^^^ Plaudits to you, the chase, for digging up that old RS poll...that is the one Taro was referring to. But I don't know what you did to your cut + paste code, but you night want to fix it so it is easier to read your post. It reads like scrambled eggs. Regarding the difference between the 2003 and 2011 polls: Apart from it being a craven attempt to generate controversy and page views, and an example of the paucity of imagination at Rolling Stone, the striking difference might be a result in a change of methodology. I don't have the 2003 poll issue at hand, so I cannot say if it was a poll based on the editorial board or a vote taken amongst musicians or readers, or some combination of all three. The 2011 poll was however the result of a group of fellow guitarists...a poll of one's peers, one might say, and therefore, probably deserves more credence than a list drawn up by Jann Wenner and his acolytes. It does show, that even fellow guitarists are wont to forget or underrate certain of your favourites...Roy Buchanan, for instance. So no guitarist poll will ever be perfect. It's the nature of the beast and folly trying to rank musicians anyway.

I rolled my eyes and was tempted to sound off...but then I saw your age and gave it a pass due to your youth. I realize musical education is practically null and void today so it's not your fault. This topic of Led Zeppelin's popularity in America vs. Britain has been hashed out before. Of course, it helps to delineate whether you are talking about the band's popularity during its years of existence(1968-1980) or today. As someone already mentioned, the U.S. has a lot more people than England. I'm sure if you measured on a per capita basis, you'd find Led Zeppelin's popularity in England/UK was on a par with their U.S. success. Let's take a brief tally of notable English achievements by Led Zeppelin, shall we? 8 consecutive #1 albums, including Led Zeppelin IV, which never reached #1 in the Billboard charts. Knocked the Beatles from the top of the Melody Maker Poll after years of domination by the Fab Four. 1970 Bath Festival...5 Earl's Court sellouts in 1975...1979 Knebworth Festival...you don't draw these types of massive crowds without being popular. Now if you're talking about today, the single biggest reason for Led Zeppelin's lower profile in the UK compared to the U.S. is the beast that is "classic rock" radio. When punk rock hit in the '70s, Zeppelin on British radio was already not as heavy as on American radio, due to no single releases and other factors. By 1981 when the band ceased to exist, British radio pretty much was all New Wave, New Romantic, NWOHM, whatever was fresh and new. However, in the U.S., while there were stations like KROQ that played the punk-new wave sounds, there were still tons of FM rock stations that revolved around the Beatles-Stones-Zeppelin-Floyd-Who-Doors-Hendrix axis. The "classic rock" genre. So if you were a kid in the U.S., chances are you got exposed to Led Zeppelin at some point...it was practically a given that you went through a Led Zeppelin phase in high school, especially if you were a white male. Led Zeppelin never disappeared from the pop culture landscape in America, whilst in the UK post-1980, they pretty much vanished. So generations of kids grew up in the UK without the presence of Led Zeppelin that kids in the U.S. had. Unless you had an older sibling or a parent/family figure who had their albums, it was unlikely the post-80 UK youth would know about Led Zeppelin. I think because of the internet, this has changed a bit in recent years, as kids are discovering Led Zeppelin on their own more readily than they were in the past. So, Led Zeppelin's popularity might still be higher in the U.S. today compared to the U.K. But if we're talking about the years 1968-1980, I would say that the band was equally popular in both countries.

Better UFO than Deep Purple.

No confusion...it is the same poll. What Taro was referring to was the RS poll from 2003 that had Jimmy at #9. I can't complain. Getting older but none the worse for wear. Still flying my Zeppelin freak flag high.

I'm liking the new Fiona Apple album "The Idler Wheel..."(no, I'm not going to type out the entire 20+ word title, hehe). I got the deluxe edition with book and dvd. And I am so happy for the rest of the country that she's out there touring again after so long an absence. One of the pleasures I get to experience living in Los Angeles is Fiona Apple popping by Largo...usually during one of Jon Brion's sets, or the Watkins Family Hour. I've sat at Largo no more than three feet away from Ms. Apple as she's melted hearts with smoky renditions of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and "My Funny Valentine" and other songs from the Great American Songbook. To see this diminutive shy wisp of a woman nervously step on stage and then hear this voice roar out of her is stunning...a concrete example of how a person can be transformed by the act of performing music. It is similar to the transformation that Jimmy Page effected from off-stage Jimmy to on-stage Jimmy. Anyway, Fiona Apple has been hiding her talents for too long from the outside world. It's good that the rest of the world finally gets to experience her again. I am tentatively scheduled to see her this Sunday at the Hollywood Palladium. I say tentatively because there are multiple things going on this Sunday, so my schedule could change at a whim. Plus, Fiona Apple is playing other concerts in L.A. on her tour, and in venues that have far better sound than the Palladium. But for those that live in a place where she's only performing once, make sure you don't miss it. It might be another 7 years before she comes around again.

I'm finally going to give these guys a shake as they are playing here in Los Angeles August 14, one day after Grandaddy plays the same venue, as it happens.

^^^ Don't forget former President Ronnie Raygun's (Reagan) remark about "we begin bombing in 5 minutes". Not exactly a "Great Moment in Diplomacy". Why? As someone above(MM?) said, if you do that the terrorists win. It's not that bad out here, is it? Have you been to some of the political forums lately, like Breitbart.com? Stick around Jangles...don't leave.

And how have you been Rorer714? Talk about a blast from the past! Good to see you back on the range. Yes he was. I haven't seen him in 15 years or so, though.

Excellent news! My second favourite Priest album and a concert dvd from their prime period. Sept. 4 cannot get here soon enough. This will make a worthy companion to the 30th anniversary edition of British Steel. Now if they would only do the same deluxe treatment for Point of Entry, their most underrated album.

Ummm, Generals Buck Turgidson and Jack Ripper? Just coming home from seeing this classic in a packed theatre...one of my two or three favourite Kubrick movies. The screenplay by Kubrick and Terry Southern is absolutely word perfect.

Oh come on, MM, she was joking...give her a break. Nobody gave you grief over your fetish thread. Can we all not be so touchy? Relax and have some fun.

^^^ Oh yeah...quite the EARTH-SHATTERING tour I hear. But that was way before my time. By the way, welcome back Electrophile. I had pretty much given up all hope of you coming back.

No, actually, I don't...is that a band? Makes more sense than Joe Liverpool.

Weird scenes inside the goldmine. Kept getting downloading unsuccessful messages all afternoon when trying to access the forum. SAJ's revenge?

Well, aren't you coy...pray, do tell!

Sorry to spoil your dream, DAS, but actually there are quite a few targets in Kansas, Nebraska and other States in the Heartland. Granted, the Strategic Air Command has been disbanded since 1992, but there are still all those missile silos. And a nucear blast is more effective and has a wider range of destruction in flatlands like Kansas than in hilly and oceanside terrain like California. Plus, any warlord worth a damn knows that to bring the U.S. to its knees, it needs to wipe out our capacity for growing food and our water supply. Bombing America's Breadbasket will be just as strategically important as bombing Wall St. or the Port of Los Angeles. You'll be no more safer in Nebraska or Kansas than in NY, LA or DC. First of all, it's because you're misreading your poll. If you look at the poll results, the "No"s far outnumber the other responses. Those of us who refuse to be cowed by fear and worry about something that 1) we don't think we're on the brink of; and 2) wouldn't stand much chance of surviving if it did happen, most likely chose "no" for our answer. It is possible to think we're not on the brink and not care either way at the same time. As for the second part of your post, I'm sorry you feel you've lost control of your government; I don't feel I've lost control of mine. I have a vote and I exercise that right. If I feel strongly enough about some issue, I will write or call my local representative or newspaper. I refuse to give in to the fearmongers. That's the one difference from today and yesteryear. The hotspots of the world are pretty much the same as they were 30, 40 years ago. The difference is the news media. When I was a kid growing up in the 70s, there was all kinds of shit happening in the world. But it wasn't in your face 24 hours a day on a constant endless loop of carnage. You might see a bit of news over breakfast before school. If you were on summer vacation, the next news show wouldn't be until 12 noon. The rest of the tv day was cartoons, game shows, soap operas, reruns of The Addams Family, Get Smart, The Munsters, My Favorite Martian, etc. Then at dinnertime, you would get the evening news in the calm reassuring manner of Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor and David Brinkley. And that was it...as a kid, you'd be in bed before the 11pm newscasts, so your expoaure to the horrors of the world was limited to a couple times a day. Now with the rise of cable news, it's around the clock. And instead of the reassuring father/uncle figures of Walter Cronkite et al, we get guys like Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck foaming at the mouth or breaking down in tears. No wonder some people's nerves are jittery.

I hope everyone caught the Andy Griffith movie marathon TCM ran last week. I hadn't seen "No Time for Sergeants" in years...decades even.

Hmmm, it's been so long since I saw the movie and I don't recall an inordinate amount of train shots...certainly not as overt and symbolic as Claude Lanzmann's use of trains and train tracks in "Shoah", his epic exploration of the Holocaust. Next time you have 10 hours to kill, rent it...everyone should see "Shoah" at least once. I should probably wait and see "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" again before answering your question, but I'm going to go on a limb and say that it was probably no more than a way of providing flavour to the film. I've found in my travels that trains are a more prevalent influence in European life than in America. Trains, and train stations lend a film a certain atmosphere. The next time I watch it, though, I'll pay particular attention to the train shots and see if I can detect any pattern or symbolism.

^^^I'm doing my best.

Damn, I wonder if he was at any of the Yes or ELP concerts I saw from 1972-on? What a trip that would have been to bump into George Jefferson at a Yes/Black Sabbath concert! RIP Sherman Hemsley. Enjoy your new "DELUXE apartment in the sky"!

It's called getting old...the Baby Boomers are hitting senior citizen status. Yep...I'm a person of that "certain age" you speak and damn straight: Medical Center, Emergency!(Julie London hubba-hubba!), Adam-12, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, The Mod Squad, The FBI('A Quinn Martin Production'), The Rookies all live long in my memory.

Sheesh, why so serious? Have a beer...or two. It's funny this thread popped up on the eve of me seeing "Dr. Strangelove" at the American Cinematheque. I've been reading the newspaper since I was a wee lad, and the front page has always been full of war, struggle and strife. Madmen bombers, bloody tyrants, violent revolutionaries, corrupt governments...there isn't anything new under the sun. Go back and read the news of the 90s, 80s, 70s. People feared we were on the brink of WWIII back then, too. Sure, there's a few more belligerent countries with nuclear weapons...but having a nuclear weapon isn't the same as having a delivery system accurate and reliable enough to hit your target. I haven't seen any reliable reports yet that North Korea or Iran could launch a successful nuclear strike against the U.S. You might ask, but the resounding answer would be "YES!!!" Hell, forget asking if the U.S. will "recover" from a foreign invasion, for it won't even happen. It would be repelled before it even got started. Forget all the talk Russia and China do...that's stereotypical "Cold War" blunderbuss; it's meant more for home consumption than signaling any intent. Every politician in the Commie countries and the Middle East knows that talking tough against the U.S. scores brownie points with their constituents...if you want to get elected, you can't be seen as being a puppet of the U.S. China and Russia like to rattle their sabres, but they're not stupid. They know there are two things that we have that the rest of the world doesn't that makes trying a ground invasion a suicide mission. 1. A superior military-industrial complex. We may not be able to make decent TVs and toys anymore, but in a crisis, the U.S. is still capable of pumping out an endless array of weaponry and military vehicles and gear at a much faster rate than other countries. And our Navy and Air Force are tops and provide one huge obstacle to anyone trying to cross the ocean and approach our shores. 2. The 2nd Ammendment. Yep, that's right. Even with the recent Colorado shooting and the Travon Martin case, this liberal still supports the 2nd Ammendment and I would vote against any politician who tried to abolish it. Now, maybe they might want to see about making it harder for a nutjob to buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition without raising a red flag. Guns don't kill people...bullets kill people. "Red Dawn" is just a movie, but it's not as far from the truth as you might think...and the Russians know that. Hell, just about everybody does...to most of the world we're gun-happy, blood-thirsty cowboys. They know any attempt at a U.S. invasion would be met not just with the full military might of our armed forces, but every Tom, Dick and Jane with a gun, pistol, rifle, shotgun would be out in force as well...rabid and armed to the teeth. For as divided and backwards as we may appear to the sophisticated Europeans, nothing would unite us quicker than some Commies or Camel Jockeys trying to touch foot on our soil. You'd have 18th St. Crips with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks fighting alongside KKKers with shotguns and Desert War Eagles. There isn't another country whose citizenry is as armed to the teeth as the U.S. Yeah, some of those Third World hell-holes have lots of people running around with guns, but upon closer inspection they lack a couple things we have: a good supply of ammunition and it's only the guys who have the guns. In the U.S., a fair share of women are packing heat. Clearly, a country would have to be insane to invade the U.S. That leaves North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and maybe a few others ruled by religious or cult wackos that would be stupid enough to try. Now comes the other problem with invading the U.S. Even if you had enough ground troops to properly invade and hold onto any land you gained(and only China comes close), you would need a sufficient Navy to transport your troops across either the Atlantic and/or Pacific oceans and get past our own Navy/Air Force without suffering significant losses to their own forces. Name one Third World or Middle Eastern Jihad wacko country with a naval force that could do that task? There are NONE. And I don't believe Putin or whomever is in charge of Russia would lend the use of their navy for some Towelhead. That's not to say the U.S. shouldn't remain vigilant and aware of any potential threat of invasion. But to ask if the U.S. had any chance of recovering from an invasion is to severely misjudge this country's backbone and resolve when confronted with a concrete threat to our own shores. It's one thing fighting in the rice paddies of Vietnam or the desert sands of Iraq, but quite another when you are defending your own neighborhood. As Rick(Humphrey Bogart) tells the Nazi General in "Casablanca", "there's certain neighborhoods in New York I'd advise you not to try to invade". Would this be the same evidence that's out there supposedly proving the existence of Bigfoot?

What the hell? I always miss these brouhahas. So after catching up over the last several pages, I don't understand why Steve was upset at Sam the Webmaster. It seems the main beef was between Jahfin and Steve. Sam merely answered a question. It's all such a trifling matter...as long as Steve's info is accurate(which it seems to be 99.999% of the time), who cares how or why he attains said knowledge. I also don't ever recall him saying he worked for the band, so it's curious that Jahfin brought it up...by this point it's a moot issue. I can't believe Steve will stay away long...he has devoted too much time and effort to his Mysteries thread to allow this minor kerfuffle to derail it and wither away. Besides, if he has Jahfin on ignore, Jahfin shouldn't be able to bother him, right? Wouldn't Jahfin's words appear invisible to him?

Saw "The Dark Knight Rises" at a midnight show last night. No metal detectors, no cops, no hassles, no overreaction to an aberration. Was going to see it at the Cinerama Dome, where the place was crawling with cops and media, but it was sold out. So I ventured further east on Sunset to the friendly confines of The Vista in the Los Feliz/Silverlake area of Hollywood, where nobody carries a weapon stronger than tofu. The movie was good...but with a few issues. I'm seeing it again on Monday at an IMAX theatre. I'll wait until then before writing more.

At least get your Keith Moon story straight. What Keith said wasn't in regards to Jimmy-Robert-Jones-Bonham...it was a jest made when Jimmy was discussing forming a group with Moon, Entwistle, Jimmy, Nicky Hopkins and I think Jeff Beck, too. This was long before Jimmy actually formed Led Zeppelin, so how could Moon slag a group that didn't even exist yet? You create more mountains-out-of-molehills than just about anybody here. As an aside, I've read in various sources that Entwistle claimed to have been the one to utter the famed "go down like a lead balloon" remark, not Moon. Obviously a bar argument that will go on forever, seeing how both parties are deceased.