Friday, March 2, 2007

LED ZEPPELIN and others...





lowbrow rapture.


  1. I was 15 the year John Bonham died and Zeppelin broke up - heartbreaking to me at that tender age. They have always been my favorite band, and I apply no discrimination whatsoever to any of their music. I love the progressive later stuff almost as much as the early stuff. I have never been more enamoured of anyone's guitar playing than Jimmy Page's, never loved anyone's gyrating blues more than Robbie Plant's.

    Now they're my favorite old band, along with Pink Floyd. My favorite later bands are Radiohead and Tool, both heavily influenced by Pink Floyd.

    I saw Jimmy Page and Robert Plant on their No Quarter tour. They were pretty good - better than I expected. It's always a pleasure to read about them. Thanks.

  2. Hey dawn

    Thanks for the comment.Led Zeppelin still sound great. They didn't release a single bad album.
    I first saw them in Detroit at at the Grande Ballroom in the late Sixties, and Page and Plant were absolutely unbeatable in chops and voice. Besides Zep, my favorite band was Mountain and the Jeff Beck Group, with strong measures of rhythm and blues ala Motown, Otis, Aretha. These days it's mostly jazz, old school, progressive/fusion, and blues. I love music because it doesn't need words to tell you what it is or what it's about.

  3. I had a collector's item first pressing of Mountain Climbing that an audiophile friend "borrowed" and never returned. He'd also given me a 45 of Immigrant's Song, with Hey Hey What Can I Do on the B-side, and then "borrowed" that back, too. He hung himself in November, so I guess I'll never see those disks again...

    I like a lot of the ambient stuff these days - Hotel Costes and Thievery Corp. I know there's a lot of good stuff out there. If I was more industrious, I'd do my homework.

  4. I don't know much about ambient music, but I like what I've heard in passing. I was at one point obsessed with songwriter and sought to construct a coherent auteur theory about scribes who work in the context of bands, but too many of my favorites--the Police, Steely Dan, Elvis Costello,Joni, Dylan King Crimson, Captain Beefheart--either broke up, jumped the shark, or just vanished. It's hard to create a working theory of rock and roll when your heros output ceases or starts sucking. Jeff Buckley, son of the late Tim, was the last guy I paid attention to, and he died young. A pity, a real tragedy, since he had a big heart , an angel's voice, and a gift for lyric poetry.

  5. 2¢, here:

    1. It makes my teeth hurt to even think of the Beach Boys being compared to the Beatles.

    2. Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy...? ehh. wudn't so hot.

  6. There was a brief period in their heyday when the Beach Boys might rival the Beatles in innovation, especially with the Pet Sounds, Surf's Up, Holland . Brian Wilson became a basket case, though, and effectively turned the BBs into an oldies act.

    I like Houses of the Holy quite a bit. Robert Plant's lyrics are and always have been inane, but the songwriting here is among their strongest--great riffs, unexpected shifts, intriguing moods.

  7. THE VERY LIPS OF HELL by Spermweaver is, hands down, the gnarliest hard rock album ever recorded. Changed my life and yours, though you may not know it.

  8. dave marsh8:13 AM PDT

    Soylstack rocks!

