Zeppelin Returns

‘Valhalla, I am coming …’

Robert Plant has agreed to lace up his tight pants for a summer tour with Led Zeppelin. He’ll join Jimmy Page (who rocked China at the Olympic closer), John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham as the thunderheaded gods of rock step out for the first time in decades.

You may recall from a few days ago that Plant was having trouble deciding whether to join the reunion. It was at that point that the band let it be known that Zeppelin wasn’t above hiring a new singer to take his place. I jokingly suggested David Coverdale (of Whitesnake, etc.), and was surprised by how many other people out there said the same thing, only seriously.

But it’s moot now. Plant will be back on stage. Consider, though, what might have been had the band really started looking for a new singer. Lucky for you I’m connected, eh? Weather Station 1 got its hands on the Led Zeppelin management team’s shortlist of potential replacement singers, so I am now able to give you the top 12 choices that didn’t have to be made.

Phil Collins: Well, he isn’t doing much these days, or if he is, nobody cares. It would be quite the contrast, going from a singer with the most powerful wail in rock to a guy who has trouble opening his mouth. No chance.

Phil Gramm: I interviewed Phil Gramm once. I wanted to capture the majesty that was Foreigner in its heyday, so I asked him “Phil, when you’re onstage, singing, your eyes shut, and the band is tight, and the sound is big, and the crowd is roaring for you, and when you open your eyes, what do you see?” He said “I can see Mick.” Yes, I used to ask those kinds of questions, and yes, Phil Gramm is too dumb for Zeppelin.

George Michael: This guy can really sing. But can he rock? Oh, wait, he just got busted in a public washroom. Again. Does the world need Led Zeppelin fronted by a prettyboy in lipstick with a checkered past? No. Zeppelin left that kind of scandal behind in the ’70s. So, no.

Bret Michaels: I think this might work, but it would interfere with the much-anticipated Poison reunion tour of 2009. Wait, what? Poison never broke up? They’re still making records and touring? Really? Wow. Okay, so he’s busy. Plus there are all those same reasons I gave you for George Michael.

Billy Joel: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Not a chance. He doesn’t even get to walk past the studio. Billy Joel. Someone owed someone a favour there, let me tell you.

Billy Idol: This I would like to see. I once saw Billy Idol in concert. He got it on with a 50-foot inflatable woman. It was bizarre and strange, but might give Jimmy Page palpitations, so no. Jimmy has to stay healthy for this to work.

Robbie Dupree: What, you don’t remember Steal Away, from 1980? YouTube it. A classic. But the wrong fit for Zeppelin, as he is more like Kenny Loggins than Kenny Loggins.

Kenny Loggins: I spit on you and your Kenny Loggins records.

Kate Bush: What? Have you management types even heard of Led Zeppelin?

Paul Weller: As interesting as this sounds on paper, I really, really think it would suck dog ass.

Paul McCartney: As would this.

Paul Rodgers: Well, there you go.™

Where No McCain Has Gone Before

I’m swamped today doing real actual work, but here’s a little something from The Colbert Report that might be good for a giggle. There are more of these on YouTube, and a real variety, too. The guy who created this one is brilliant.

Worst Toy Ever

This is real, people. This isn’t PhotoShop mischief. You can actually buy this.

The sad thing is this photo has been on my fridge, held on with a magnet, and my kids have asked for it for Christmas.

Downloaded Heroes

The ratings for Heroes are decidedly unheroic. Oh, they’re bad. Heroes got whipped by Dancing With The Stars, for Hiro’s sake. That ain’t good.

NBC is understandably upset. This is their Lost, their CSI, their lynchpin. Last year saw a real slippage, but that’s the writers’ strike for you. As a fan, I can assure you that every critic was right: Epic suck. A bloody perfect season 1 became a season 2 that had me thinking about other things.

Season 3 has launched. So far, I like it. The show has moved beyond the everyman nature of Season 1 and the WTF nature of season 2 into new and really strange territory. I plan to stick with it. How could not, after the end of that second hour?

But I’m in the minority. More people are watching David Caruso than Hayden Panettiere, which says a lot about TV watchers.

But at the same time as the ratings are showing a big dump of TV watchers, check this out: TorrentFreak reports that a million people illegally downloaded the Heroes season 3 opener on the first day. This doesn’t even take into account the people who watched it on streaming pirate sites.

You all know I don’t advocate P2P and torrents. That isn’t what’s going on here. This is a significant shift away from traditional broadcasting to something new, a gradual underground change that has become mainstream. It has been embraced in the U.S. via ad-supported concepts like Hulu.com, but not in other countries. And I should point out that those Heroes torrent numbers were heavily stacked toward viewers from other countries, places where the show either isn’t available or comes out weeks, or months, later.

We live in a world with an immediate digital delivery system. The users have embraced it, legally and illegally. Television, which has been griping for years about the ‘threat’ of the Internet, has to make a choice: adapt or die. Don’t make a website with a forum and a chatroom and a webmail address so your fans can be mclovin19226345@gossipgirl.com. Dive in and get your shows out there, with ads on them, and let people see them.

Six Million Dollar Man: The Movie

I’m bionic.

I was wrecked in a car crash a few years back, which left me with artificial parts – steel screws, rods, a teflon joint – in my legs. I’m lucky to be able to walk, and I’m grateful for that, but something always makes me think: How come I can’t jump over houses, in slow motion? Why can’t I run as fast as a car … also in slow motion? And why hasn’t there been a Six Million Dollar Man movie?

The idea got started a few times, but sputtered quickly. There was talk of a Jim Carrey version, and one with Chris Rock called the Six Billion Dollar Man. I like those guys okay, but casting either one of them as Col. Steve Austin gives you a sense of where producers have been wanting to take this franchise. Actually, the Chris Rock script had him as a scrawny dope-smoking airport baggage handler with a big mouth who becomes a bionic super-soldier and … never mind, it’s painful to think about. It reminds me of how I felt when I heard Jack Black was going to be Green Lantern: two seconds of “What the -” followed by a bad word.

They tried to remake The Bionic Woman for TV last year. It was more than a bit shit. We’re done talking about that.

But I should say this: I was a Steve Austin kid. In the mid-70s, life was all about Steve Austin, Planet of the Apes and Star Trek. (This is just before Star Wars changed everything). And also Evel Knievel. But man, Steve Austin was the business.

The Six Million Dollar Man was developed from a TV movie based on the novel Cyborg, by Martin Caidin. The movie is not much like the book, and the TV series is not much like the movie. In Cyborg, Austin is a bionic assassin with a finger that shoots bullets; people who remember the TV show know that’s not THEIR Steve Austin. Actually, Caidin always wrote ‘bionics,’ not ‘bionic,’ so Austin had ‘bionics legs.’ Sounds stupid.

Aside from a handful of TV movies of varying quality in the late 80s and early 90s (one of which starred Sandra Bullock as the new Bionic Woman), Steve Austin has been absent from the screen. You can’t even get it on DVD. You can get Growing Pains, sure, and The Nanny, but not Steve Austin.

So bring him back. How hard can it be? The beauty of the concept is the producers aren’t tied to the idea of casting a new Austin who looks like Lee Majors. This isn’t Star Trek, where the look of the characters is burned into fanboy psyches like a tattoo of a beer logo on Amy Winehouse’s inner thigh. It’s more like I Spy, or Starsky and Hutch. Close enough counts. Wait – those sacks of suck both starred Owen Wilson. Note to producers: Don’t cast Owen Wilson.

Oh, now you know they will.