What a drag it is getting old? Well, in fact not as much of a drag as anticipated, and one of the unexpected consolations is that the Old Guard are still getting out there and doing it, still facing down the demons, clear into this new science fiction century. Larry Wallis may have taken his time completing Death In The Guitarfternoon, but here it is now, proof positive that, as Gene Vincent once remarked "it's the bop that just won't stop", no matter how grey, grizzled, and Sam Peckinpah we all might become in service of the rama-lama.

Objectivity? We don't need no stinking objectivity. That he and I have ridden with the Lewis Leathers Brigade longer that some of you have been alive doesn't stop me from recognizing that what we have here is one fine, fine digital firework display. We may have fought, feuded, kissed and made up a hundred times, we may have seen all the same movies, written a couple of dozen songs together, survived the death of Elvis, and the night we drank everything including the contents of the lava lamp, but, hey, that doesn't stop me from recognizing a master craftsman of the red Fender when I hear one, and knowing that I'm listening to a grown man, who knows the demarcation between fantasy and confession, playing with all the heart, soul and honesty he's ready to reveal.

The cliche Hank B. Marvin on acid has already been used, but that's only a part of the story. Clearly and determinedly demonstrated on this collection is that Laz can make said red Fender stalk like an Italian gunfighter when he's of a mind, or skitter like a poodle on waxed linoleum. And then there's the new gravel voice. Who the fuck would have thought that he'd start sounding like me only more tuneful with the passage of years?

A favorite? I like to hear him working his vocal chops around the absurdly long lyric lines I wrote for "Downtown Jury", I laugh out loud at the crosshair vitriol on "Screw It", I need to listen a few more times to "Where The Freaks Hang Out"to fully get the lyrics, the guitar on Dead Man Riding is the chill on the cowboy nuclear test site, and the new reading of Police Car is a definite King to the Ace, but I guess the prize where I live has to go to "Are We Having Fun Yet?", not because I was in on the birth of it's ancestor, and I've always been a fool for the theme, but for how the neatly hilarious lyrics can also wrench the heart, and for the instrumental surprise of the killer excursion into Grateful Dead territory, after already completing four high-test minutes to a point at which a lesser mortal could have gone to a fade fully satisfied.

I might say what took you so long, but I ain't gonna. The Larry Wallis solo CD is among you, making it as plain as the nose on Pete Townshend's face that, in the matter of Martian real estate, our LW knows exactly whereof he speaks. He's been there, was seen there, and even stopped to buy an evening paper. Fine work, me old darlin'.