I’ve had a crush on Machine Head’s Phil Demmel since the first time I met him, back in the early ’90s. Back when he was in Bay Area band Vio-Lence. What a classy dude, always kind to the cool-assed radio chick. My sort of hot, too.

I’ve also totally been jamming to the new Machine Head single, Darkness Within. LOVE, love, LOVE that song! It’s about music as religion and it reminds me of an essay I wrote in college (that was good enough, my prof entered it in the college-wide essay-writing contest. The winner? Something with some long, dry, academic title. Of course) about the first time I saw Alice in Chains. It was the Limelight in New York City, a long-since-shuttered nightclub that had a long and fruitful previous life as … a church. Layne Stayley up on that old altar…

Yeah. In a setting like that, you get the idea of music as religion.

I’ve also been drooling on this here blog over the wordsmithing magic that is Joel McIver.

Phil Demmel + Joel McIver = Susan in HEAVEN.

If you can’t figure it out, Joel’s penned the first-ever biography of Machine Head. Okay, so Phil shares the spotlight with the rest of the band. I can deal.

What I can’t wait to do is read.