Three items for you to consider. Firstly, remember Child In Time's intro on Deep Purple's In Rock album? Delightful, no? Unfortunately, ripped off from the relatively unknown band It's A Beautiful Day on their self-titled debut album (the track it appears on is Bombay Calling; guess The Clash ripped the name! Poor guys, they were really robbed blind!). The original melody/riff is done with a violin, or so I have read. The band itself look fairly decent, psychedelic prog, if there is such a thing. Yet another artist to consider purely on a whim.

Is it unfortunate, really? I suppose that as long as it fits in with the overall mood of the song, it isn't that big a crime (if we don't consider it from a legal point of view, which isn't that interesting to me anyway). Led Zeppelin of course did the greatest rip-off in history with Stairway To Heaven, taking the universally famous tune from the (again unknown) band Spirit's (again self-titled!) debut album. Zep used to play with Spirit on tour, and heard the song (it's called Taurus, a purely instrumental track) and were enamoured with it, and so decided to use it as their own. Of course, apparently they did get permission for borrowing the tune, but nonetheles, hardly anyone remembers Spirit and their humble little song, whereas the whole world seems to be taken with Stairway. I wonder how that must make you feel, and how it must sound when you mention it to other people; probably like some crackpot! ("But it was me, I tells ya, I made that!" / "Suuure you did").

Brian Wilson is going to release Smile after all! Hurrah! Sept. 28 is the tenative release date, and this is certainly something that I'm looking forward to. Although, I must confess, I wonder whether it would have been better to let it remain a mystery and an engima rather than release it now. The very concept of it was striking, a subject for many "What if?"s. If it turns out to be average, then the magic is gone, the legend is shattered, and Sgt. Pepper still rules undisputed!

And finally, bizarre stuff here: Andy Kaufman is alive!? I don't quite know what to make of this, my gut feeling is that it's fake, but stranger things have happened. This is really up there though!