Big news day today. Spirit (or more accurately Michael Skidmore, the journalist and co-trustee of Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe's estate who filed the suit) lost its appeal to the Supreme Court allowing the 11 judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court which had ruled in Led Zeppelin's favor to stand. Stairway to Heaven is now legally a Led Zeppelin original composition.
Although I am a Led Zeppelin fan, the similarity between Sprit's Taurus and the introduction to Stairway to Heaven are striking. However, the two songs then evolve quite differently and it is not uncommon for short themes to be used as the starting points for quite different pieces of music. Hayden's London quartet uses a well known Hungarian folk song for the "King's melody" (which then became the German national anthem).
The second big story of the day was the award of this year's Nobel price for physics to British mathematician Sir Roger Penrose for his work on the mathematics of black holes.
All in all a good day for Brits.
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