MUSIC: I Get A Kick Out Of...

...the original, acoustic version of "Revolution" on the White Album, when John Lennon sings, "But when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out... in." That one last word, not in the single version, suggesting (ironically? Hard to say) that he was of two minds.

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...when, on "Won't Get Fooled Again", a few seconds after the line, "For I know that the hypnotized never lie," almost drowned out by Pete Townshend's roaring guitar, Roger Daltrey faintly adds, "Do ya?" Meaning: you, the audience, the listener at home, the general public -- you're the hypnotized, suckers. Wake up!

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...the new version of "Break On Through" that I've been hearing recently on the classic rock stations, exactly the same as the old version but for Jim Morrison now completing a previously censored line. "She gets... she gets... she gets..." he used to sing. Now it goes, "She gets high, she gets high, she gets high..." That version isn't on the album -- not the album I've got, anyway. When did that word get added back in? Morrison uncensored, only 30 years after his death.

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...Neil Young's version of "Imagine" on the 9/11 charity album America: A Tribute to Heroes; when he gets to, "Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can," he changes it to, "I wonder if I can." Tougher question. I'll bet even John wondered if he could.

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..."Is She Really Going Out With Him?", when Joe Jackson says, "Look over there!", how you can't help but answer along with the song: "Where?"

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...when radio stations play the very, very end of "Start Me Up," where Mick Jagger switches from "You make a grown man cry" to "You make a dead man come." Naughty!

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...that driving guitar in the chorus of Boston's "More Than a Feeling," especially towards the end, when it kicks in hard a couple bars before the lyrics.

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...The Daily Show theme song, "Dog on Fire," written by Bob Mould, with the current version performed by They Might Be Giants.

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..."Gimme Shelter," when it goes from that woman's soaring, hair-raising vocals on "Rape and murder, it's just a shot away," to Mick's silky "I said love, sister, it's just a kiss away."

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Hate:

--All the radio stations that are afraid to play the uncut versions of songs they've been playing for 20, 25, 30 years or more, because of the insane fines the newly reactionary FCC is raining down left and right. So in Steve Miller's "Jet Airliner," we have to hear the watered-down "funky kicks goin' down in the city" rather than "funky shit," and Roger Daltrey asking "Who the fuck are you?" on the uncut version of "Who Are You" is right out.

--The revised version of the Clash's "Rock the Casbah," where the "jive" in "that crazy Casbah jive" is electronically stretched and echoed for an extra five seconds. Why just that one word? Why change any of it to begin with?

--Same with AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." If you know the album version, you can tell where a couple of bars of guitar have been added in at a couple of pieces right near the end. It seems like this version is the only one that gets played on the radio anymore. Who did this? And when?