All criticism of the pretentiousness of massively successful rock bands is absurd and should be halted immediately. It's like criticizing the president for acting like he's in a position of power.

If pretention equals crappy rock & roll, all we'll be left with is "ol' granny playin' fiddle on the porch while the sun was goin' down? not crap!"

spoot wrote:All criticism of the pretentiousness of massively successful rock bands is absurd and should be halted immediately. It's like criticizing the president for acting like he's in a position of power.

If pretention equals crappy rock & roll, all we'll be left with is "ol' granny playin' fiddle on the porch while the sun was goin' down? not crap!"

Uhm, yeah.

zepellin, by and large, was a group based on wholesale theft of ideas, just like any other pop band. on principle, they are allowed that, because it is pop music and no one expects much from it. they deserve credit for taking some rather stale puzzle pieces and assembling them into a fairly presentable picture. my poor examples:
-when in doubt throw in a blues riff (hey, it worked for cream; not innovative) and slather it with distortion (a la kinks; mildly innovative because of rumored page association)
-wait a few years for a fad to pass, then reintroduce it as an original idea (their use of world/middle eastern/indian flavorings and folky sound of III was several years behind the hippie fascination with said stylings; not innovative)
-plant was a poor man's roger daltrey (mimicked his look, his sound, everything except the stutter...wait a minute, did that, too; not innovative), but poor folks do need a rock star they can call their own, right (mildly innovative)? (by the way, i'm poor so don't call me on any pc shit)
-did manage to find a way (with the help of peter grant's strong arm) around the hands-on workings of record labels (to some degree) by doing it themselves on record and making sometimes "unreasonable" demands of their label just for the perversity of it (innovative)
-managed to cobble together enough schtick to sell records, and, almost in spite of their tendency towards grave-robbing dead genres and dead bluesmen, came up with a half-way original sound that itself is mimicked by bands around the world (mildly innovative)
-jp jones is easily one of the most underrated musicians of the rock era, and was too often overshadowed by page and plant's flash, and bonham's bombastic drumming; his compositional skills were tempered with an impecable sense of taste that have never been fully recognized (innovative, for the "genius in the shadows" factor)
so i'm split, but since i can't whole-heartedly get beyond seeing this band as an over-complicated, way-too-derivative mess, i can't in good conscience vote not crap. so, crap it is.
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whoa, ngjack... the most compelling commentary yet in this thread, and its your first post here... kudos, my friend.

i must say i agree with you on all points... like i said before, i am not a hater, just not a fan.

Yeah but.... John Bohnam's awesome right? (staggers off in a drunk bewilderment)

...

to blast zepplin for ripping the blues is silly. rock n roll came directly from the blues in the 50s and 60s - it would have been impossible not to rip off blues structures. rock didnt divorce itself from the blues until punk and post punk later on. at least zepplin was open about it, i mean they dug the old blues-men, isn't that how rock started? white guys copying r&b.

oh, did we mention they fucking invented Heavy Metal??[/quote]

Comparing Daltrey to Plant is like comparing soy cheese to regular cheese, there's just no point and it's in shitty taste

As a long-time vegan i can totally follow this argument, soy cheese tastes like shit... yellow shit...

oh, did we mention they fucking invented Heavy Metal?

I would give more credit to Blue Cheer for that...

This has grown to quite the thread... perhaps that alone is testament to the power of the Zep... ehhh....

i'd like to congratulate ngjack on a fine dissection of the problems with zeppelin, and i say that as a firm not-crap vote

much appreciated in the wake of so much 'no, they rule' and 'no, they suck'

wow, nice even tempered responses...
let me clear on this much. i don't hate zeppelin any more than i hate hendrix or cream or the allmann brothers or whatever because of the blues thing. i just don't like the blues or much of anything blues related. they don't hit me where i live. and i know i'm in the minority on that point.
and stephensolo's argument about the blues...more people inaccurately credit the blues with being the prime structure behind rock. that is simply not the case. all the early rock phenoms were country singers who (you are very, very right on this point) dug r&b. now, i can see how the mixup would happen, but r&b and the blues are not the same, however similar they are. that's like saying hip hop and r&b are the same. i mean, it's black people singing it, right? what's the difference? big one.
rock did divorce itself from the "blues" much earlier than punk, with the beatles, particularly. when they injected tin pan alley and admittedly peripheral elements of the avant garde and compositional schools, they effectively stepped out on the blues and got it on with the freaky chick down the street. and let's not forget that the velvet underground had already pointed the way about the same time as zepellin was rearing its formidable head.
and let's not get into the metal debate...who started that is irrelevant because of what it ultimately turned into (to no fault of its early advocates).
mattw, your point about influences is well taken. your point about chops is about as relevant to the debate as my shoe size is to my glasses prescription. who cares if they had chops (and i did give them props for that). the point about chops is not whether they had 'em, but how they used 'em. page in particular thrills me about as much as clapton does. those guys are great at what they do, but what i consider interesting in music has nothing to do with how much they can jack their dicks. it's great to be able to play your instrument with flawless precision, but if you don't come up with anything more than moderately interesting to me, then i'm not impressed.
and you must really not be paying attention if you don't see the similarity between daltrey and plant. before you even put on a record, take a look at a picture or two. plant did add one thing to daltrey's formula: he pushed it to the stratosphere. but that's just what i hear.
and i guess that's the point. this is all my opinion, but it's great to see other people talking about this. i've felt strongly about zepellin worship for years and i've alway been in the minority. any argument that has been presented here in favor of the zeps has been thrown at me in the past. and all points are well taken.
and the funny thing is i own most of their albums and listen to them on occassion. just for the perversity of it.