Zeppelin Without Plant?

New singer? Doubtful.

Holy shit, can this be legit? A high-up source in the music industry says Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham are ready to tour without singer Robert Plant. Reports indicate they’ve drafted singer Myles Kennedy of the band Alter Bridge to take Plant’s place as Zeppelin storms forth into the 21st century.

This comes on the heels of weeks of talks between the parties. Plant has held off on committing to the tour, sure to be a monster moneymaker; he’s been on the road with Alison Krauss and apparently doesn’t want to put the tight pants back on.

But last thing your Weather Station heard, he had relented and was ready to let his golden howl lead the band once again.

Now this, though. It’s being reported by The Canadian Press, via the TV music station MuchMoreMusic, that plant is out and Kennedy is in. Wait, what? Oh, shit.

This “hot tip” comes from Dee Snider, who was being interviewed for the station. Yeah, Dee Snider, Twisted Sister’s tranvestite clown lunatic. That’s funny, because when I made up a list of supposed replacement singers for Led Zeppelin a few weeks back I thought of him, but rejected him as too stupid and obvious.

There has to be more to this. Stay tuned.

Well-connected rock insider? Doubtful.

Music Review: Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction

“Deep within the fifth-dimension theocracy
that is The Mindwarp, apostles of the groove are at work.”

That’s from the liner notes of Tattooed Beat Messiah, the breakthrough first full-length album from Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. There is nothing else like it on this planet. The band, or the album. All their albums, actually.

Zodiac Mindwarp is a guy named Mark Manning, a poet and artist and writer and madman. In the early 80s, he set about to explode every hard-rock cliche he could find and created a band, ability to actually play not necessarily necessary. So he got some guys with names like Slam Thunderhide, Cobalt Stargazer, Kid Chaos, Trash D. Garbage, Flash Bastard … later Tex Diablo and Suzy X, and many others.

The music this filthy bunch of loud-ass leather-clad faux bikers created was a cross between AC/DC, Deep Purple, The Cult and the Porky’s movies. Big fat simple riffs, sneering, snarling vocals and incomprehensible lyrics about sex, drugs, booze and going as long as possible without taking a bath.

My first exposure to Zodiac was through British music magazines. As a kid in Ontario, it was hard to get the actual albums, but the magazines turned up sometimes. Finally, in about 1986, I was able to buy High Priest of Love and Tattooed Beat Messiah at Sam’s in Toronto, and fuck me if I didn’t become an instant convert. It’s bad music. It’s fast, loud and dirty. But it was fun, and it came just as AC/DC released Who Made Who and the Cult went Electric, so the riffs and the hair were right in tune with what I was doing. My guitars got louder, my drums got bigger, my jeans got tighter and there were some cowboy boots. You’ve seen the mullet photos. You know.

As the years went on, band members came and went. The music softened. For a while, it seemed like Zodiac forgot he was playing a big joke on the industry and he became more of an actual rock star, until he got screwed over, events documented in a book called Fucked By Rock, which you should read.

Throughout it all, Manning crafted metal-lite gems with titles like Backseat Education, Elvis Died For You, Skull Spark Joker and Hangover From Hell, and peppered his recordings with absolutely bizarre ranting speeches about aliens, demons, swans pulling chariots and planets barfing fire. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect there may have been some acid in the studio air.

Here’s a discography:

• Tattooed Beat Messiah (1988)  (This one hit No. 20 on the UK pop charts)
• Hoodlum Thunder (1991)
• Live At Reading (1993)
• One More Knife (1994)
• I Am Rock (2002)
• Weapons of Mass Destruction (live album) 2004
• Rock Savage (2005)

In the spirit of those 80s British music magazines, I now give you 10 Things You Need To Know About Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction

1. Zodiac named the band after a lyric in Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark
2. Guitarist Cobalt Stargazer used to be in Wham!
3. Rob Zombie would be nothing without the Mindwarp.
4. Bassist Kid Chaos quit after High Priest of Love, joined the Cult, then formed The Four Horsemen in the U.S.
5. The band covered Born to be Wild on Tattooed Beat Messiah because Zodiac thought they could do a better job than the Cult (on Electric)
6. Zodiac wrote Feed My Frankenstein for Alice Cooper
7. Before he was a dirty little rock star, Mark Manning was a magazine editor. Kind of like me, except the other way around, and except for the rock star part.
8. Manning wrote a book called Bad Wisdom with Bill Drummond of The KLF. It’s really fucked up, and one of my favourites.
9. Some people thought they were a real band and didn’t like them because they didn’t get the joke
10. Those people were stupid.

The band’s official website is here. And Zodiac rumbles on about the band’s history and meaning on MySpace. Meanwhile, here’s a video:

It’s Prime Mover, and yes, I know it’s just Living After Midnight, but he shoots lasers from his fingers! That’s cool.