I learned how to get along

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jul 19, 2002

BOSTON (NYT) -- Legend, says Robert Plant, is "a funny thing. You have to be careful it doesn't take over." Plant should be an expert on the subject, having fronted Led Zeppelin, Page & Plant, and his own solo bands with a voice that has been instantly recognizable for 30 years. But Plant has now embarked on an "experiment" that climaxes with this week's CD release of Dreamland, in which he sidesteps his British rock image to sing flower-powered American songs from the `60s.

On the CD, he rearranges -- and majestically so -- such psychedelic classics as the Grateful Dead-associated Morning Dew, the Youngbloods' Darkness, Darkness, and the Jimi Hendrix-identified Hey Joe. So is Plant having acid flashbacks or what? After laughing, he gives a serious response: "The songs were beautiful, and there was such promise during that period. From the coffeehouses of New York and from the basements of Detroit, and from the love-ins in San Francisco, there was a whole thing that took place that actually had some focus. We were British kids leaning on our Celtic roots a little bit with the riffs of Howlin' Wolf behind us. It was a different zone altogether from the kaleidoscope of the Jefferson Airplane. And I always looked at that longingly because I wanted to be a part of it, but I wasn't. I was British."

Plant says he made a stab at hippie acceptance by helping write such Zeppelin songs as Going to California, Down by the Seaside, That's the Way and Ramble On. "I tried to join in, in a British sort of way, with varying success," he says. "But I had my freak flag flying."

This isn't the first backward stab by Plant, who succeeded at putting Big Band sounds on Classic Rock stations with his Honeydrippers experiment in the `80s. But that doesn't sway Zeppelin fans who await a return to his rock roots.

"So some people say I'm not rocking anymore? Well, you've got to be a bloody moron to think that everything you do from the age of 17 to 60 is supposed to be laced with frantic, Cro-Magnon primal screams," he says. "That was one trick that I used with (Zeppelin's) Whole Lotta Love and Misty Mountain Hop, because that's where it belongs. But I'd sound like an idiot singing Morning Dew like that. The thing is, I really like singing all kinds of material."

And so you're back

NEW YORK (AP) -- First Ozzy Osbourne, then Anna Nicole Smith. Now Sean "P. Diddy" Combs is the latest celebrity who wants you to enter his world. The fall MTV show won't be as intimate as The Osbournes, this year's surprise hit and the most popular show in that cable channel's history. You won't see Combs brushing his teeth in the morning -- besides, he did that last year during an episode of the cable channel's up-close-and-personal series Diary. Instead, the rap mogul is hosting the second season of Making the Band, which launched the boy band O-Town two years ago on ABC. Cameras will follow him at work as he forms a new hip-hop group, from auditions and rehearsals to recording and performing.

"This show will be a wild ride, no tricks or gimmicks, just P. Diddy reality," said Combs, who discovered such acts as Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans and Dream. "This show will give insight into what it takes to be at the top."

It's the latest in a slew of shows in which celebrities choose to live their lives on camera. And it melds two of the biggest trends in TV today: the average person's desire to prove they're a star, and the star's desire to prove they're an average person.

As long as I know how to love

FORT WORTH (NYT) -- A couple of weeks ago, Columbia Pictures sent movie journalists a stuffed replica of Frank, the scene-stealing pug from Men in Black II. Squeeze the little sucker, and it sings: "So you're back from outer space/I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face/I should have changed that stupid lock..."

If you've listened to the radio in the past 25 years or so, you probably recognize those lines from I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor's disco hit from 1979. Actually, you didn't have to listen to the radio. You simply had to reside on this planet. I Will Survive has shown up in at least a slew of other movies -- Four Weddings and a Funeral, In & Out, Coyote Ugly and The Replacements, just to name a few. It has become a gay-rights anthem and a feminist anthem. It has been covered by alternative-rock acts and sampled by rap artists. It has been recorded in 20 languages, and it was once used as the theme song of the French soccer team. It topped VH1's list of "100 Greatest Dance Songs," and a Swedish poll named it Disco Song of the Century. It won the first -- and only -- Grammy for Best Disco Song.

The song tells a story of empowerment. The singer has been dumped, moped about it, then discovered she (or he) could make it on her/his own. But the song grew bigger than that. It became a catch-all for anyone who had been through a rough time. And the song goes beyond individuals. An Internet search for the song's title revealed it has been adopted as a theme for people with AIDS and hepatitis C, for battered women, and for those who have been sexually abused, among others. But then the song became a movie staple, and its meaning started to become lost altogether. In almost every instance, the song is used comedically.