I know. You probably expected the next installment of my analysis of Notes on Camp, or at LEAST something elaborating on something I found in my travels in June. My travels will continue in another diary (probably on Friday), but this is my attempt to make up for my diary on the (admittedly unfamiliar) Stranglers. So tonight we investigate another supergroup like Cream, also British, who no less a personage than Dave Grohl says heavy metal would not exist without this group and
if it did, it would suck.
#14 on
Rolling Stone's best artists list, just ahead of Stevie Wonder, just behind Buddy Holly. Ladies and Gentlemen,
John Bonham (drums), Robert Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (keyboards) - the artists who composed the super group Led Zeppelin.
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Sure. I owned the first album too. I don't know if the claim that they invented heavy metal is exactly true, because this cover version of a song by Eddie Cochran, sounds pretty heavy metal to me:
But what Led Zeppelin did with the genre certainly deserves a lot of credit. Here's the origin story:
Led Zeppelin formed out of the ashes of the Yardbirds. Jimmy Page had joined the band in its final days, playing a pivotal role on their final album, 1967's Little Games, which also featured string arrangements from John Paul Jones. During 1967, the Yardbirds were fairly inactive. While the Yardbirds decided their future, Page returned to session work in 1967. In the spring of 1968, he played on Jones' arrangement of Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man." During the sessions, Jones requested to be part of any future project Page would develop. Page would have to assemble a band sooner than he had planned. In the summer of 1968, the Yardbirds' Keith Relf and James McCarty left the band, leaving Page and bassist Chris Dreja with the rights to the name, as well as the obligation of fulfilling an upcoming fall tour. Page set out to find a replacement vocalist and drummer. Initially, he wanted to enlist singer Terry Reid and Procol Harum's drummer B.J. Wilson, but neither musician was able to join the group. Reid suggested that Page contact Robert Plant, who was singing with a band called Hobbstweedle.
NOT the Yardbirds, by any stretch of the imagination. This won't be in chronological order, either.
From the first album. You KNOW it revs up, and this is why we all ran out to buy the album. Based on a folksong by Anne Bredon (1959) and first recorded by Joan Baez (1962), and I can assure you this sounds NOTHING like what Joan Baez recorded. This is what Robert Plant brought to the group.
Heavy metal indeed. But you'll notice that the four remaining songs from this heavy metal group show much more artistry than you typically think of when you remember heavy metal, although they require every bit as much skill to play. Dancing Days (1973), for example, which is #16 on Rolling Stone's list of great summer songs and #21 on their list of Led Zeppelin songs, veers in that direction, and, as Rolling Stone describes it, hearkens BACK to a previous era:
After recording this at Mick Jagger's country home Stargroves in England, the bandmates were so excited they went out on the lawn and danced to it. The music – most strikingly, the searing slide-guitar line – was inspired by Page and Plant's trip to Bombay. The lyrics are an almost Beach Boys-like vision of Edenic summer ease.
Kashmir (1975). This is an exceptionally lush song (#141 on Rolling Stone's list of the best songs of all time, and #4 on the Led Zeppelin list). The magazine again:
It's their hugest-sounding track, partly because it was one of the few that used outside musicians – a string and brass corps that augmented Jones' Mellotron swirls, Bonham's druid storm-trooper processional and Page's Arabic-Indian vibe ("I had a sitar before George Harrison," he said). Plant's lyrics were born from an endless car ride through southern Morocco, and his 15-second howl around the four-minute mark may be his most spectacular vocal moment. Plant called it "the definitive Zeppelin song."
I am NOT going to argue with Robert Plant.
The Battle of Evermore (1971). #17 on the Led Zeppelin best songs list, and if you listen carefully, you'll hear a mandolin. This is FOLK music played by a heavy-metal band. And, if you know Tolkien's work (I'll admit that I don't), Rolling Stone observes
It's also their fullest evocation of The Lord of the Rings, with allusions to wraiths and mountainside warfare.
Tangerine (1970). This one, which is based on a song the Yardbirds wrote and didn't perform, is one I don't remember from an album or from the radio. It was the song that was played most often in the movie Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical film about his career as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone. #35 on the Led Zeppelin song list. The magazine says "country" but I just hear an excellent song.
I met Robert Plant once, in I think 1985 (maybe 1986), when he was on tour with a successor band, the Honeydrippers, in San Francisco. The band had two back-up singers, one of whom was the daughter of a neighbor (the neighbor was also one of the sales reps who called on me when I was the media planning officer at Bank of America) and the neighbor invited us to meet her daughter and the rest of the band. The other back up singer, however, was Ulla Hedwig, who gay men of my age will IMMEDIATELY recognize as one of Bette Midler's original Harlettes. She said she had never had as much fun on a tour as she had working with la Midler.
On another note: It is now close enough to NN 14 for me to remind those of you who are going that way back in last July we decided that Top Comments should field a team for the Pub Quiz. I still love the idea. Do the rest of you who are going still like it? And should we be the Slithy Toves or the Mome Raths?
And now for the stuff that makes this Top Comments:
TOP COMMENTS, July 9, 2014: Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU when you find that proficient comment.
From Mopshell:
I'm recommending this comment by anon004 for Top Comments because, in less than four lines, it explains how paradoxical descriptors fail to disturb rationality in the Republican brain. From Hunter's diary America's Dumbest Congressman says immigrants are Obama plot to take over Texas.
From
Puddytat:
tmservo433 tells what is probably the greatest story ever told about tipping in side pocket's annual diary about tipping the household staff at Netroots Nation.
From your diarist,
Dave in Northridge:
Threads today. weezilgirl starts an excellent one about the intelligence of Republican candidates for Congress from Texas in Hunter's diary, Texas Republican candidate diagnoses the president with ... 'Münchausen syndrome by proxy'?
zenbassoon starts an equally excellent one about what insurance pays for in akadjian's diary about how we should talk about Hobby Lobby with people who are likely to support the recent decision.
TOP MOJO, July 8, 2014 (excluding Tip Jars and first comments):
1) Is this a "On This Date in 1905 on Kos" by Floyd Blue — 164
2) Infrastructure spending... by JeffW — 149
3) Running out the clock by Land of Enchantment — 142
4) This is exactly the sort of thing by Witgren — 124
5) Go Maureen!!! by ExpatGirl — 111
6) Oh yeah? Check out Genesis 2:1 "And on the by Cartoon Peril — 89
7) Good by jfromga — 84
8) When all they face is an $18,000 fine by Puddytat — 81
9) I can't do it. by willrob — 81
10) Almost by grover — 76
11) p.s. You just know she gave that station by ExpatGirl — 71
12) This is nothing new. by Richard Lyon — 71
13) Pointless by Hannibal — 71
14) And how much of that 90 million by nosleep4u — 66
15) And she was billed for $5000 by newmexicobear — 62
16) that reminds me . . . by corvo — 61
17) and Hunter, I believe the correct metaphor is... by skillet — 61
18) This is the perfect time to expand Social Security by markthshark — 60
19) Another Victory For The ACLU of Texas And NM. by chuco35 — 60
20) I'm pretty sure Gohmert's childhood home was... by BelgianBastard — 60
21) People's memories are short... by Pixie5 — 59
22) What just a damn minute! by GreenMother — 59
23) Low-income housing subsidies by Lize in San Francisco — 59
24) Gee if only he had done this THREE FRICKIN' by Fordmandalay — 59
25) HAHAHAHAHAHA! by flycaster — 58
26) They said they wouldn't charge if she consented by Pencils — 55
27) They're about to be joined by by Puddytat — 55
28) Stopped buying Eden Foods products by mole333 — 54
29) Water is being cut off for people who by ExpatGirl — 52
30) She is totally right on. She called him on by cany — 51
31) Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, on Monday... by bobswern — 51
32) This quote by GAKeynesian — 51
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