Ecky-thump. Lost in translation from the old English...

...from buying this album.

is it better than "Escape" by Journey?

Nothing is better than "Escape".

Marchese's 5 Greatest Records in History:

5) Foriegnor "Four"

4) Journey "Frontiers"

3) Reo Speedwagon "Hi Infidelity"

2) Styx "Paradise Theatre"

1) Journey "Escape"

Reading Marchese write about music now is like hearing Bush talk about; well, anything. Here and there a word sounds right, but for the most part there's nothing but empty space and lost credibility.

In my opinion, there is nothing worse than mediocre garage blues rock disguised as high art. the other way around perhaps, but not in that order. the white stripes, or jack white in particular, make alright loud crunchy rock music and pretend to be artists. if they are making high art, then so is every highschool garage band that has ever existed. I think they should be ignored on principal. whether or not their music holds up despite their phonyness is beside the point. i am quite surprised that people are still paying attention to them. i had predicted a much shorter interest in their pseudo-statement.

So what are you telling me, no one else here has some form of guilty pleasure in their music collections? If I started looking through your stacks am I going to find nothing but Big Star and Velvet Underground records? All on Japanese virgin vinyl of course. Bullshit, there's a Pat Benatar record in there somewhere, I can smell it. The only difference between your taste in shitty pop music and Davids is that you don't have to defend yours in public.

I've only listened to Icky Thump once all the way through, but I'm just not getting the toe tapping sensation out of it that I look for in a stripes record. Jack just seems to be getting weirder and more self indulgent as the years go by. I guess that makes it art.

A guilty pleasure is one thing; equating Journey with the Ramones is ridiculous. The credibility destroying "Journey is really quite good" article bordered on insanity. I expected more from Salon.

Look, I don't care what you do in your own headphones, but don't tell me that "Don't Stop Believin'" is anything but garbage. A musical twinkie. Do you like it? Maybe. Do I? No way, no sir.

Are there items that might be perceived as "junk" in my collection? Sure. Am I ever going to say that "Misplaced Childhood" is anything but tripe? No. I like it and that's enough for me. Will you hear me call "Songs from the Attic" the first great live album? No. It really wasn't the quality of the guilty pleasure as much as it was the attempt to establish Journey as credible. They aren't. I'm certainly not.

And now neither is Marcheesy.

thank you... its not that i dont have any derivative pop trash in my collection. my point about the white stripes is that i think they deserve no credit simply because they think they are better, smarter, more meaningful that those guilty pleasure rock albums. jack white is pompous and considers himself some sort of visionary. hes not. ill take my dumb guilty pleasure rock and roll over that any day

As a Native Detroiter, I admired Jack and Meg's seemingly blind devotion to our shell of a city...they used to always perform with the flag of Detroit proudly displayed behind them. The "ashes" motto refers to the fire of 1805 that wiped out most of the city. It also seems an apropos motto for The Stripes themselves as they have tried in vain to reinvent themselves as Detroit's greatest musical sensation since The MC5.

Sadly, it's all a shtick, and a stagnant one at that. Meg really hails from the ritzy suburb of Grosse Pointe. Jack, in all his "humility" as a former furniture upholsterer, slowly gives way to Jack the temperamental rock star. I witnessed him storm off stage more than once when an audience was less than fawning. The studied irony of his interviews is tiresome. "Why would we be so bourgeois as to all of a sudden wear blue and green?" Hmmm...why would Jack be so bourgeois as to marry, have a kid, and buy a house in income tax free Tennessee? Better yet, he's become a living, breathing stereotype; he's part of the rock star married to a supermodel pantheon. I wonder if they only dress their kid in red, white, or black?

The time to disband was with their most diverse and arguably best album to date "Get Behind Thee, Satan". The whole "bad ass Detroiter" art poseur stance is as one dimensional as their music has become. The music is merely stripped down Zeppelin. The image, not the medium, is the massage.