A formula exists for the interchangeability of sex (S) and rock and roll (RNR), which is: S=RNRC. C equals the name recognition (``cred''), increased exponentially by hype. According to this formula, the creation of pure sex out of rock and roll is simply a matter of multiplying any amount of rock and roll by fame raised to the level of hysteria. Some bands execute this conversion with such finality that it can be burned into plastic and sold forever. Obviously this is a magical, even godlike, process. Which brings me to Led Zeppelin.

If ever a band generate SEX on a grand, gothic scale, it was Zeppelin. So high was their net efficiency that by 1979 it was determines they had added something like 40 percent to the world's proven reserves of Uncontrollable and Insatiable Lust. In fact, there is nothing in their music but sex, all of it unequivocally male. Jimmy Page's insistent guitar is the voice of a man bent on seduction, whose goal is not pleasure but absolute domination; if you want to know what a real predator sounds like put Snoop Doggy Dogg back in the bin and get a load of this megalomaniac. The rapaciousness with which he plays is guaranteed to lift you out of your clothes. And Plant is his flip side: the regular guy as a victim of cold-hearted sorcerers, kicked in the balls by the little schoolgirl he worships, shrieking in flamboyant misery and animal frustration --- in a word, PUSSY-WHIPPED. Makes my cock hard just to think about it, and I don't even have a cock.

And face it, ladies, there's just something about seeing some macho prick squirm that brings out the, well, carnivore in even (especially) the most saintly of us. Who among us has not, at one time or another, taken the opportunity --- deny it to the heavens though you may --- to fry some pathetically willing dweeb over a couple of kilowatt-hours of sexual heat, only to dump him out the next day like so much leftover fat? Or make nice with a two-timing fuck just long enough to get him into a corner and blast him with a Glock wrapped in his favorite pair of your panties?

This is the promise of Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page the two-timing fuck and Robert Plant the pathetic dweeb made soundtracks for the edification of young women everywhere, all with the same moral: sex is power. Love may be a democracy, maybe even a dictatorship. Sex is a force of nature, an absolute. They were convinced of this, and their conviction carried everybody else along, male, female, and shark alike.

Besides, a lot of us like our men on the domineering side. And while I may stop a few hundred yard shy of sheer blood-thirstiness, I'm not going to sit here and tell you I wouldn't wear a fur coat, I wouldn't attend an execution, I wouldn't fall in love with a two-timing fuck --- I would, and I'd happily torture him for being one. So would Jimmy Page, so would Robert Plant.

Suffice it to say that Led Zeppelin's music does not so much describe sex as raise its spirit. I defy you, dear reader, to listen out one whole Led Zeppelin album (with the possible exception of Coda) and not see yourself and the object of you obsession meeting by fate and fucking all night, chased by the same demons that drove all those blues guys mad. How many more times? As many as you can take. (Emily XYZ)