ALLEGEDLY JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #371!

Bob Dylan – Tempest (Columbia) :: As if the songs themselves weren’t enough of an audio joke, Borsht Belt Bob goes for a visual rimshot by stealing Ted Nugent’s logo and slapping it on the front cover as his album title. Ho ho. Boffo humor, that. Too bad he hasn’t got the Catskills chutzpah to call his next one Storm.

Jean-Claude Van Damme – Six Bullets (MPCA) :: I watch action movies for their educational content, which is how I learnt from Expendables 2 that, unlike Stallone (ref: Bullet To The Head); and Schwarzenegger (ref: The Last Stand); and Willis (ref: A Good Day To Die Hard); and just about every other shop-worn last action hero you can name who’s getting by these days on the sheer nostalgic strength of their personality alone, Jean-Claude Van Damme is the only one of them who’s conscientious enough to suppress his cookie-cutter persona and be craftsman enough to still act like, well, a seasoned professional actor.

And while this melodrama about child slavery may have a few plot implausibilities, there’s no denying that JCVD delivers an understated guilt-ridden performance that none of his peers could pull off without descending into stock scenery-chewing shtick—and that’s what easily elevates this one above and beyond your worst expectations.

Saunderson “Spammer” Einstein – Gre a t pi cture s and vi d eos (SPAM Email) :: “Style will not foster the charge to waste paper, headlong, for though I embroider treacherous it to her, and sensation strives it acutely aboard, - adultery will not like to hear it much wasteed of. Sin calculated without the orb of mire appearing for a valuable unequivocal. Made him electrocute one at the ordinarily object annually it was licking its ravine movements, and the adore conifer in a almshouse into the mud. Ah, satellite I stow been through! But do get in. Simultaneous shaped. Their certainty to our sauce, their friendliness in every orderly, is more than I can sigh. Having seductive softly inconvenient the shelter, he awfully had mustaches and no sanctifyd.”

And you thought I overwrote.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Black Sabbath – 13 (Vertigo) :: And speaking of exceeded expectations, this studio reunion has enough ominous plodding thud and proto prog rock proficiency to remind you of what these berks were once capable of before they fired their singer 35 years ago. Amazingly, Ozzy’s understated and nuanced vocals show that he can be the Jean-Claude Van Damme of rock ’n’ roll when he wants to be.

But it’s a bloody Sabbath shame that managerette Sharon Osbourne allegedly squeezed original drummer Bill Ward out of the picture by allegedly offering him and Geezer Butler an allegedly take it or leave it allegedly financial percentage of allegedly 25% that Geezer allegedly took and Bill allegedly left.

Which, if these unfounded allegations were ever proven in a court of law, would definitely put Black Sabbath’s original drummer cast adrift in the same 1-800-SEE-YA boat as original Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos and original Stooges drummer Scott “Rock Action” Asheton.

Who wants yesterday’s drummers? Nobody in the world.

Be seeing you!