I recently made a friend's jaw drop by admitting to him that I was pretty unfamiliar with Led Zeppelin's music, apart from the standards that get played to death on the radio.
I realized that I had to fix this, so I scraped together every album of theirs I could find, and committed myself to listening to it all. And ho-ly SMOKES... can I say I get it now? Luke, are you reading this? I'm thinking of you as I write it, bud.
I mean, I grew up hearing this music - my folks listened to it; I'd hear it at work; it was the crap the older guys listened to. I came of age in the 80's, so "my kind of music" was anything (I now understand) more or less directly derived from punk. I remember Robert Plant playing on the radio, and I'm sorry, but it was awful -- or at least I thought so at the time (maybe I'll change my mind on that at some point).
Anyway, so back to Led Zeppelin: I'm not going to try to talk them up to anyone who hasn't heard them. Either you've heard them and don't like them (I'm not going to convince you otherwise); you've heard them and do like them (again: I'm NOT going to convince you otherwise); or you've heard the few of their songs that get flogged to death on the radio. If you're one of the last group, and you don't get what all the fuss is about, grab their first album, carve out some time, and listen to the album at least once through uninterrupted.
Something similar to this has happened to me with Eric Clapton (and Cream and Derek and the Dominoes), The Allman Brothers, The Who, David Bowie, in roughly that order.
I've never really gotten the hype around the Rolling Stones. Maybe I'll see the light on them someday ;-)
1 comment:
Let me save you the trouble in respect to the Rolling Stones. I've tried on multiple occasions to "get it" with them, and I just don't. They have about half a dozen really great songs, and about 50 other "OK" ones, but I don't see what has earned them the label of "greatest rock and roll band"
The more I have listened to Led Zeppelin, the more I realize that every rock band following them owes a large chunk of their sound to the magic combo of Page & Plant. That isn't to understress the amazing contribution of their rythym section, either. Try listening to John Bonham's explosive drum playing and then follow it with the drums of 99% of other rock drummers and you'll swear that the latter was being played by a 4 year old child.
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