Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum, so apologies if this topic has already been beaten to death.
I just wanted to pass along my own story of how I just became a LZ fan, since I think it might have some more general significance. If you had told me a month ago that I wasn't a fan of the band, I would have said no, that's not really true, I like LZ a lot, and know a lot of their music. But the reason I would have said that is because I'm an American in my late 50s, which means I went to high school in the mid-70s with a lot of big LZ fans, and that I've spent the last 30+ years being bombarded by the classic rock radio format.
So actually my knowledge of the band consisted of the 15 LZ songs that get played to death on classic rock radio stations, plus maybe three others that I happen to have run into one way or another that I thought were great -- Since I've Been Loving You, Ten Years Gone, and Tangerine. Now to be fair that adds up to about a quarter of the band's studio album output, so that's a solid chunk of their officially released music. (LZ is THE most played band on the classic rock radio format).
What I've discovered over the last few weeks is that I didn't actually know the band's music at all. I had an experience on New Year's Eve that led me to start digging into LZ's entire official catalogue (haven't heard any boots yet, although I'm really hoping to get some direction in that regard!).
What I found, of course, is that a huge amount of the band's very best music is not something you're ever going to hear on the radio, at least not in the USA.
Here are five songs that I've just discovered in the last couple of weeks that have totally blown me away:
In My Time of Dying
The Rover
No Quarter
Achilles Last Stand
Into the Light
Now I'm sure to real fans it must seem completely ridiculous that somebody could have thought of themselves as a fan of the band but didn't know these songs at all (I had heard NQ maybe a couple of times at some point, but I think I literally had never heard a note of any of the others -- and I'm a nearly 60 year old guy who thinks of himself as a fairly big rock music fan!).
And that brings me to my main point, which is that the classic rock radio format is particularly bad for Led Zeppelin -- and for an ironic reason, which is that LZ gets played so much on the radio! But of course the problem is that it's always the same dozen or so songs, that have been played completely to death, to the point where somebody like me could think that he "knew" LZ as a band, when actually I didn't have the first clue about how incredible they actually are.
Anyway, I just wanted to express how strange it feels for somebody who has listened to Stairway to Heaven, Rock and Roll, Black Dog, Kashmir etc. hundreds of times to realize that he didn't actually know Led Zeppelin's music hardly at all, and how great it is to really discover it so late in the game as it were.
