London Calling is indeed a great song, albeit more from an atmospheric than a musical POV, but it's not even the best song on the album, and it's certainly not the 15th best song since 1955. It might be the 15th FAVOURITE song of a sample of the 30-something preppy slacker drop-outs who write for or read RS, but that's a generational rather than a qualitative judgement.

Come Bite the Apple - Mother Love Bone

When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Windmills of Your Mind I'll Be Your Valentine - ELP

You're Gonna Kill That Girl - Ramones

From 1968. One of RP's favourite bands, apparently, although he flatly refused to acknowledge my repeated drunken requests for a cover of 'Just Like Gene Autrey' when I was standing about 10 feet away from him at a Priory of Brion gig in 1999... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvcWuCZ33yM

Yes, I'd seen that. It says on there somewhere that this show is 'easy to find'. Well, I'm pretty good at finding these things, and I can't find it! Sounds like a great show as well Ady's posted a clip from it, which I already had with a couple of weird Earth demos (The Rebel, When I Came Down) plus a horrible jazzy instrumental, which apparently is a fake, thank god

Yes, that's where I found it - then I discovered Ozzy put the whole session, I think, on his comp, which I never had cos I'm not really into much Ozzy solo stuff. The sound quality's about the same, btw. One boot I can't find is a show from Dumfries in Scotland, just before the 1st album came out I think. Have you heard that? And there don't seem to be many studio outtakes around. I'd love to hear work-in-progress for SBS & Sabotage. Ever seen any of that?

That's on the Ozzy comp 'The Ozzman Cometh', isn't it? Along with the early version of Black Sabbath, with the extra verse (got the shock of my life when I recently heard a live version of that for the first time). Excellent stuff! The Sabs were superb up to 75. Sabotage remains one of my all-time favourite albums. Like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, it contained some highly sophisticated multi-layered stuff, which represented significant progress from the raw sound of their first few albums. The RJD era was a return to form after the last two patchy Ozzy albums, with a more powerful but very different, almost medieval sound. Live, I found them less interesting. Having tracked down quite a few ROIOs from 70-78, I was always surprised at their song selection. IMO, in the mid 70s, they relied too heavily on the obvious songs from their first 3 albums (Black Sabbath, Paranoid, War Pigs, Iron Man, Sweet Leaf, Children of the Grave etc) at the expense of superior material from their later albums. And like Deep Purple, there was an awful lot of unstructured and frankly boring improvisation. Then again, I never saw them live, so perhaps I'd have felt differently if I'd been there!

Ah yes, Deep Purple - the Cortinas of rock. Never remotely in the same league as LZ, but I used to love them, and can hardly bear to listen to them these days. I put on Made in Japan recently, and had to turn it off after 3 songs. Eww. IMO, the MKII sound has aged REALLY badly. Too much yucky Hammond. "Taxi for Mr Lord?" Their studio albums were puny, and their live improvisations deadly boring. Mks III & IV were more interesting musically, and haven't aged nearly as badly. Baldrick's high-water mark was with RJD, specifically Rainbow Rising, side 2 to be precise. What a colossal side of vinyl that was. Ok, so Stargazer was a desperate Kashmir tribute, which has nevertheless rightly earned 'classic' status, but 'Light in the Black' is the true unsung epic, probably Baldrick's crowning glory. Absolutely stunning.

Hmm, not so sure about this. I downloaded the album, thinking it would make cute bedtime music for our 2 year-old daughter. But when I previewed all the tracks, they actually sounded very dark, spooky and twisted! Like the kind of thing a serial killer might play to his victims before slicing their throats open. I'm quite disturbed to discover that this ostensibly innocent distillation of LZ to its simplest elements elicits this reaction in me. Maybe we really have all been singing for satan all along?

A baboon was swinging through the jungle one day, horny as hell and looking for some action. But try as he might, he couldn't find any lady baboons to lighten his load. So he decided to go for a swim to cool down. Just as he swung onto the last tree before the waterhole clearing, he saw a huge hippo bent down drinking at the water's edge, with his great muddy a*rse stuck right up in the baboon's face. The baboon looked at the a*rse, looked down at his own d*ick, and looked back at the a*rse. The a*rse looked very inviting. So, quick as a flash, the baboon jumped down onto the hippo's back, positioned himself appropriately, and before the hippo had a chance to register what was going on, the baboon had drilled the hippo, shot his load and scampered back into the jungle, laughing his head off. When the hippo finally twigged what had happened, he was not amused. He turned around and, hearing the chortles of mirth emanating from the forest, set off in hot pursuit. Hearing the hippo stomping along behind him, the baboon stopped laughing and started looking for a place to hide. Suddenly the forest opened into a clearing, and the baboon was exposed with nowhere to hide. In desperation, he looked around, and at the far edge of the clearing he saw a white-suited British explorer, wearing a pith-helmet and monocle, sitting on a shooting stick and reading The Times. Meanwhile, the hippo stomped ever closer. Thinking on his feet, the baboon bounded over to the explorer, broke his neck, took his clothes off, hid his body in the undergrowth, and had just managed to don the explorer's outfit, sit down and position the newspaper as the hippo came stomping into the clearing. The hippo stood there for a while, panting. Then, spotting the explorer, he timidly approached him and quietly asked whether he had just seen a large monkey running past. The baboon, realising that he hadn't been rumbled, lowered his newspaper and peered up at the hippo over his monocle. "Can't say that I have, dear boy", he said, sniggering quietly to himself as he returned to his newspaper. Then he lowered the paper again, and added, "I say - you're not the hippo that the baboon f*ucked in the a*rse, are you?" With a look of utter devastation on his face, the hippo looked down at the baboon. "Oh my god", he said. "Is it in the papers ALREADY??"

Hey, I saw her first! Deborah, do you have a larger version of your avatar?

Waking up for the first time in 3 days without a really painful bad lower back Although I'm gonna kind of miss the Tramadols

With a couple of exceptions, there wasn't much wrong with the music on C/P. IMO it's the best post-Zep recording any LZ party's been involved in. Agree the problem was totally Coverdale - infantile lyrics and a busted voice. I saw Whitesnake a couple of yrs before that, and it was REALLY F*CKING PAINFUL to listen to Cov even then, so god knows what JP was thinking of hooking up with him. Shoulda got that bloke out of Kingdom Come, or even Michael White. At least RP had the dignity to recognise when his voice was shot and adjusted his delivery accordingly.