JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #530.161!

Satellite – Into The Night (MVD Audio/Metal Mind) :: Poland’s answer to Phil Collins-era Genesis isn’t nearly as dire a disc as you might think because the music is quantumly heavier—and that’s always a good sign.

Enter The Haggis – Soapbox Heroes (UFO) :: With a band handle like “Enter The Haggis,” you just know that it’s got to be chockablock fulla the hottest and heaviest synth ’n’ shredded guitar rock ’n’ roll this side of Boiled In Lead.

Outlaw Social – Dry Bones (self-released) :: Cheerful funky fiddle folk music that sounds as if it was recorded in the Dust Bowl days of the great Depression.

Tamara Nile – At My Table (self-released) :: And this banjo-fueled feminine folk rock sounds like it was raised on the right acoustic side of Led Zeppelin III’s tracks.

Rick Wakeman – Aspirant Sunshadows (MVD Audio/Music Fusion) :: Let one of rock’s most spiritual adherents gently lull you into slumberland with these elegant and elegiac soothing soundscapezzzzzz.

Porkbelly Futures – Porkbelly Futures (self released) :: And you thought “The Beatles” was a stupid name for a group.

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Duke Robillard – Duke Robillard’s World Full Of Blues (Stony Plain) :: “All Killer! No Filler!” is the truthful tag on this enthusiastic and encyclopedic brass-backed double disc by one of the modern masters of the blues. Bonus points for covering obscure selections like Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken” and making them sound even hipper!

SARCASTIC PLATTERS OF THE WEEK: Ed Sanders – Sanders’ Truckstop & Beer Cans On The Moon (Collectors’ Choice) :: Proving that there’s just no justice in the rock ’n’ roll world, Fugs founder Sanders failed to shake some chart action on these two early ’70s satirical broadsides, which contain irreverent acerbic send-ups of every known socio-political sacred crow from here to infirmary. But don’t blame Ed; instead blame an insensate society for not recognizing that insightful shit-stirrers like “Henry Kissinger” and “The Maple Court Tragedy” (aka “Polaroid Spread Shots”) were just slightly ahead of their whine.

Be seeing you!