Saturday, November 08, 2003
Writing with passion about music Dept.
Thrill of the week, from tim byrnes at punk rock blues
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Nature Abhors a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman: Led Zeppelin’s Irony Deficiency
(The Golden Age of Rock and Roll 1970-1978 Part 4)
We all have our cut-off points, watershed people/places/events in our rock and roll experience where lines get drawn and crossed. There comes a time for all of us when there’s no escaping that feeling that "rock and roll’s been going to hell since........
Elvis
Elvis joined the Army
The Beatles
] The Beatles Grew Moustaches and Beards
Dylan went electric
Dylan went Christian
Dylan went Orthodox Jew
Dylan went a’courtin’ and he did ride, uh-huh
Hendrix/Joplin/Morrison shuffled off this mortal coil
This Mortal Coil......"
You get the idea, right? Well, for me, and I’ve alluded to it elsewhere in these communications, the point where rock and roll was shaken badly (the form itself can never be ruined, simply misused, and harshly at that) and made prime for the wholesale cultural highjacking and the inevitable, and continuing, corporate make-over that compromises all that was/is pure in rock and roll was when Led Zeppelin got that freaking airplane. With that one purchase came the turning point where rock and roll went from our little theater to their big business. When concerts went from gathering places to stadia, from act of love and communion to packing in as many burnt-out offerings as possible into the cheap seats and skyboxes. Rock and roll was headed on a course than led (hmmmmmm) to the codification of our rebellion and thousands of Robert Plant clones singing like they were being paid by the ‘baby’ and thousands of sloppy guitar auteurs slouching over Les Pauls and crucifying the blues.
Now, I’m not so blind to not recognize the musicianship of Zeppelin, let alone the fact that their music has touched millions and continues to rake in the bucks, no the Zep were dope and can’t be blamed for their lesser imitators, but I tend to judge a band on intent as well as execution and on what I see as the artists responsibility to the form. I know I think about this stuff way too much, but this is the closest thing I have to a religion and, anyway, it’s only a theory.
Zeppelin grew, of course, out of the Yardbirds, a quasi-blues band out of England in the early 60's who’s history is well covered elsewhere. A blues band, British at that. Jimmy Page took the electric, feral growl of the masters (Son House, Robert, Muddy, Wolf etc) and pumped it through Marshall Amps, platform shoes and black satin dragon jackets while Robert Plant shrieked stolen lyrics like a helium freak, thrusting his nipples toward the world. John Bonham was, indeed, a force of nature and John Paul Jones is without a doubt one of the coolest guys in rock, but because of ‘This Sporting Life’ his 1995 collaboration with Pete Thomas and Diamanda Galas, not for any bloated spectacle credited to Superhype Publishing.
While one can’t blame someone for becoming famous, as that is usually out of the famous’ control, hey if we could all be famous we all would be famous, now wouldn’t we? But, and here’s the tricky part; what one does with the fame, attention and most importantly, influence that fame confers is what separates the Great from the merely Good. With Zeppelin, it seemed to me that the attention they aroused was somehow enough, in and of itself, for the band. With each album and the tours that followed the Zeppelin experience became bigger, broader and ultimately more distancing to their audience. The rock band became the Rock Superstar, the rock show the Rock Concert, where 4 guys, just like us with a degree of talent, became Super-Heroes under the Super Troupers, fleet fingered virtuosi and gold maned sirens who came from the land of the ice and snow and we’re gonna give us every inch of their love.
(My favorite Zep lyric, from ‘Ramble On’, remember Plant wrote this:’MA-MA-MA-MA-MA-MAMA-YEAH!)
Hogwash! By which I mean bull****, what a load of crap! Now, if Zeppelin was cool with the fact that it was crap, they would have attained the greatness of a ? And the Mysterians or the sainted Iggy,. But Zeppelin had not the grace of the blessedly demented, instead they invested their howl and moan with the STURM und DRANG of Grand Opera with the fairy dust mysticism of the unicorn and rainbow 70's like the acquaintance we all know who, while never having actually read "The Lord of the Rings" knows that, gee, it represents a better like, life, y’know? Mindless pageantry, self important and anti-human in that it exchanged flesh and blood for flash and fantasy, and they did it while pillaging the work of past musicians, stealing lyrics wholesale, amplifying the old poses past the point of credulity. I’m not saying Led Zeppelin was lame, I’m saying they were worse than lame; they betrayed the trust of their community by taking the torch from our hands and, rather than lead us into the future, simply bathed themselves in a flattering light and took, took, took, giving us back nothing but their image, which we were there only to admire.
¶ 11/08/2003 10:02:00 AM
Thrill of the week, from tim byrnes at punk rock blues
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Nature Abhors a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman: Led Zeppelin’s Irony Deficiency
(The Golden Age of Rock and Roll 1970-1978 Part 4)
We all have our cut-off points, watershed people/places/events in our rock and roll experience where lines get drawn and crossed. There comes a time for all of us when there’s no escaping that feeling that "rock and roll’s been going to hell since........
Elvis
Elvis joined the Army
The Beatles
] The Beatles Grew Moustaches and Beards
Dylan went electric
Dylan went Christian
Dylan went Orthodox Jew
Dylan went a’courtin’ and he did ride, uh-huh
Hendrix/Joplin/Morrison shuffled off this mortal coil
This Mortal Coil......"
You get the idea, right? Well, for me, and I’ve alluded to it elsewhere in these communications, the point where rock and roll was shaken badly (the form itself can never be ruined, simply misused, and harshly at that) and made prime for the wholesale cultural highjacking and the inevitable, and continuing, corporate make-over that compromises all that was/is pure in rock and roll was when Led Zeppelin got that freaking airplane. With that one purchase came the turning point where rock and roll went from our little theater to their big business. When concerts went from gathering places to stadia, from act of love and communion to packing in as many burnt-out offerings as possible into the cheap seats and skyboxes. Rock and roll was headed on a course than led (hmmmmmm) to the codification of our rebellion and thousands of Robert Plant clones singing like they were being paid by the ‘baby’ and thousands of sloppy guitar auteurs slouching over Les Pauls and crucifying the blues.
Now, I’m not so blind to not recognize the musicianship of Zeppelin, let alone the fact that their music has touched millions and continues to rake in the bucks, no the Zep were dope and can’t be blamed for their lesser imitators, but I tend to judge a band on intent as well as execution and on what I see as the artists responsibility to the form. I know I think about this stuff way too much, but this is the closest thing I have to a religion and, anyway, it’s only a theory.
Zeppelin grew, of course, out of the Yardbirds, a quasi-blues band out of England in the early 60's who’s history is well covered elsewhere. A blues band, British at that. Jimmy Page took the electric, feral growl of the masters (Son House, Robert, Muddy, Wolf etc) and pumped it through Marshall Amps, platform shoes and black satin dragon jackets while Robert Plant shrieked stolen lyrics like a helium freak, thrusting his nipples toward the world. John Bonham was, indeed, a force of nature and John Paul Jones is without a doubt one of the coolest guys in rock, but because of ‘This Sporting Life’ his 1995 collaboration with Pete Thomas and Diamanda Galas, not for any bloated spectacle credited to Superhype Publishing.
While one can’t blame someone for becoming famous, as that is usually out of the famous’ control, hey if we could all be famous we all would be famous, now wouldn’t we? But, and here’s the tricky part; what one does with the fame, attention and most importantly, influence that fame confers is what separates the Great from the merely Good. With Zeppelin, it seemed to me that the attention they aroused was somehow enough, in and of itself, for the band. With each album and the tours that followed the Zeppelin experience became bigger, broader and ultimately more distancing to their audience. The rock band became the Rock Superstar, the rock show the Rock Concert, where 4 guys, just like us with a degree of talent, became Super-Heroes under the Super Troupers, fleet fingered virtuosi and gold maned sirens who came from the land of the ice and snow and we’re gonna give us every inch of their love.
(My favorite Zep lyric, from ‘Ramble On’, remember Plant wrote this:’MA-MA-MA-MA-MA-MAMA-YEAH!)
Hogwash! By which I mean bull****, what a load of crap! Now, if Zeppelin was cool with the fact that it was crap, they would have attained the greatness of a ? And the Mysterians or the sainted Iggy,. But Zeppelin had not the grace of the blessedly demented, instead they invested their howl and moan with the STURM und DRANG of Grand Opera with the fairy dust mysticism of the unicorn and rainbow 70's like the acquaintance we all know who, while never having actually read "The Lord of the Rings" knows that, gee, it represents a better like, life, y’know? Mindless pageantry, self important and anti-human in that it exchanged flesh and blood for flash and fantasy, and they did it while pillaging the work of past musicians, stealing lyrics wholesale, amplifying the old poses past the point of credulity. I’m not saying Led Zeppelin was lame, I’m saying they were worse than lame; they betrayed the trust of their community by taking the torch from our hands and, rather than lead us into the future, simply bathed themselves in a flattering light and took, took, took, giving us back nothing but their image, which we were there only to admire.
¶ 11/08/2003 10:02:00 AM
