Language foul

You know a piece of tech lingo has really gone mainstream when Janet Reilly, Democratic candidate for California state assembly, sends you a piece of mail touting "California 2.0: [A Plan] for Upgrading California Public Policy in the 21st Century."


FMFM: Old Genesis, specifically Foxtrot at the moment. Yeah. A holdover from my prog-rock days of the mid-1980s. (Go ahead, make fun of me.) Back when Phil Collins was just a hairy drummer who could stay loose in 11/8 time, when Peter Gabriel would take the stage dressed as a sunflower (or something much weirder!), when Mike Rutherford was the slickest 8-string bassist around, they made some of the best RenFaire Rock around. (Steve Hackett sure could get heavy too.) To be clear: I don't need stories about medieval knights or battles in English forests. I just have fond memories of, you know, trying to figure out what the hell they were talking about.

As I recall, King Crimson once sold its mellotron to Genesis. I understand it's obvious on the records, when King Crimson no longer uses mellotron and Genesis starts using one. Funny.

It's kind of like the tale about the guitar shop in Asbury Park that advertised the Gibson Les Paul as "the guitar Bruce Springsteen uses!" back in the early 1970s. The story goes that some kid traded his Esquire/Tele frankenguitar for a Les Paul so he could be like Bruce; then, the Boss himself swapped his Les Paul for the Esquire, which he still uses today. (Yeah, that one.)