Ubuntu: talk to me

When ubuntu boots it displays a pretty pulsing ubuntu logo until it boots into glorious X.

This is great, until it goes wrong, and anyway I prefer to see what it's doing.

Under 9.10, which uses the new grub2 boot loader:

$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub

change
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

and run 

$ sudo update-grub

to update the boot menu.