off the top of my head that don't have a chorus. Nelson sings his verse, Kristofferson follows immediately, which goes straight into Jennings. There's only the slightest hint of a bridge before Cash wraps things up. Of course, rarely do you have four soloists in the same song (except, of course, with Dionne and Friends).

3) The song makes very effective use of slight--yet distinct--variations of the music from verse to verse. It's very simple during Nelson's verse, a steady and subtle drumbeat and the gentle guitar strumming setting up the structure that every verse will copy. For Kristofferson, it sounds like a flute or some other wind instrument that floats above and around him, which segues into a synthesizer. As soon as he finishes his final line, the Knopfler-like guitar makes it's appearance. That guitar then provides the backbone of the verse, filling in the gaps between each of Jennings' lines. For Cash's wrapup, there are elements of all three on display, with two shifts for a more insistent drumbeat kicking in along the way.

4) Great story, great images. My take: throughout history, one soul has experienced adventures associated with their chosen professions; each time, that job has led to an untimely death. However, the soul is reincarnated each time, as hinted by each verse's closing line: "but I am still alive," "but I am living still," "but I am still around," "but I will remain and I'll be back again." Cash's character is still alive as he sings, but he believes he might come back as the highwayman who sang the opening stanza.

NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SEE THE DAY

I'm not a huge concert-goer, but I've had occasion to see some of the biggest acts in the world over the years. I include U2, Prince, Alice Cooper, Coldplay, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Blind Melon, Foreigner, The Beach Boys, Steve Miller, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood and The Rolling Stones among the events I've had the good fortune to see. One that I most certainly never expected to have the opportunity to catch live was The Police. They finished their final tour together in early summer 1984 and the relationship between lead singer/bassist Sting and drummer Stuart Copeland could be described as strained (at best).

But that was then...now they're back together and going their first world tour in 23 years. As thrilled as I was at the thought of seeing them, I was also skeptical. Sting didn't seem capable of hitting those distinctive high notes anymore, and surely two-plus decades apart would have them out-of-sync and rusty. This seemed to be confirmed when Copeland savaged their effort in an early concert in Vancouver. Other reviews were similarly mixed.

Well, not last night. Holy crap. That's what a concert is supposed to be like. My general impressions?

"Message In A Bottle" was the opener and it was so dead-on that I was worried initially that they were lip-syncing the performance. Just amazingly tight and Sting's voice sounded great. That led right into "Synchronicity II," which I'd told Meg on the drive over that I really hoped they would play. They played around with the arrangement a little bit, giving it a different feel starting about halfway though that differentiated it from the album cut...the highlight being a blistering guitar solo by Andy Summers. "Walking On the Moon" calmed things down a little bit. Next it was the chorus of "Voices Inside My Head" that immediately segued into "When The World Is Running Down." Sting and Summers combined for an amazing duo on guitars, which was topped off by a thunderous drum solo from Copeland.

This was followed by the first example of Sting not being able to quite hit those upper registers anymore. "Don't Stand So Close To Me" was closer to the original version than the updated one they did in 1986, but he did tone things back during the chorus. "Driven To Tears," never released in the United State but one of my personal favorites ran a little long (but not in a bad way) when Sting repeated the second verse immediately following the third before wrapping it up.

If there was a screw-up along the way, it came with "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." Summers started up, but I think Sting was expecting a different song. He stopped and stared at his guitarist in amusement for several seconds before joining in. Then after the first chorus, Sting made some comment about not knowing what in the heck they were doing. That misstep, however, was more than remedied by "Wrapped Around Your Finger." This was Copeland's time to shine, as he stepped out from behind his drum set to a contraption rigged up with chimes, cymbals, a xylophone and gong. Extremely cool watching him work. The underrated "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" was next, and again Sting dropped down in register during the chorus.

My least favorite part of the entire concert came with "Invisible Sun" and "Walking In Your Footsteps," the latter of which had completely cheesy animation superimposed on the video monitors. Just silly. But that allowed them to rebound in a big way as they closed the set with "Can't Stand Losing You," which I was was a very cool rendition, and "Roxanne." Now don't get me wrong, I'm loving the concert to this point. One of the best I've seen. But the electricity that surged through the crowd was chilling; it got the hair standing on the back of my neck was. The only comparable concert experiences to it were during "Let's Go Crazy" (Prince) and "Where The Streets Have No Name" (U2).

They then pulled off three encores..."King Of Pain" to open, then followed by "So Lonely" off of their first album. After leaving the stage again, they came back out to do the classic "Every Breath You Take." I was really worried after the first few moments that this was going to be a giant letdown (much like "Satisfaction" was during the Stones concert last summer). But it got progressively better and better. We figured that was the end, but they came out one more time and rounded things out with "Close To You," which had a great video package put together of highlights from their entire career.

WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

In case you were wondering (the Cliff Notes version)...

In case you were wondering (the War and Peace version):
Harry Truman...Doris Day...Red China...Johnnie Ray
South Pacific...Walter Winchell...Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy...Richard Nixon...Studebaker....television
North Korea...South Korea...Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs...H-Bomb...Sugar Ray...Panmunjom
Brando...The King And I...and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower...vaccine...England's got a new queen
Marciano...Liberace...Santayana goodbye
We didn't start the fire; it was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire; no, we didn't light it but we tried to fight it.
Joseph Stalin...Malenkov...Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller...Campanella...Communist bloc
Roy Cohn...Juan Peron...Toscanini...dancron
Dien Bien Phu falls...Rock Around The Clock
Einstein...James Dean...Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett...Peter Pan...Elvis Presley...Disneyland
Bardot...Budapest...Alabama...Khrushchev
Princess Grace...Peyton Place...trouble in the Suez
We didn't start the fire; it was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire; no, we didn't light it but we tried to fight it.
Little Rock...Pasternak...Mickey Mantle...Kerouac
Sputnik...Chou En-Lai...Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon...Charles de Gaulle...California baseball
Starkweather homocide...Children of thalidomide
Buddy Holly...Ben-Hur...space monkey...mafia
Hula hoops...Castro...Edsel is a no-go
U2...Syngman Rhee...payola...and Kennedy
Chubby Checker...Psycho...Belgians in the Congo
We didn't start the fire; it was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire; no, we didn't light it but we tried to fight it.
Hemingway...Eichman...Stranger In A Strange Lane
Dylan...Berlin...Bay Of Pigs invasion
Lawrence Of Arabia...British Beatlemania
Ole Miss...John Glenn...Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul...Malcolm X...British politician sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else to I have to say?
We didn't start the fire; it was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire; no, we didn't light it but we tried to fight it.
Birth control...Ho Chi Minh...Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot...Woodstock...Watergate...punk rock
Begin...Reagan...Palestine...terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran...Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune...Sally Ride...heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts...homeless vets...AIDS...crack...Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore...China's under martial law
Rock and Roller cola wars...I can't take it anymore!
We didn't start the fire; it was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire; no, we didn't light it but we're tried to fight it.

SHUFFLING THROUGH THE TUNES

Burning discs for the wife and downloading the Indiana/Syracuse national championship game from 1987 off iTunes...thought I'd use the free time to randomly shuffle through the iPod and see what pops up (idea, as always, shamelessly ripped off from my best man).

Do You Love Me Now? (The Breeders) - haven't the faintest idea, I copied one of Meg's CDs for her and I've got my iPod set to default and it uploads everything...it will be deleted soon.

Heart of Glass (Blondie) - In the late 70's, a couple of years before they broke into the big time with this song, Debbie Harry was without question one of the all-time hottest singers ever. Wow. Maybe Stevie Nicks pre-Fleetwood Mac tops her, maybe not. This song was a huge hit, not quite disco, not quite techno, just catchy. Took years before I heard the non-radio edit and hurt that sweet voice utter curse words.

The Bomber (James Gang) - Sounds like a bad early-70's Zeppelin ripoff.

Love Is A Wonderful Thing (Michael Bolton) - Seriously, search the web for a video clip for the brief earlier incarnation of Bolton, with his very minor hit "Fools Game." Good stuff. But not successful enough to keep him from doing cotton candy fluff like this one.

Road Runner (The Gants) - This came from an album with the word "Bubblegum" in the title, and is based entirely on the cartoon character...up to and including his signature "beep beep" sound. It's shocking The Gants didn't establish themselves as bigger stars.

Could You Dig It (Brian Hyland) - My dad was talking to me a few weeks back about Brian Hyland having some success with songs done by Jay & The Americans, or maybe it was vice versa. Either way, I went out and picked up the greatest hits for both acts. Can't say that I recognize this at all.

Just Like Jesse James (Cher) - I mean, seriously, I have so much stuff in my collection that 30% of the time I've never heard the songs. Not a huge Cher fan as it is, and certainly not of anything she's put out the last fifteen years. This isn't particularly noteworthy stuff.

Hungry Like The Wolf (Duran Duran) - It's easy to dismiss them as fluff and all image because they were probably right there with Michael Jackson in the early 80's as exploiting the new medium of music video. But I think music history will give these guys a little more credit than they get. Very catchy stuff, a great drive to most of their music...they're no U2 or even INXS, but this is one of the great bands of the decade, and this is probably their signature song.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind (The Five Keys) - It was only 1956, less than a year into the rock and roll era, and a lot of the music still carried elements of the big band feel. This is one of them.

For Love's Sake (Jody Watley) - Too lazy to check off the stuff I didn't want added, so I downloaded the entire album. At some point I'll delete the nine songs that weren't hits--including this one--and it will never appear in my shuffle again. This is truly bland.