I suppose it hardly matters which of these bloated, overproduced albums I end up “liking” the best–and God knows how much I’ll be listening to the full albums again in the future, aside from the songs I cherry picked–but I don’t have the foggiest idea how I’d defend the idea that one bloated dinosaur Aerosmith album is passable while another one is miserably embarrassing.

Aww too bad about “Since You Been Gone.” Looking around on Amazon it does seem as though “the people” maintain more Rainbow fans than I really thought, and that song is a non-Dio hit, and I thought their legacy was pretty much just the stuff with Dio. If it’s any consolation, the next Rainbow album, Difficult To Cure (1981), is COMPLETELY generic and forgettable, not containing any song I’ll ever be listening to again.

Nazareth: Well, I’m always curious about the stuff George handed glowing reviews (or bitter one-star hatefests) to in his “mp3 reviews” section (and I really loved that he fell for Alice In Chains’ Dirt even harder than I did). I guess I’m more forgiving than you are of overblown vocals on 1971 hard-rock albums? Some of the non-hard-rock stuff I really liked didn’t seem to be popular amongst the few reviewers I could find for that album.

Hair Of The Dog: It was seeing “Love Hurts” on Youtube (not in Dazed & Confused) and sort of liking it more than I used to, which sometimes perversely happens with overplayed oldie hits. I didn’t even know it started as an Everly Brothers song (and a very mushy one at that, IMO!) Did you like “Please Don’t Judas Me”?

I wonder who all out there really knows the Dune political mythology inside out. I mean, there’s all those nerds who know the Tolkien legendarium inside out, people who know the entire history of the Numenorians and shit like that, but I’m getting the impression that “taking notes” on the back and forth in the Dune sequels isn’t something too many people have bothered to do.

Magazine serials were a big deal until.....when, exactly? I know that Stephen King serialized The Green Mile, just not in magazines, and it was considered a clever gimmick when he did it. Large parts of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire Of The Vanities appeared in Rolling Stone and helped build up anticipation for when that became a huge best seller, that was I believe 1984 through 1987.

The lengthiness of Furiosa did not by any stretch of the imagination work in its favor. RIP, Mad Max, it was nice seeing you again.