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What if Zep was more Mainstreamed


McSeven

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There is another post talking about the Jonas Brothers/Hanna Montanna are in the mainstream of music right now, and how Zep might die off.

What if there was a mainstream resurgence of Zep right now, where they were everywhere. Like how U2/The Rolling Stones react.

Would it take away from the mystique of Zep? No matter how you slice it. The JB's and HM are fads that will die away. Just like the Spice Girls and New Kids on the Block.

Mc7

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There is another post talking about the Jonas Brothers/Hanna Montanna are in the mainstream of music right now, and how Zep might die off.

What if there was a mainstream resurgence of Zep right now, where they were everywhere. Like how U2/The Rolling Stones react. .......Would it take away from the mystique of Zep?

Mc7

......No, Zep are very strong foundation, a musical institution that has stood the test of time...from late 70's on, many different type of music was explored by each generation, ie. "Punk", Disco, etc.. The generation of the 80's, for example, soon realized the value of ZEP...

.....to retain their mystique and still be Mainstream as you suggest..a very rare possibility for few Rock Groups....ZEP being one of them...

"Old is Gold".......

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How much more mainstream could they be? Sheesh they are more popular now than they were in their prime. You don't sell hundreds of millions of albums without being mainstream, in fact that should be the proof they are the upper echelon of mainstream. Bands like Zep, The Beatles, Elvis, Garth Brooks define mainstream. Hanna Montana isn't mainstream unless you're a 11 yr old girl.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Led Zeppelin certainly weren't a mainstream kind of band back in the day. Only much later have they been generally accepted as one of the most definitive bands in rock history, and hence as belonging to "the mainstream" in a similar manner as, say, The Who. This is retrospective appearances, because they didn't see themselves as anything of the kind, nor did their fans or anybody else. It is a tribute to the genius of the band that none of the imitators have ever got even remotely close to replicating their musical attitude - which is where it's at - and in that way they are quite like The Beatles or The Who, etc.

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!Disclaimer: coming from someone who missed Zep by 14 years!

I think they were pretty damn popular during their heyday, put weren't recognized by critics and such. Not that it really matters, since fans mean more than any critic. Today, walk into any mall and you see Zeppelin everywhere. That doesn't make them mainstream, though.

It makes them timeless.

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Having grown up in the 70s I heard them all over the radio and saw them on the cover of tons of magazines, not to mention all the sell out shows and The Song Remains the Same movie. They definitely weren't some obscure underground band. What set them apart was the mystique that built up around the band as far as refusing interviews and whatnot. Plus, they rarely (if ever) seemed to be featured in any of the "history of rock n' roll" type documentaries I saw back then but they were definitely a huge part of the mainstream rock n' roll scene. These days it's almost sickening to walk into a department store and see "Led Zeppelin", "AC/DC", "Pink Floyd", "Jimi Hendrix", etc. treated as some sort of brand name on t-shirts. Sure, those type of shirts were also available back in the 70s but not on the same level and as widespread as they are today.

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mainstream more than that

gooooooood

they were giants at their time and no more mainstream needed

they left it to the mighty disco and beegees

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Oh wow man...So much has changed, in what? 30-40 years?

I suppose you could put the "Bubble Gum" (aimed at young kid's) music of the 1970's like say, The Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett and others as an equal to the Hanna Montana and Jona's Brothers of today. You can also throw in Britney Spears and The New Kid's On The Block, Boy's to Men for the 1990's era Pop, Bubble Gum stuff. In the 1980's you can name group's for ever and ever, it seems to me that the 1980's was the "Pop Music" Times to end all time's with Pop Metal and New Wave so big then.

I would say that being as if you ask many of the band's from the 1980's you'll hear, "Led Zeppelin was the main band that made me want to do this Music Thing". With that in mind Led Zeppelin was likely "THE" most influential Rock/Pop bands in the 20th century. At least the 30 or more years of the 60's threw to the 90's!

This does not mean that there where not any other highly innovative band's out there, it just means that they where wildly popular amongst the new Musician's of that time.

I think its safe to say that they will keep rocking and rolling on after they pass on.

Here's some good info..

http://www.tunecharts.com/?1970s-Music

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Having grown up in the 70s I heard them all over the radio and saw them on the cover of tons of magazines, not to mention all the sell out shows and The Song Remains the Same movie. They definitely weren't some obscure underground band. What set them apart was the mystique that built up around the band as far as refusing interviews and whatnot. Plus, they rarely (if ever) seemed to be featured in any of the "history of rock n' roll" type documentaries I saw back then but they were definitely a huge part of the mainstream rock n' roll scene. These days it's almost sickening to walk into a department store and see "Led Zeppelin", "AC/DC", "Pink Floyd", "Jimi Hendrix", etc. treated as some sort of brand name on t-shirts. Sure, those type of shirts were also available back in the 70s but not on the same level and as widespread as they are today.

But Jahfin, is sheer popularity in terms of sales and such things what is actually meant by "mainstream" - I have always taken it to mean something like the sales-oriented search for usually the lowest common denominator in what is topping the charts, and all that - an attitude towards the music itself - not very daring, not particularly intent on making a real musical statement, but rather more adaptive towards current tastes. At any rate, I can't remember having seen or heard anybody describe them as a mainstream outfit back then.

Don't get me wrong - I know that even here there are two sides to the story. Jimmy Page was indeed very much aware of the fact that album-oriented rock was getting hugely popular in the States, and he did want to take advantage of it - but for his own musical purposes, it seems to me. They would just make their music and then try their best out there. Jimmy has expressly rejected the mainstream tag, even recently, and if you read the interviews from the early days of the band, you find that members of the band tend to identify their band as a progressive band - obviously not in the sense that word later acquired, but in the sense of an experimental band, doing new things.

There is no doubt that already by 1972 Led Zeppelin were already outselling everybody else - specifically The Stones, who also toured the U.S. in that year. LZ were then still studiously avoiding journalists and the typical publicity things, but they decided to change that in 1973 when they hired BP Fallon, etc. and after that the publicity gradually grew. It's still typical that they only got the cover of Rolling Stone in 1975, and it was Creem that first directed attention to them in a big way. But that was really just a confirmation of the fact that the band was already huge. It had spread very much as a word of mouth thing by all accounts - in the U.S. I mean. In the UK the record deal they got with Atlantic was criticized a great deal and they were seen as a "capitalist" group. It took quite some time for them to shake that off - despite the fact that they were one of the most hard-working bands in the business in their first few years. The "Return to the Clubs" tour in Britain in 1971-1972 was partly calculated to counter that old allegation.

But jeez, I agree with you about the latter day publicity trash!

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They definitely started out as an underground band, who like most underground bands would have probably termed themselves "progressive" in the sense that Otto just described, meaning among other things "defiantly not mainstream." The term "prog" that people use today didn't exist then, and progessive music had more to do with an entire lifestyle and outlook than just the kind of music you played. Then, as so often happens, the marginal achieves broad acceptance simply because so many people recognize its worth--then you get the arguments about "selling out" and so on. But I think the way Zeppelin were treated by the media throughout their career proves they never did that, in any sense.

Nowadays, in retrospect, they seem mainstream, simply because of their widespread familiarity to music fans, because the band has been around (on record) so long. But even that's deceptive, when you think that in fact many fans are only familiar with a handful of songs, and wouldn't find Fool in the Rain or Carouselambra mainstream at all.

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They were such a staple of AOR and they were virtually everywhere I turned when I was growing up in the 70s so it's hard for me to think of them as anything but "mainstream" in the sense that their music was readily accessible. Even though they refused to release singles they were still all over the radio and everyone I grew up with had their records. And, coming off of the Yardbirds I just don't think of them as being "underground" in any sense of the word.

On the other hand, I do think of a band like the Grateful Dead as being somewhat left of center in those days. Yes, they did play to sell out crowds and were regularly featured in magazines such as Rolling Stone but as far as achieving the sort of commercial acceptance as Led Zeppelin on commercial radio they really weren't on the same level. While both bands built their reputations as live acts, the Grateful Dead seemed to be known more on a grassroots sort of level than Led Zeppelin. They were far from "underground" (as least after their formative years) but never seemed to be fully accepted by the mainstream until at least Touch of Grey in '89 whereas Zeppelin enjoyed that level of acceptance much earlier in their career.

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Well, in that sense you're obviously right, Jahfin - they became huge after 1972, no doubt about that, and they did get a lot of airplay in the U.S. But the main point seems to be that we understand the term mainstream differently, and I stand by what I said earlier, in the sense I explained.

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I'm with you Otto - of course we can only speak from our own experience but Zepp absolutely weren't mainstream in the UK - and if we're going by radio play - they had none in the UK, and still have little except for on specific rock stations - and most people over here just don't listen to those kind of stations. Most, like me, have always prefered a station like Radio 1 or 2 which plays a broad range of music and exposes you to all kinds of styles rather than limiting you to one kind of music.

To this day when a Zeppelin song comes on the radio here I worry that one of them has died. It really is a wildly unusual happening.

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It was the same situation here in the 1970s, Knebby - I did hear Boogie With Stu on the radio in 1975, and it became memorable! :lol: Back then you only had the state-run radio, and then the station run by the U.S. military base, which did play a lot of pop and rock music, but the sound wasn't very good from where I was picking it up, and I preferred to just listen to Icelandic radio. Very little rock music on there though, but it was a couple of times each week, something like that. Almost unbelievable today, and it all changed in the early 1980s, when the FM stations arrived on the scene. Robert got some airplay then, Burning Down One Side. And same thing here, if I listen to radio at all, it will be the old state-run station because the news coverage is better, and the program is a more general one.

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Even though they refused to release singles they were still all over the radio.

I can only speak for the UK, but when they began they were definitely classed as underground (despite the Yardbirds connection--and the Yardbirds fell into the "progressive" camp, too), and certainly not all over the radio, little as there was of it then. Only John Peel played their stuff regularly. Then they became huge despite radio--all I ever remember being played on "regular" radio in those days was an edited (without the middle section) version of WLL.

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I guess it depends on how one chooses to define "mainstream". Were they a top 40 type band that was played regularly on those type of stations (particularly AM)? No, they weren't, at least that I recall but by the same token I also never considered them any sort of underground band. At least not in the same way as I think of truly underground artists from that day and age such as the ones featured on the Nuggets collections. If Led Zeppelin were ever underground at all it didn't last very long at as it wasn't too long after their inception that they were selling out concerts, embarking on worldwide tours and were a staple of album oriented rock radio in the U.S.

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No, it didn't last long, but then neither did the meaning of the word in the strictest sense, in that a lot of those bands then achieved wider popularity and came to be described as "progessive" instead. But they were still very much a different category from mainstream pop.

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I'm with you Otto - of course we can only speak from our own experience but Zepp absolutely weren't mainstream in the UK - and if we're going by radio play - they had none in the UK, and still have little except for on specific rock stations - and most people over here just don't listen to those kind of stations. Most, like me, have always prefered a station like Radio 1 or 2 which plays a broad range of music and exposes you to all kinds of styles rather than limiting you to one kind of music.

To this day when a Zeppelin song comes on the radio here I worry that one of them has died. It really is a wildly unusual happening.

When they had the reunion though, Zeppelin were almost everywhere on the t.v news and in the papers. It was like a mini Zeppelin mania for a while. They certainly got far more attention than other reunions such as Floyd and The Police, Sex Pistols etc etc.

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When they had the reunion though, Zeppelin were almost everywhere on the t.v news and in the papers. It was like a mini Zeppelin mania for a while. They certainly got far more attention than other reunions such as Floyd and The Police, Sex Pistols etc etc.

I completely agree, but I also think that that was partly because the UK media was so amazed by the huge world-wide fuss it had caused - and most of the coverage actually centred on THAT aspect, rather than the re-union itself.

I actually think this is partly about a UK/European attitude to culture which differs from that in the US. No matter how massively popular Zeppelin were over here, they would never achieve the kind of "mainstream" coverage we are talking about because the media here has its own perception of what the majority of this country are like and do like. Unfortunate but true.

You only have to look at our appalling choice of daily rags - any choice that consistently forces me to buy the Daily Mail because the other choices are so f**kin abysmal really speaks for itself.

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I think Zep have never really bean mainstream but I guess we all seem to have different views on what that word means.

I agree with many of the points people have put but i believe Zep sidestepped mainstream, often by choce but often becuase ( and I speak froma UK point of view) is thatthe press/media didn't know what to make of them, do with them or how to label them.

The lack of media involvement from the Zep camp added to that and i think the press saw this as arrogance and there was a vibe of Zep being too big for their boots. It's a UK trait to knock success rather than support it. Much of the press as we know has been about Jimmys so called occult issues and bad karma, they said fuck all about the music, Knebby's right abut how everyone suddenly jumped onboard the Zeppelin express for the 02 show. It wasn't about the music it was about the demand for tickets etc.

All that said i think Zep have come out of all that pretty well cos really it was the band, the music and the fans and not the media that made the band. Very few interviews no tv appearances,no singles and yet have sold so many albums and have a loyaly in fans I am humbled by at times. Says it all for me.

I look at the Stones for instance and to me they have really always been a rock and roll circus ( still are) their early noteriety turning into them becoming very much part of the 60's establishment they seemed to set out to shock, challenge and rebel against. I also have to say that inthe 60's theyand the Who did a good job of that but Zep weren't rebelious, it wasn't about attitude to me it has always been about the music and it's presentation, often more understated than it's been given credit for compared to how other bands have presented their shows.

I think, even though it was often frustrating having so little news and info back in the heyday of my youth in the 70's of anything Zep, to me it added to what I loved about them and still do.

:rolleyes:

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I completely agree, but I also think that that was partly because the UK media was so amazed by the huge world-wide fuss it had caused - and most of the coverage actually centred on THAT aspect, rather than the re-union itself.

I actually think this is partly about a UK/European attitude to culture which differs from that in the US. No matter how massively popular Zeppelin were over here, they would never achieve the kind of "mainstream" coverage we are talking about because the media here has its own perception of what the majority of this country are like and do like. Unfortunate but true.

You only have to look at our appalling choice of daily rags - any choice that consistently forces me to buy the Daily Mail because the other choices are so f**kin abysmal really speaks for itself.

Interesting KB - makes a lot of sense. I like these sorts of discussions, viewing the differences on how things were in the UK versus the US. Has this perception from the media's point of view changed at all in terms of bands in general, or you'd say this has pretty well always been the way they are?

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I think Zep have never really bean mainstream but I guess we all seem to have different views on what that word means.

I agree with many of the points people have put but i believe Zep sidestepped mainstream, often by choce but often becuase ( and I speak froma UK point of view) is thatthe press/media didn't know what to make of them, do with them or how to label them.

The lack of media involvement from the Zep camp added to that and i think the press saw this as arrogance and there was a vibe of Zep being too big for their boots. It's a UK trait to knock success rather than support it. Much of the press as we know has been about Jimmys so called occult issues and bad karma, they said fuck all about the music, Knebby's right abut how everyone suddenly jumped onboard the Zeppelin express for the 02 show. It wasn't about the music it was about the demand for tickets etc.

All that said i think Zep have come out of all that pretty well cos really it was the band, the music and the fans and not the media that made the band. Very few interviews no tv appearances,no singles and yet have sold so many albums and have a loyaly in fans I am humbled by at times. Says it all for me.

I look at the Stones for instance and to me they have really always been a rock and roll circus ( still are) their early noteriety turning into them becoming very much part of the 60's establishment they seemed to set out to shock, challenge and rebel against. I also have to say that inthe 60's theyand the Who did a good job of that but Zep weren't rebelious, it wasn't about attitude to me it has always been about the music and it's presentation, often more understated than it's been given credit for compared to how other bands have presented their shows.

I think, even though it was often frustrating having so little news and info back in the heyday of my youth in the 70's of anything Zep, to me it added to what I loved about them and still do.

:rolleyes:

.....all of your views are right....By reading various ZEP books, it can be seen that U.K. was not too happy with ZEP's success worldwide right from the beginning....initially, I don't think Jimmy was too happy with censorship issues in the U.K......

As for your comments for so little news back then in the 70's...yes, so true.....it was ZEP'S music and charisma that made them popular to date, back then I could easily compare ZEP's Stairway to Heaven, and no question about it, it was a extra-ordinary musical journey commenced by some fine artists...(I was a teen in mid 70's/new immigrants. ..not familiar with music/culture/Language in Canada back then....still, Stairway to Heaven stood out in mind more than others, and Jimmy's Charisma in Pictures......incomparable......

....and I also remember Jimmy not saying too much to the media....(yes, it did appear as if ZEP were too arrogant,but I could only assess/understand so much).... :D

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.....all of your views are right....By reading various ZEP books, it can be seen that U.K. was not too happy with ZEP's success worldwide right from the beginning....initially, I don't think Jimmy was too happy with censorship issues in the U.K......

Can I just stress the difference between the UK and the UK media?

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