I really intended to get to a post that would contribute to that major ongoing project, but that’ll have to wait until the weekend. At least this will make for a good warm-up for Five for Friday.

Carrie Brownstein of the peerless Sleater-Kinney does her blogging for NPR. Before she began he recent experiment in immersion with the band Phish, Brownstein cooked up a little fill in the blank activity that I, naturally, found irresistible. Others put their responses into the comments section, but, hey, I have these electronic spaces for these sort of things. Besides, I’m a tad too long winded to just fill in the blank.

Fill in the following blanks with the name of a band or musician:

1. I’ve had to defend my love of _____________________ over the years.
William Martin Joel. The piano man, I came to realize well after I added each and every album to my collection, is the epitome of uncool. Truth is, I don’t try to defend him much any more. I just quietly sip my beer and retreat from the conversation. Still, the guy was a very fine songwriter in the best Brill Building tradition, merging early rock grooves with classic pop stylings and flavoring it all with a bracing cynicism. He was an inspired musician and made up for a limitations in his vocalizing with a consistently interesting approach to phrasing and intonations. Seriously, he’s better than you think.

2. As far as I’m concerned, ______________________ nearly ruined music.
Jann Wenner. The Rolling Stone founder and eternal publisher created a publication that rapidly became the de facto canon setter for rock’n’roll and proceeded to use that paper pulpit to venerate the safest material out there. There are few things in this world more predictable than the Rolling Stone record review section.

3. One of my favorite bass players ever? That’s easy: It’s _______________________.
He’s hardly considered one of the greats, but I think Muzz Skillings did some pretty amazing things on those first two Living Colour records.

4. If I could go back in time and dance like crazy, crowd surf or join a mosh pit, I would do that at a ___________________ show.
Husker Du. In some dingy Minneapolis bar in the dead of winter. Circa 1984. The timing and geography was so close, and yet…

5. If I were to frame one album cover and put it on my wall, it would be _______________________.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)