I think Flowers' is right on the money, just take a look at what's popular on the U.S. charts. Some folks (including those that post here) seem to think the only choices available are what's on commercial radio and previously, music television. Thankfully, there are more choices than ever these days to discover new music but some choose not to explore music that deeply. No wonder they long for the past or for all new music to sound just like Led Zeppelin. You have to actually make the effort to seek new music out, it's not going to be handed to you on a silver spoon.

Nor am I. I'm referring to Flowers' point about the American audience largely being unopen to new music (such as the Killers) and preferring to stick to things they consider safe such as the music of Nirvana and Led Zeppelin.

That feeling would be wrong. Even as a child in the early 70s my record collection included everything from Zeppelin records to stuff by Waylon Jennings, Earl Scruggs, the Grateful Dead and others. I attribute that to growing up the youngest in a household of six kids who's musical tastes ranged from James Brown and Aretha Franklin to the New York Dolls and Bob Dylan. By the time I was 18 my tastes would have encompassed John Prine, Willie Nelson, Bob Marley, Old & In the Way as well as many, many others. How about those that are so closed off to anything besides what they're accustomed to "giving it a break, man"? Even Led Zeppelin didn't make the same records over and over again and managed to incorporate a very diverse array of music styles. I'm n ot even a fan of rap but I think it was very cool that Page was willing to work with Puff Daddy, that John Paul Jones has worked with everyone from R.E.M. to Diamanda Galas and Sonic Youth and that Plant also knows no barriers when it comes to the type of music he does. I guess I'm just surprised that so many fans of Led Zeppelin prefer to be so closed off to anything new when the band itself represented anything but that.

That's not my point at all. I'm talking about those that turn a closed ear (and mind) to anything new such as the folks that have previously posted in this thread that have expressed that very viewpoint. Would you prefer music to never progress or evolve?

I think Yankee Hotel Foxtrot got a bit too hyped for it's own good. Some speculate that was Wilco's doing while other say it really was rejected because it was too "noncommerical". Whatever the case, I still love it but it's far from my favorite record of theirs (that would either be Being There or Summerteeth depending on what mood I'm in at the time). I also liked Sky Blue Sky but from what I've read the new album is supposed to be "experimental". I guess I'll find out what they mean by that once it's released in June. I've just been a bit put off by all the Wilco The Album and "Wilco (The Song)" stuff.

Apparently some don't. As far as telling me to stop posting, ain't gonna happen.

I'm afraid I don't get it. Care to explain?

When I refer to folks on this board that are stuck in the past I'm not talking about ones that have an appreciation for older music, I'm referring to those that have no interest whatsoever in anything new or possibly groundbreaking. Take the drubbing Plant has received for the record he did with Krauss for instance. People referred to it as a "hillbilly" album. That right there showed they hadn't even listened to it because there's not even a hint of country or bluegrass music on it. Not to mention, where were they when John Paul Jones was showing up at places like MerleFest and Bonnaroo to jam with bluegrass bands? He's also produced records by Uncle Earl (an all girl bluegrass outfit) and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek. I see nothing at all the matter with loving older music, it's those that seem completely unreceptive to any new music that I don't understand. I'm 46 years old and love everything from old blues, big band, country, reggae, ska, bluegrass, zydeco and rock n' roll right up to music from the present day such as the Gaslight Anthem, Blitzen Trapper, Samatha Crain & the Midnight Shivers as well as many others. I'm not saying we should all like the same music, I just don't understand how so many so called Led Zeppelin fans can be seemingly so close minded when Led Zeppelin themselves embraced such a broad range of music.

I'm anxious to hear the new ZZ Top record they're cutting with the Black Keys and Rick Rubinn at the helm in the producers chair. Hopefully it will be a return to that vintage ZZ Top sound that Billy Gibbons has been promising for so very long now.

How are you liking this one? Some of their latter day records are a little spotty but this one captures them at their zenith.

From CookingVinyl.com: The Minus 5, led by underground icon Scott McCaughey, will be releasing a new album Killingsworth on Monday 6th July 2009. Killingsworth is an aptly named thoroughfare that borders northeast Portland's "Alberta Arts District", where the tracks were primarily conceived and executed. Scott's old buddy John Moen, who has been a Dharma Bum and a Maroon and a Jick, and is now a Decemberist, wove a noose out of papyrus, and helped lasso his current bandmates and other notables to flesh out the arrangements on a dismal and disturbing array of soon-to-be-classics. The effervescent smokin' drinkin' Little Sue and the four ultra-stylish priestesses once known as the Shee Bee Gees provided welcome feminine counterpoint to the song cycle's wanton depravity (it's not truly a song cycle, nor is it a Richard Strauss tone poem, but the caliber of the material deserves a modicum of pretension). Various members of M. Ward's combo, as well as the very great Norfolk & Western (some of them the same people), played crucial roles in delivering the goods. They were poorly remunerated. Noted novelist and Richmond Fontaine frontispiece Willy Vlautin provided a golden lyrical trampoline, and Timothy Bracy of Mendoza Line fame collaborated on the dance-floor-bound "Dark Hand of Contagion". As ever, Peter Buck put twelve strings or less to optimal use whenever cajoled. Ken Stringfellow sang on a Scandinavian ferry, fully clothed. Thus begins a new chapter in the Minus 5 saga. Different than the rest, yet barking up the same monkey tree. And if you have any questions or comments about the music itself, Mr. McCaughey would be glad to elucidate all over you, to the best of his ability, which varies according to the situation. Tracklist 1. Dark Hand of Contagion 2. The Long Hall 3. The Disembowelers 4. The Lurking Barrister * 5. It Won’t Do You Any Good 6. Vintage Violet 7. Scott Walker’s Fault * 8. Big Beat Up Moon 9. I would Rather Sacrifice You 10. Ambulance Dancehall 11. Gash In The Cocoon 12. Smoke On, Jerry 13. Your Favorite Mess * 14. Tonight You’re Buying Me A Drink, Bub * These songs previously appeared on last fall's Sad Hasselhoff vinyl EP

R.E.M. To Reissue Reckoning From Pitchfork: The R.E.M. reissue campaign continues with a 25th anniversary deluxe edition of their second album, 1984's Reckoning, due out June 23 on I.R.S./A&M/UMe. Like last year's deluxe treatment of R.E.M.'s debut, Murmur, the deluxe Reckoning is a two-disc set. The second disc contains a live show taped at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on July 7, 1984 and aired on Chicago radio station WXRT. The Aragon show features eight Reckoning songs, old songs "Gardening at Night" from Chronic Town and "Radio Free Europe," "9-9" and "Sitting Still" from Murmur, and new songs "Driver 8" and "Hyena", which would show up on Fables of the Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant, respectively. 180 gram vinyl versions of the reissued Reckoning and Murmur will also be released on June 23.

I think the worst cable company story I've heard involved a British company that made one of their customers so mad they mailed them a package of crap.

Years ago, after Hurricane Ophelia hit the NC coast my family had to make the decision to part with our family home there which my Dad purchased way back in the 70s. For many years we never had any problems with hurricanes but once Bertha and Fran hit in the summer of '96 it seemed relentless. Hurricane Ophelia was the straw that broke the camel's back. In any event, once we made the decision to part with our home I wanted to keep the phone number. Somehow it inadvertently ended up getting assigned to another family member that lived in the area because of a mistake Time-Warner made. The number was a Sprint number but since it was Time-Warner that made the mistake, it was Time-Warner I had to deal with. Needless to say it was one of those situations where you ask for help and are continually re-routed until you end up talking to the same person you originally had contact with. I swore I wouldn't give up but after weeks of dealing with their incompetence I found it best just to give in and be assigned a new phone number.

The band is Wussy, here's a link to a review of their latest record. Their website.

I haven't heard any of the new songs yet so I can't speak to those but I just watched the new DVD last night. Damn good stuff. If you haven't picked it up yet I highly recommend it.

Princeton embraces Southern Rock: Southern Rock Symposium Thing is, it's not just Southern Rock as people tend to think of it: Skynyrd, Allmans, Marshall Tucker, etc. it encompasses a much broader range than that. Like nearly all music that's originated from the South.

I've been through that too and while it was tempting to do so, I didn't fall into the trap of playing that game back. I'm a grown man, not a fucking 12 year old.

Part travelogue, part concert film and behind the scenes documentary. I always find films like that much more enjoyable to watch than straight up concert footage. I think that's what made Pearl Jam's Immagine In Cornice work so well for me. And while Kicking Television is a fine documentation of the Wilco concert experience, Ashes of American Flags captures them at what may very well be their peak as a live band.

Not sure where the thread is but Otto did quite a bang up job on the research into the history of the song. It's well worth reading if you haven't done so already.

It may not have anything to do with the point you were making but it has everything to do with the point Flowers is making (which continues to go right over your head).

I didn't detect any humor in your post, that's why I didn't take it that way. As for the artists you mentioned, a great deal of them are shit. I don't gather that Flowers is comparing the Killers to Zeppelin or Nirvana, he's merely noting how unaccepting American audiences are to anything different these days. Personally I gave up on commercial radio once most of the rock stations changed their programming to nothing but the dreaded "Classic Rock" (whatever that is) format. Thank goodness for satellite radio and the innernut which provide an almost endless amount of music to choose from. Still, you have folks (like some in this very thread) that are still longing for how things used to be (even though they didn't even grow up in the 60s and 70s) or want artists to sound just like Led Zeppelin. And for the life of my I'll never understand why some think music took a bad turn in the 1980s. Some of the very best music I've ever heard (including the 60s and 70s) came from that time period. It wasn't all what was popular on MTV or commercial radio. Things change, music evolves and so do people. Led Zeppelin embraced a very wide range and extremely diverse array of musical styles but for some reason quite a few of their fans just don't seem to be comprehend that, they seem downright narrow minded and unaccepting of change. Ironic when change is something Led Zeppelin was very much about.

It doesn't make a lick of sense to me. When I noticed the thread was gone I created a new one in the Master forum not knowing it had been moved here. Now, it's gone again and the other thread has also been moved to the Newbies forum. No big deal I guess but it would be nice to know that it was moved and why. I can understand the need for a Newbies forum because of the same old Satan/backwards masking, symbols, etc. questions being asked but perusing around this section of the board I see a lot of topics that seem out of place here. Then again, I don't seem to fully understand the nature of the Newbies forum, especially since my thread was moved here. I agree but this thread was never meant to be taken seriously anyway, it was merely a spoof of a similar thread.