PUT the CRACK PIPE DOWN!!! Son, Aerosmith isn't close to being the second greatest band of all-time, and they're not even in the running for greatest American band anymore, not after nearly 30 years of cheese. They had their day, sure, even were good in concert for awhile...but not as good as the Black Crowes are live. So let's see, Black Crowes, Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynrd, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Bob Dylan, the Band, DLR-era Van Halen...those are just a few North American bands better than Aerosmith.

Led Zeppelin was scheduled to tour the U.S. again later that summer and fall, including shows at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the Day on the Green shows in San Francisco, when Plant's accident forced the cancellation of the tour. If you remember, the first leg of the tour in early 1975 didn't hit the Bay Area at all, a weird thing considering that San Francisco was one of Led Zeppelin's strongholds.

Thanks for the set list, Wolfman. Can't wait for them to hit LA later this month...they're playing the Hollywood Bowl May 31(Bonzo's birthday) and the Shrine on June 1. I've been seeing the Cure since the early 80's...and yes, for some time they have been playing 3 hour concerts. And whenever they play multiple dates in the same city, they also change the setlists. So, some shows will be heavy on the Pornography- Head on the Door era, others will focus on the Kiss Me, Kiss Me-Disintegration-Wish-era. I remember one 4 night stand they did around 1999 or 2000(1 show at Irvine Meadows and 3 nights at the Greek), where every night was radically different from the next; over the 4 shows, they must have delved into every corner of their immense catalogue. One of the great live acts of the past 20-30 years...and, I don't know about the rest of the United States, but the Cure are definitely NOT underrated here in Los Angeles...in fact, LA was one of the first places that the Cure broke thru in the States; KROQ played them all the time(along with other Brit bands of the time like New Order, Depeche Mode and the Smiths). In fact, for some time the Cure might have even been more popular here in LA than back in their native England. The Cure have sold out Dodger Stadium and the Rose Bowl over the years.

My 15 most recent cd purchases: Portishead "Third" Goldfrapp "Seventh Tree"(special edition box) Explosions in the Sky "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place" Steve Hillage "Live Herald" Dead Meadow "Old Growth" Box "Studio 1" Various Artists "Florida Funk:1968-1975" Acid Mothers Temple "Starless and Bible Black Sabbath" Acid Mothers Temple "Power House of the Holy" King Crimson "The Great Deceiver: Live 1973-1974 Vol. 1 & 2" Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings "100 Days, 100 Nights" Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings "Naturally" Low "Drums and Guns" She & Him "Volume One" Various Artists "Doom & Gloom: Early Songs of Angst & Disaster"

I'm loving these old articles you're posting Cat...it shows the kind of mindset among reviewers Zeppelin was up against back then. Keep them coming! And, SteveAJones, I have to second your hopes that Rhino or maybe somebody like the Sundazed label re-releases Cartoone. I have that great double-cd compilation of Page's 60's session work "Hip Young Guitar Slinger" and I tried to find some cds of First Gear and the Primitives but had no luck. And I was completely ignorant of Jimmy's work with the band Cartoone...never even heard of them until just now! Somebody should realize there is a market for these old bands' records!!!

My reaction exactly, KOTHP!!! Not that I didn't like Metallica back in the day...saw some great early Ride the Lightning/Master of Puppets-era shows. But for me, Metallica jumped the shark when Cliff Burton died.

Since last Tuesday when the album came out, I've been grooving to the new Portishead cd, "Third" almost nonstop...love how they didn't just reprise their trademark trip-hop sound. "Plastic" sounds almost like a Broadcast cut. Along with "Plastic", "Machine Gun", "We Carry On", and "Magic Doors" are my favourite songs from the cd. Also been enjoying the latest Goldfrapp, "Seventh Tree", and Dead Meadow's "Old Growth".

Rory is my third favourite guitarist of all-time, after the two J's: Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. What an amazing player AND an amazing performer live, too...check youtube for some cool clips as well as the dvds that are out, especially the Irish 74 tour. I was late getting into Rory Gallagher, so my first time seeing him wasn't until 1973, when by pure chance, I went to the Kinks show at the Hollywood Palladium April 11, 1973 and Rory happened to be the opening act. Needless to say, he BLEW the Kinks off the stage(the Kinks starting to sound kind of tired by this point in their career). After that, I said man I got to get this cat's records and definitely made a note to myself to see him again in concert. Due to one thing or another, I had to miss the next couple of times he played the LA area that year, so it wasn't until February 17, 1974 when I saw Rory again, this time as headliner at the Long Beach Auditorium(not to be confused with Long Beach Arena), where I kid you not, Kiss was the opener...and man, did Kiss SUCK! For some reason, the scheduled opener, Fleetwood Mac, never showed, and we got stuck with Kiss. My reward for suffering through Kiss, however, was a full headlining show of Rory blazing away! I remember seeing pictures of Rory in magazines and thinking how similar to Jimmy Page he looked...and what Jimmy is to Les Paul Sunbursts, Rory is to battered Fender Strats. While Rory was more of a blues traditionalist than Jimmy, he never bored me the way Eric Clunkhead did with his Michelob Lite music for yuppies. In fact, it's always bothered me that Rory had to toil away in relative obscurity while Eric got all this "Clapton is God" love, when for my money Rory was far better than Clapton. Rory could play stuff that would melt your face...he was that good!!! Over the years, I managed to see Rory quite a few more times, maybe 10 or 12 all together...the highlight being when I finally got to see him in his Irish homeland on a few dates of his 83-84 Irish tour. Rory was truly one of a kind...magnificent guitarist and a geniunely warm, charming and generous performer in concert. He is, and will always be, missed by this music fan.

Wake me when Bill Bruford is back...until then, I'll pass.

I was at Coachella and Prince's performance wasn't THAT great...good, but nothing special. Oh, and you can't take credit for playing past curfew when it was because you made the audience wait for hours before going on to begin with...and for me, he RUINED "Creep" precisely by changing the lyrics. Prince is too egotistical to ever sing "I am a creep", so he turned it to "you", which totally blows the whole point of the song...and just made it an excuse for more Prince guitar wankery....though, I have to admit, Prince is pretty awesome on guitar...he gets great tone! But if you've seen Prince before, especially in the last 2-3 years, the show he did at Coachella was pretty similar. Best sets at this year's Coachella were: Portishead; Goldfrapp; Spiritualized; Roger Waters and Justice. All in all, not one of the better Coachella's...and whoever booked Jack Johnson as Friday's headliner should be FIRED ASAP!!! What a snooze!

Like whatever Rod had to say in 1978 has any validity...guy had so much coke up his schnozz back then. Basically, though, SteveAJones and gollum6668 refute Rod's accusations very well. "You Shook Me" was a song that just about EVERY blues-rock band in England played back in the 60's...it was part of the standard rep, along with "Killing Floor". Lastly, I believe Led Zeppelin had recorded their first album by October 1968, which is BEFORE Jimmy would have seen the Jeff Beck Group's Miami gig in November of that year. Frankly, whenever I read quotes from Pete Townsend, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, et al trying to diss Zep, alot of it comes across as sour grapes and jealousy...that Zeppelin became SO HUGE...and did it WITHOUT the help of the rock critics and media of the time. Unlike the Stones and Who who were always sucked up to by the media, esp. Rolling Stone magazine, which was Jann Wenner's way of hoping to get to sleep with Mick Jagger.

Okay...screw this...they're back from commercial and instead of picking up where they left off in D & C, they've fast forwarded to White Summer. Can't they show a little respect...endless hours of Kiss and Bret Michaels and Celeb rehab garbage and whatever shite bands they endlessly show, but the one time they show Zep, they can't be bothered to air the whole damn thing with the songs intact. What's the point of showing Zeppelin anyway, if you're not gonna go all the way...are they really afraid today's kids won't be able to handle anything longer than 5 minutes? Typical MTV/VH1 bullshit.

I just tried to post this info in the LZ Master section, but the stupid page died or something. Anyway, I am in Los Angeles, with Direct tv satellite, and the time slot is from 6pm to 8:30pm pacific standard time...and it just says "Led Zeppelin: Live", with no other info given. But so far, it looks like they will be playing at least the whole 1970 Royal Albert Hall concert, as they started with that show: We're Gonna Groove, I Can't Quit You, and now Dazed & Confused. OHHHHHHHH FOR CHRISSAKES &^$%^&#@#$%^&*&*()&^!!!!!! They just went to a F**CKING commercial right in the middle of the violin bow section...BASTARDS!!!!

Am I nervous about tonight's show? YOU BET! Let's review past "reunion" shows, shall we? At Live Aid, they obviously didn't rehearse and the drummers were lost and Jimmy's guitar was out of tune. Then in 1988, everybody said how great they sounded in rehearsal, even rolling fucking stone...then, night of show, things are running late, which delays Zep's performance by more than an hour, which frays Jimmy's already fragile nerves, and to top it off, the sound guys forget about JPJ(poor Jonesy, always overlooked) and Kashmir comes out sounding thin, and it goes from bad to worse from there. Still have nightmares about that 'Stairway to Heaven'. And now, there's less than 24 hours to go...I'm nervous as hell, so I can only imagine what the band must be going thru. Jimmy fracturing his finger doesn't help. But at least they all seem to have approached this gig with the best intentions and will presumedly be well-rehearsed, if all reports are true. I really don't care if they tour...and the more people pressure them to tour the less likely I think Robert will do it...see his great quote in Rolling Stone about the "conveyor belt of expectation"...if the media and the fans would just shut up and let them breathe and just let them get through this Ahmet Ertegun Tribute(remember, this IS the reason there is even a concert to anticipate to begin with!) without bombarding them with reunion tour hooey, maybe, just maybe, if tonight goes well, the boys might see how much fun they can still have on stage togetherand give a tour some thought. But the way everybody is already going nutso, it seems highly unlikely. So, as long as they can just crank out one last blazing concert tonight, that'll be enough for me.

First of all, I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving(guess that applies only to Americans). And since I don't want to kill my Thanksgiving good vibes, I'll wait before posting about my thoughts on the TSRTS release and my dissapointment with those edits on the cd(Black Dog and No Quarter being especially egregious). But I couldn't help notice how many people seem to be having a hard time FINDING the damn thing...where do you people live? Because I had no problem walking into Border's and Amoeba's the morning of Tuesday November 20 and buying the cd, the dvd AND the Limited Collector's Edition Box Set(dvd, cd, lobby cards, t-shirt, the works)...using my Border's Reward card and coupon I paid only $34 for the special box set...I bought 2, one for me and one for a Christmas gift(haven't yet decided which one of my friends or relatives will be the lucky one to get it). Granted, Border's only had 3 copies of the special box set, but they still had tons of the dvds and cds already in stock and on a special Led Zeppelin display along with the recent Mothership releases. But then, I live in Los Angeles, where they KNOW not to be late with any Zeppelin product, hehehe.