I've been to Scunthorpe for work several times. While there, I was asked if I was 'the man who put the 'c*nt' in 'Scunthorpe'. They make their own amusement, obvs. Bizarrely, the Open Hearth is still there and it's still got that name. Mind you, it's probably still 1967 in Scunny, too...

Excellent. Nay, outstanding!

😂 Outstanding!

I'm 61 next month - so not in mine either.

There's an old website (Thieving Magpies) that basically bashes and dismisses Zeppelin as blues thieves, but has this to say about Jimmy: ‘Jimmy Page is unacknowledged as one of the, if not the, greatest psychedelic guitar players ever. Page’s criminally underrated work with the Yardbirds and on countless sessions (take note of his hypnotic work with Donovan in particular) illustrate that he set the standard for lysergic discord par excellence.’

Tiny, semi-transparent flecks of snow - but constant , so it's settling. Two days ago it was clear blue skies and sunny. 'March many-weathers', indeed.

Weird - I always thought it was Jimmy singing backing vocals on Thank You and was convinced that I'd actually read a quote where Jimmy said that it was him. But I can't find it anywhere, so now I'm wondering if my brain's turned an assumption into a false fact! Getting old, man... I'm torn re. a 'classic albums' type of documentary. On the one hand, yes, I'd love to know all about it. On the other hand, do I really want all the magic and ambiguities explained away? Hmmm...

The key word there is 'arrangement'. It's not the same as songwriting and you don't get a co-writer credit for doing it. Songwriting's just the basic tune, the melody and the lyrics - anything on top of that is classed as arrangement, including the string arrangement that JPJ added to Jimmy's tune and/or Robert's melody. Seems harsh on Jonesy, but just think - if arrangements were included in the writing credits, Rolf Harris would get a writing credit for the wobbleboard part he put to Stairway to Heaven in 1993. Or, more seriously, Hendrix's ideas would've made him the co-writer of All Along The Watchtower. Etc. Apparently, the reason for Bonzo's credit on Kashmir is because when he and Jimmy were jamming the basic idea, Bonham's improvisations gave Jimmy new ideas for where to take the riffs that he wouldn't have come up with if not for what Bonzo did. Course, it's entirely up to a band themselves how they attribute credit and there was nothing stopping Jimmy including Jonesy in the credits if he'd actually wanted to...but that's a different matter! 😉

Imagine the rest of the wigs if that was the best option...

Yeah, I'm stalled of this too. The idea's pretty good, I'd've watched it and bought a copy, but...yawn, wassat? They've failed to launch too many times. Misfire, dude.

Jonesy caught sight of his reflection while sporting that wig.

No.

Great stuff, cheers, lads!

8.7lbs? Can that be right? That's about 4kg. Aren't Les Paul's supposed to be notoriously heavy? If these have been designed to be much lighter than the originals, what effect will that have on the sound? Not criticising - genuinely interested in how these things work. Excuse my ignorance - I'm a drummer, so I don't actually know anything about music. 😉

Chicken run...

Logan Lucky. With the bleached hair, Daniel Craig really does look like Red Grant! Shame there wasn't a Bond film with a train fight between Craig (looked like Grant) and Adrian Paul (looked like the living incarnation of James Bond). The post-modern, role-reversal jest of it would've tickled me no end.

Don't be coy, Chillum - what do you really think of it, mate? 😁

I studied with Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of The Nazis: A Warning From History, and he had no doubt that Hitler seriously intended to invade the UK. The Battle of Britain was an attempt to destroy British air cover ahead of a 'surrender or be invaded' ultimatum. Hitler did see the British in a different way to other Europeans and he would've preferred a negotiated surrender and the installation of a puppet govt, but he was quite prepared to achieve that by force. He was used to dealing with the likes of Chamberlain, though, so he seriously under-estimated Churchill. Even if the Battle of Britain had gone the other way, I really doubt that Churchill would've sought terms. He was a belligerent old sod who'd physically fought in several wars and believed that the answer to violence is greater violence - he'd wanted to bomb the Irish 'rebels' and wanted the army to shoot striking Yorkshire miners, after all! I suspect that Churchill would far rather have been invaded and gone down fighting , rather than surrender. It's possible that he could've been removed by a coup of appeasers if the Nazis had actually invaded (the British aristocracy was riddled with Nazi sympathisers!) , but he was fairly entrenched, had the military on side and wouldn't have gone quietly. I'm from a Yorkshire mining family, so I can't stand the bloke, but we're lucky he was PM during the war. Regarding US support, Churchill sought American support for a long time. If Churchill himself thought that the UK needed America to beat the Nazis, I'd say there was a good chance that we did. He was in more of a position to know than anybody else, I guess. And the Nazis had already kicked our arses out of Europe in 1940, after all!

Jeff. Ah, fuck.

I've ignored my own birthdays since I was eight, so I'm not taking any notice of Jimmy's, dude!

Ian Hunter said that he's spoken to Mick Ralphs recently and that Ralpher seemed a fair bit better than he had been in a while. Good to know.

Yes, true, but that stuff was back in the '70s. According to Andy Fraser, Rodgers was always a punchy bloke even in Free, but by the time of Bad Co. drink, drugs, money and status had basically turned him into an asshole - frequently pulling dick moves and daring anyone to stop him. Paul's only a little bloke, but he was really good at karate and he's from a rough, working class area in the North of England so he had no fear of throwing down - which meant that few people wanted to cross him and he got away with all sorts of havoc. He seems to have been a nasty drunk with a lot of anger, but he came off the drink and drugs at the end of Bad Company and apparently stuck rigidly to the straight and narrow thereafter - which is why touring with him in the mid-'80s was like being out with a 'grandmother', according to Jimmy! Sounds preferable to the mid-'70s version, tbh...

Indeed. Ronson was an arranger, rather than a writer, but as Ian Hunter said: 'Mick made any song better.' There's a really good documentary about Ronno called 'Beside Bowie' - good place to start.

It's true, reids - and he's explained how he spent lockdown putting his record collection in alphabetical order, too. No wonder he hasn't had the time to fulfil his decade-long claims to be releasing music 'next year', eh! Seriously, though, I think Jimmy's done enough for one lifetime and if he doesn't want to do music any more, then fair enough. There's still a bit of mileage in taking the piss out of all the 'next year' stuff, though.

Although Jimmy supported Thatcher, so I'm not sure how he'd be upset by right wingers...