This is a close call, but I have to go w/ the Rolling Stones. I say this despite the fact that I listened to a live version of "Stairway" today and it made me cry actual tears, like a little girl. (Yeah, I'm a pussy.) The song is so fucking beautiful that I was feeling like I was actually in heaven, looking back on my past life and just digging everything that had happened. But then I watched a live performance from '70 and I dried up like a cock in the orifice of a Golden Girl. The magic had been dispelled.

Words can't express how much more I love Charlie Watts' drumming than I appreciate John Bonham's drumming. Bonham's drumming is hard-hitting, but it's got no swing, no rhythm. It's pure caveman bop.

Keith Richards is the master of the riff. There's obviously no question about that. Page came up with some tremendous riffage -- "Rock & Roll," "Moby Dick," etc. -- and Page had that acoustic Nick Drake/Joni Mitchell hoo-ha going on III, which was his best material, obviously. But Bonham's solo on "Moby Dick" needs to go sit in the corner for 45 minutes while all the other kids go out to play Dodgeball for recess. Someone said that the song's title sounded like a new-fangled venereal disease, and all I can say is, "Bonham's solo should be clapped much less than a young Captain Ahab was clapped."

Okay, now I'm going to throw down the gauntlet and I'm guaranteed to get tons of shit from the peanut gallery for this one:

The Stones knew how to play the blues, while Led Zep had no clue how to play the blues. That's just an objective fact, as objective as saying that the earth revolves around the sun, or that Elvis Costello needs to stop making albums. Jon Spencer will back me up on this one. He said, "Yeah, we play a type of blues music. The real blues, not the sort of 'blues' that Jimmy Page tried to play."

I want everyone to admit the following: while Led Zep's mid-period material is pretty grand, the band's first two albums are unlistenable amalgamations of scud-rock Marshall-amp Leslie West lard, and that everything after Houses of the Holy suffers from lackluster, heroin-induced professionalism. Admit it.

Oh, and obviously "Stones" here means '68-'75 Stones.

I hate comparing. This is like apples or oranges for me. eh.

The Stones are to Led Zeppelin what the MC5 and The Clash are to great punk rock bands.

For that alone, they lose.

Zeppelin. For sincerity.

Zeppelin, and I don't even like Zep.

Black Sabbath

EAT

A

DICK



the motherfucking STONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pasta wrote:EAT

A

DICK



motherfucking ZEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FYP

NerblyBear wrote:Bonham's drumming is hard-hitting, but it's got no swing, no rhythm. It's pure caveman bop.

NERBLY, STOP THE MADNESS

NerblyBear wrote:
The Stones knew how to play the blues, while Led Zep had no clue how to play the blues. That's just an objective fact, as objective as saying that the earth revolves around the sun, or that Elvis Costello needs to stop making albums. Jon Spencer will back me up on this one. He said, "Yeah, we play a type of blues music. The real blues, not the sort of 'blues' that Jimmy Page tried to play."

Jon Spencer is your source for what constitutes authenticity in blues music?

Mick Taylor.