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Led Zeppelin in its original context


Kayte

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Part One

Love reading topic, are you doing a project for Uni or something ??

Nope, just curious. :) I just finally got my degree in sociology/anthropology, so I'm sorta hard-wired to ask these kindsa questions. A lot of you guys might think I'm asking for mundane details, but when you've gone on an archeological dig and can't tell that your recently-unearthed artifact is a buggy spring, you realize that the mundane details are crucial, y'know? Fer example... the AM/FM radio thingy you guys are talking about is confusing me. Lemme get a good image here to help elaborate on my confusion...

patrickdrool.gif

I never listened to much radio, but I never realized how FM grew in popularity over the 70s. I'll have to ask my parents about it... I'm having dinner with them tonight, I think.

Well! Now I have more questions! And I read every word you guys wrote and loved it all. I saved the responses. Dunno why, but they just seem real important. Like, you guys have a unique perspective that kids born after Bonzo passed aren't going to have. (I was born four months before...) So here we go!

the 80's was unkind to Zeppelin and it was the height of uncool to like them then, it wouldn't be untill 1990 after the release of Remasters that the new generation would reapraise their body of work and then it was cool again to like Zeppelin.

I was gonna ask about this! How was Zep perceived in the 80s? I started listening to music when I was about eight (1988,) and I wasn't listening to anything closely. Like, The Bangles, Poison, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Madonna, Heart (in their 80s era,) etc. There was no mention of Zeppelin anywhere. It wasn't until the late nineties that I started wondering who they were. Also, as I said before, I didn't listen to the radio much, so... I never heard "Stairway to Heaven" until I got one of their CDs in, like, 2001. :mellow: Late-bloomer.

I do remember that both mom and dad asking about Robert....wasn't he kind of old for me to like and boy was he hairy!!!!hysterical.gif

Hahahaha! My father only once saw me watching The Song Remains the Same (like, nine years ago,) and the only thing he said was, "He sure is a pretty man. <_<" And he's from the Zep generation!

There was a storyline in The Song Remains the Same?! :o

This is not meant as a shot or a slight but what a question..questions !!! Good ones though B) I'll get back to you in about a month :lol: maybe two :shifty:

I'll be waitin', pardner. cowboy.gif

No, they won't but IMHO, if their legacy means anything, it will be about openning doors to a world of music and musicians that many would have previously disgarded. By doing so, they openned the door to the future as well. Nothing like a good teacher :D

But then... a lot of people complain that things haven't been as good musically since Zep. Like, does anyone compare to them? What bands do you think benefited from Zeppelin's trailblazing? (And that's a sincere question. I need to listen to more varieties of music.) And on that note....

Shortly after that I got into Greek and Middle Eastern music and thankfully missed a lot of horrid 80's pop!

Any Middle Eastern music you'd recommend to Led Zeppelin fans? I used to know a girl from Saudi Arabia, and she introduced me to a couple different songs that were really good! There was, like, a Moroccan pop song called.. uh... صبرى عليك طال... that I really liked! It's by Rajaa Belmlih from 1994. You know it? You know any like it? It's so pretty.

Yes, the effects of WWII were definitely still lingering into the 50s. Rationing ended in the early 50s, for instance, and although I'm younger than any of the band, I can remember the war being talked about almost every day as being totally present in people's minds, and that was true for years.

As for why kids were listening to the blues--I think it was a combination of factors. The Beatles covered people like Barrett Strong ("Money") and assorted Motown songs, Dylan was emerging (and very popular in Britain in the early 60s and covering songs like "House of the Rising Sun," there was a backlash against slick singers like Frankie Avalon and such, Elvis was sadly becoming one of them, and then the Rolling Stones appeared and introduced blues to the masses (having recognized the extent to which it was at the heart of a lot of the best of rock and roll); around that time a lot of blues greats started touring Britain because they suddenly had an audience (Bukka White, Son House, John Lee Hooker, etc. etc.), and lo, the British Blues Boom! I think it was essentially a reaction against prefabricated pop. A lot of folk clubs also started featuring blues singers.

THANK YOU! I asked a British girl who was in her thirties why blues became so popular over there, and she said it was because of (probably African-)American GIs bringing it over during World War II. She wasn't a Zep fan or anything, so she's not looking at it from a Zep perspective... if that makes any sense whatsoever.

World War II is most likely viewed differently over here in the U.S. In fact, I've got this idea that Americans see the very concept of war differently from Europeans. So even though America and Britain both fought in that war, there's got to be significant differences in how the war is remembered -- even collectively. When I first started listening to Zep, I started wondering how important WWII history was to the music. It had to have played an important but indirect part.

(Gotta post a "part two" cuz I got so many quote boxes...)

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Part Two

Hang their pics up in their lockers? No, lockers were only for the rich kids!

You had to carry your crap around with you all day? Holy hell!

Why were the kids listening to blues over there? Well they weren't listening to it in the US for a start. There was always blues music in Oz but it was the English who showed even the Americans how good the music was.

Absolutely true! I wasn't around back then, but I'm thinking it was mostly racism that kept blues unpopular. The majority (white folks) didn't listen to "black music." That's still a common mentality today, too, for some people.

There's an ass-kicking collection of American folk music by Alan Lomax. Here's hoping Mr. Plant listened to it during his Raising Sand period. Lomax is well-known for going around and recording folk music in the 30s and 40s, and the stuff he captured is incredible. I wanna say that "Po' Lazarus" from the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack is one of his, but I can't remember offhand. His stuff sounds like that, though. But here's the thing -- apparently it was his English wife who convinced him to make the recordings. :( Dude, America had all this great music, but we couldn't see it. It took Papa Britain to point it out. What the hell?

Here are Library of Congress links for Alan Lomax. You must look at them!

So, yeah, I'm personally indebted to Zep for the blues. I couldn't have gotten into Bukka White without Mr. Plant.

NEVER....and I repeat NEVER did Led ZEp sell out on their philosophy and sound.....UNLIKE many overrated bands out there today (e.g. Pink Floyd, The Wall period;);:))

Y'know why I asked that question? This is a stupid reason. I was watching The Venture Bros., and In Through The Out Door is a running motif in the series. One of the characters is a Zep fan (he has part of the Swan Song Icarus-guy tattooed on his shoulder, but he got jumped by henchmen before it could be finished! lol.) At one point he's asking another character not to put on ITTOD and says, "Zep sold out on that one." I was like :o And he's depicted as a huge Zep fan, so I wanted to know if there really were Zep fans out there who thought like that.

Yes, I was inspired to ask that question after watching cartoons.

• Was The Song Remains the Same in a theater near you and did you see it?

I was at Syracuse University, with a bunch of non-Zep fans for the premier there. All they did was talk about how annoying it was to look at Roberts "junk" on the big screen.

Wasn't it popular to wear really tight jeans back then? If so, there must have been some obvious junk visible everywhere, right? Yeah, most guys I know are like, "Oh, shit!" when they see Mr. Plant in those jeans, but in nowadays' sexual climate, it's like porn to me. :o Women are objectified way worse, I think, and dudes.... man are guys in bands getting uglier?

Zep was by and large too much to digest while tripping. MUCH too intense!

Good point....

BUK, I'm gonna read more from that link you posted. Thanks for all the details!

In the 1970's it seemed like everyone's parents were getting divorced including my own. But whenever I got mad at my step-parent(s), I would go to my room and crank up my Penn Crest dept. store stereo as loud as I could and listen to "The Rain Song" or "No Quarter" and all would be good again. :)

Super good point! Divorce and Zep as a coping mechanism. I work as a crisis counselor now, and I have repeatedly talked people out of suicide by using Zeppelin. Not kidding. And they're people of all ages and backgrounds.

I was at the June 1977 Tampa concert (field seating, but who cares I was there!) and waited hours for the band. Unfortunately, this was the show where the band had to leave after playing only 2 or 3 songs due to the heavy rain. No reschedule either. The next day the St. Pete Times had a story about 80,000 fans and rioting and so on, but I don't recall any of that. I only remember being so disappointed that the freakin rain never let up. Well, I figured for sure I would catch them next tour in my area. That was not to be after September 1980.

That's awesome to get a firsthand account of the Tampa show, cuz I always think of "riot" when I think of that one.

The idea that we "outgrew" Zep and considered ourselves "too cool" for Zep at one point, is something that my friends and I recently talked about so maybe I'll add that too.

Yeah, I can see that. Like, I was born in '80, and I remember that Scooby-Doo got more and more embarrassing as the 80s progressed. Bell-bottoms were illegal. I can imagine Zeppelin looked temporarily unfashionable at that point.

During my LZ years, the mother of one of my closest friends was from England and she was referred to as a "war bride" because she married a U.S. serviceman who was stationed in England. As many times as we begged her to talk about England (because we wanted to know all about this place where LZ came from) she never talked about it - I think she left it all behind - maybe her experiences during the war were so horrific she wanted to forget about them and focus on her new life.

Interesting! I remember my father talking about "the English Ford." He said there was a car on the market in... the 50s? Maybe? It was English, and it was horrible. It was kinda like the Yugo, apparently. (Remember the Yugo!) But he also was quick to say, "But they were still recovering from the war back then!" So I guess that's a typical American view of what the British might have been feeling in the 50s. They felt like the Yugo. :lol: (No offense! It's just stupid thinking....)

Deborah, your answers were really cool! What awesome parents! And what a cool place to grow up and listen to music! Pre-Katrina New Orleans!

Did the kids talk about Zep a lot at school? Hang their pics up in their lockers? Draw ZOSO all over everything?[

well, us cool kids did :P seriously, most of the kids i knew were mad over abba and sherbet ( a local oz band ). i tried to educate as many as i could but ... i even presented a project on them in music ckass one day. i read a bit of background profile to the class and hung up a couple of posters. i played them kashmir, trampled under foot and stairway ( we only were allowed to play 3 songs each ) the whole class just sat there stunned. i think they thought i was on drugs and that the zep boys were all aliens ... :(

Hahahaha! Y'never know, though. You may have planted the seed.

So did Australians feel rooked that Zep only toured once over there?

Alright, my eyes hurt. Gotta go!

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Part Two

You had to carry your crap around with you all day? Holy hell!

Absolutely true! I wasn't around back then, but I'm thinking it was mostly racism that kept blues unpopular. The majority (white folks) didn't listen to "black music." That's still a common mentality today, too, for some people.

There's an ass-kicking collection of American folk music by Alan Lomax. Here's hoping Mr. Plant listened to it during his Raising Sand period. Lomax is well-known for going around and recording folk music in the 30s and 40s, and the stuff he captured is incredible. I wanna say that "Po' Lazarus" from the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack is one of his, but I can't remember offhand. His stuff sounds like that, though. But here's the thing -- apparently it was his English wife who convinced him to make the recordings. :( Dude, America had all this great music, but we couldn't see it. It took Papa Britain to point it out. What the hell?

Here are Library of Congress links for Alan Lomax. You must look at them!

So, yeah, I'm personally indebted to Zep for the blues. I couldn't have gotten into Bukka White without Mr. Plant.

Y'know why I asked that question? This is a stupid reason. I was watching The Venture Bros., and In Through The Out Door is a running motif in the series. One of the characters is a Zep fan (he has part of the Swan Song Icarus-guy tattooed on his shoulder, but he got jumped by henchmen before it could be finished! lol.) At one point he's asking another character not to put on ITTOD and says, "Zep sold out on that one." I was like :o And he's depicted as a huge Zep fan, so I wanted to know if there really were Zep fans out there who thought like that.

Yes, I was inspired to ask that question after watching cartoons.

Wasn't it popular to wear really tight jeans back then? If so, there must have been some obvious junk visible everywhere, right? Yeah, most guys I know are like, "Oh, shit!" when they see Mr. Plant in those jeans, but in nowadays' sexual climate, it's like porn to me. :o Women are objectified way worse, I think, and dudes.... man are guys in bands getting uglier?

Good point....

BUK, I'm gonna read more from that link you posted. Thanks for all the details!

Super good point! Divorce and Zep as a coping mechanism. I work as a crisis counselor now, and I have repeatedly talked people out of suicide by using Zeppelin. Not kidding. And they're people of all ages and backgrounds.

That's awesome to get a firsthand account of the Tampa show, cuz I always think of "riot" when I think of that one.

Yeah, I can see that. Like, I was born in '80, and I remember that Scooby-Doo got more and more embarrassing as the 80s progressed. Bell-bottoms were illegal. I can imagine Zeppelin looked temporarily unfashionable at that point.

Interesting! I remember my father talking about "the English Ford." He said there was a car on the market in... the 50s? Maybe? It was English, and it was horrible. It was kinda like the Yugo, apparently. (Remember the Yugo!) But he also was quick to say, "But they were still recovering from the war back then!" So I guess that's a typical American view of what the British might have been feeling in the 50s. They felt like the Yugo. :lol: (No offense! It's just stupid thinking....)

Deborah, your answers were really cool! What awesome parents! And what a cool place to grow up and listen to music! Pre-Katrina New Orleans!

Hahahaha! Y'never know, though. You may have planted the seed.

So did Australians feel rooked that Zep only toured once over there?Alright, my eyes hurt. Gotta go!

i like to think that i turned a few onto zep. i reckon some of them liked the music, but were too stuck in their little ruts. school kids, for the most part, like to blend in. dress the same. walk and talk the same. you know. i actually liked the fact that i had something they didn't. i had zeppelin.

oh i think it's really sad that zep only toured once. reggie says it was an amazing concert in sydney, and i am soooooo jealous of him. they shoulda came back. but back then, i guess travel cost a lot and took a lot of time. it must've been a lot more desirable to stay in the us and europe.

page and plant only came here once too. and i wasn't able to see that show either :(

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So did Australians feel rooked that Zep only toured once over there?

Alright, my eyes hurt. Gotta go!

Not really, they were going to tour again in 1975 but Robert had the accident in Rhodes and it was cancelled accordingly.

It was disappointing at the but the important thing is he survived and continued on even after his son passed away which was another sad chapter in his life along with losing Bonzo and to their credit decided not to continue on without him.

In hindsight 1972 was enough for me as they were at their peak IMO and I've seen Plant , Page and Plant and TCV since then so I'm content with that.

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the 80's was unkind to Zeppelin and it was the height of uncool to like them then, it wouldn't be untill 1990 after the release of Remasters that the new generation would reapraise their body of work and then it was cool again to like Zeppelin.

Part One

I was gonna ask about this! How was Zep perceived in the 80s? I started listening to music when I was about eight (1988,) and I wasn't listening to anything closely. Like, The Bangles, Poison, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Madonna, Heart (in their 80s era,) etc. There was no mention of Zeppelin anywhere. It wasn't until the late nineties that I started wondering who they were. Also, as I said before, I didn't listen to the radio much, so... I never heard "Stairway to Heaven" until I got one of their CDs in, like, 2001. :mellow: Late-bloomer.

The 80's in a lot of ways was a very destructive time for the bands from the decade before, the music press for some reason just wanted new young musicians, yet people listen to early jazz from the 20's and 30's, listen to classical, yet they were complaining about people who were still alive playing their brand of music from a few years before....never really worked that out being a teen myself then.

On the other hand i liked being the Zep fan then when everyone else in the early 80's were in to the bands of the late 70's to early 80's, I was too listening to the those bands but they were Iron maiden etc, where as Toyah, adam and the ants and Duran Duran (well in the UK)were the in vogue stuff. By the end of the 80's and early 90's lots of my old mates were now into Zeppelin...yes it felt good that they had grone up a bit and looked back a bit furhter as I had a few years before ( and me always on about them lol)....So much so tha a few years back, in fact 5 days before the reunion gig I went to see a boot Zeppelin band with some mates while telling em I was seeing the real thing, we bumped into a guy whoIi hadn't seen since school some 25 yeras before, yet he was at a covers Zep band loving it...back in the 80's he was a Duran man etc but not rock. I guess what I am trying to say is Quality will alway shine through like a fine wine...it will rise above the critics as Zepplein did and still do.

(P.S. Duran Duran in the 90,s were actually a half decent band and wrote what I would consider to be a classic ballad called "Ordinary World", and amazingly did a version of Thank You on a covers album they released in the mid 90's). They have since gone back to playing the 80's stuff...anyway I am going off topic and the mods are loading the riffles as we speak)

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I asked a British girl who was in her thirties why blues became so popular over there, and she said it was because of (probably African-)American GIs bringing it over during World War II.

No, blues didn't become popular in the UK on any appreciable scale until the early 60s. I'm sure some GIs may have brought it over, but it didn't reach the population as a whole--in fact, what most GIs brought was jazz (even singers like Billie Holliday didn't become fairly widely known until the late 50s).

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I don't buy into the 80s being a "destructive" time for music. If anything, it was a time when music blossomed in ways it hadn't since the 1960s. AOR stations starting paying attention to college radio which opened the doors for all kinds of diversity whether it be artists like U2, R.E.M. and the Cure or reggae and ska bands. Destructive? Not really, it was quite the opposite.

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I don't buy into the 80s being a "destructive" time for music. If anything, it was a time when music blossomed in ways it hadn't since the 1960s. AOR stations starting paying attention to college radio which opened the doors for all kinds of diversity whether it be artists like U2, R.E.M. and the Cure or reggae and ska bands. Destructive? Not really, it was quite the opposite.

agree, I was meaning it was a destructive time for the bands that came before, and the almost dismissive press unless it was new and built out of the 80's, Maiden , Mettalica etc all out of the 80's, a very vibrant rock/Metal scene.

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snapback.pngally, on 04 January 2011 - 09:21 PM, said:

No, they won't but IMHO, if their legacy means anything, it will be about openning doors to a world of music and musicians that many would have previously disgarded. By doing so, they openned the door to the future as well. Nothing like a good teacher :D

But then... a lot of people complain that things haven't been as good musically since Zep. Like, does anyone compare to them? What bands do you think benefited from Zeppelin's trailblazing? (And that's a sincere question. I need to listen to more varieties of music.) And on that note....

Being a Zeppelin fan in the 70's meant that you were going to be exposed to many different forms of music. More than any rock band that I can think of , they weren't scared to follow their instincts and by doing so, they not only tested themselves but they tested their fans as well . I can't speak for all of us who grew up with Zeppelin as my musical tastes will be different than the next person but then, that's the legacy I'm talking about ! I think you'll find that most of us, still have a craving for new sounds and new artists.

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I think you'll find that most of us, still have a craving for new sounds and new artists.

My experience here has been quite the opposite. I've encountered far more fans that seem to long for some sort of replica of Zeppelin to rise from the ashes in order to "save" us from today's music than those that are still on the path of discovering new music that excites them. I was as huge a fan of Zeppelin as you might have found back in the 70s but my love of music didn't suddenly screech to a halt when they announced they were laying Zeppelin to rest back in 1980. As far as Plant's solo ventures, it's not like everyone that was ever a fan of Zeppelin has to like everything he releases but I've found some of the downright venomous responses to his last couple of solo outings to be completely out of line. It's one thing to express an opinion, it's quite another to outright insult the man. Oftentimes I think this isn't so much in response to their disapproval of his current musical direction but has more to do with their unhappiness in regards to him not wanting to be part of a Zeppelin reunion.

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agree, I was meaning it was a destructive time for the bands that came before, and the almost dismissive press unless it was new and built out of the 80's, Maiden , Mettalica etc all out of the 80's, a very vibrant rock/Metal scene.

Thanks for clarifying as I understand what you mean now. I'm not sure if you've ever heard the Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera album but Patterson Hood pretty much expresses the same thoughts in this description of Act I from the liner notes of the opera:

It's the summer after high school graduation and our hero hasn't played his guitar in two months. His band was over the night that Bobby died. No more partners in crime. At night he dreams he's fronting his ultimate rock and roll band. All their equipment stacked atop their Anvil cases. (What better way to measure a band's worth to an eighteen-year-old.) The highway's calling, but it sure ain't as romantic as it once seemed.

It's 1979. The seventies last rites are being read by the very same assholes who killed them. Disco has driven a fork into rock's heart and within a year, video will dissect every little tissue until it is as meaningless as the rest of the fucking world. "Video Killed the Radio Star". No shit!

There's this legend (myth?) (truth?) about Lynyrd Skynyrd that claimed that Ronnie Van Zant was killed by a strike on the head from the on-board VCR mounted in the back of the plane, directly behind his seat.

By the early 80's, Skynyrd's crowd was being run out of town, There was no place for big, masculine looking, hairy men with beards and guts and sweat and spit. Not on TV. Sure the hell not on MTV.

Our hero grew up in North Alabama. He came of age in the seventies. He remembers the Watergate hearings interrupting his mama's soaps. Standing in line with his daddy at the Shoals Theatre to see Walking Tall, cutting class to go to the state line with Bobby. (Home was a dry county, but have no fear; the Tennessee state line is just fifteen minutes away if you haul ass.)

He listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Who, ZZ Top, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, The Sweet, Ted Nugent, Queen, Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, CCR, The Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Lot's of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Years pass. Our hero moved to the city, then a couple of more cities. He got him a funny haircut or two. He became a punk rocker and tried to disassociate himself from his youthful transgressions. Much like so many well-meaning southern people who try to talk down their southern accents for fear of sounding "too-southern". (As if that was inferior or something.)

He starts having re-occurring dreams about arena rock. Perhaps he's being visited by spirits from his past. Now he wants to remember, He wants to re-connect with whom he once was and what he used to dream. When it was OK to be a little barbaric. When it was OK to turn your three guitars up to ten. When it was OK to ROCK!

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Thanks for clarifying as I understand what you mean now. I'm not sure if you've ever heard the Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera album but Patterson Hood pretty much expresses the same thoughts in this description of Act I from the liner notes of the opera:

It's the summer after high school graduation and our hero hasn't played his guitar in two months. His band was over the night that Bobby died. No more partners in crime. At night he dreams he's fronting his ultimate rock and roll band. All their equipment stacked atop their Anvil cases. (What better way to measure a band's worth to an eighteen-year-old.) The highway's calling, but it sure ain't as romantic as it once seemed.

It's 1979. The seventies last rites are being read by the very same assholes who killed them. Disco has driven a fork into rock's heart and within a year, video will dissect every little tissue until it is as meaningless as the rest of the fucking world. "Video Killed the Radio Star". No shit!

There's this legend (myth?) (truth?) about Lynyrd Skynyrd that claimed that Ronnie Van Zant was killed by a strike on the head from the on-board VCR mounted in the back of the plane, directly behind his seat.

By the early 80's, Skynyrd's crowd was being run out of town, There was no place for big, masculine looking, hairy men with beards and guts and sweat and spit. Not on TV. Sure the hell not on MTV.

Our hero grew up in North Alabama. He came of age in the seventies. He remembers the Watergate hearings interrupting his mama's soaps. Standing in line with his daddy at the Shoals Theatre to see Walking Tall, cutting class to go to the state line with Bobby. (Home was a dry county, but have no fear; the Tennessee state line is just fifteen minutes away if you haul ass.)

He listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Who, ZZ Top, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, The Sweet, Ted Nugent, Queen, Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, CCR, The Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Lot's of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Years pass. Our hero moved to the city, then a couple of more cities. He got him a funny haircut or two. He became a punk rocker and tried to disassociate himself from his youthful transgressions. Much like so many well-meaning southern people who try to talk down their southern accents for fear of sounding "too-southern". (As if that was inferior or something.)

He starts having re-occurring dreams about arena rock. Perhaps he's being visited by spirits from his past. Now he wants to remember, He wants to re-connect with whom he once was and what he used to dream. When it was OK to be a little barbaric. When it was OK to turn your three guitars up to ten. When it was OK to ROCK!

Amen

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I don't buy into the 80s being a "destructive" time for music. If anything, it was a time when music blossomed in ways it hadn't since the 1960s. AOR stations starting paying attention to college radio which opened the doors for all kinds of diversity whether it be artists like U2, R.E.M. and the Cure or reggae and ska bands. Destructive? Not really, it was quite the opposite.

Definitely. Loved a lot of the above music. Well said Jahfin!

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Definitely. Loved a lot of the above music. Well said Jahfin!

agree, I was meaning it was a destructive time for the bands that came before, and the almost dismissive press unless it was new and built out of the 80's, Maiden , Mettalica etc all out of the 80's, a very vibrant rock/Metal scene.

Just to clarify it wasn't said that music was destructive in the 80's but ment to be as I said above

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I disappeared for awhile there! Work has been killer... I'd like to come back to this topic and murder it myself. :)

(P.S. Duran Duran in the 90,s were actually a half decent band and wrote what I would consider to be a classic ballad called "Ordinary World", and amazingly did a version of Thank You on a covers album they released in the mid 90's). They have since gone back to playing the 80's stuff...

I am so embarrassed to say that Duran Duran was an alright band in the early nineties. Weird. The "Wedding Album" is what it was called, I think, but that wasn't the official title. I don't know the whole story there... Anyway. I like "Come Undone." I still listen to that!

anyway I am going off topic and the mods are loading the riffles as we speak)

The mods are armed?! :o

Being a Zeppelin fan in the 70's meant that you were going to be exposed to many different forms of music. More than any rock band that I can think of , they weren't scared to follow their instincts and by doing so, they not only tested themselves but they tested their fans as well . I can't speak for all of us who grew up with Zeppelin as my musical tastes will be different than the next person but then, that's the legacy I'm talking about ! I think you'll find that most of us, still have a craving for new sounds and new artists.

I get what you're saying! You are right. Agreed.

Thank you everyone else for contributing to the topic! I was truly interested, and I loved the answers.

(Edited for crazy grammar problems!)

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  • 5 years later...
On 1/4/2011 at 4:23 PM, leddy said:

 

 

WOW great question or questions. I am from the generation just after Zeppelin being born in 1966 I was 2 when they formed, 14 when they finished, so most of the questions I cannot answer as I got into them in 1981 at 15 years of age a year after they split in 1980. There will be many on here who were old enough to see them, Knebby was at well you can guess where.

 

I can being from England tell you though in the 70's as a kid I remember the music of Queen but not Zeppelin because Queen released singles but Zeppelin didn't so they didn't get airplay...thats cool though and as such wehter we like it or not Queens music is more in the national Pysche because of that, but Zeppelin are held in high regard now in the music circles because they didchange popular music, they moved the blues forward and not just keeping it firmly in the past like say Clapton did.

 

I can also answer the question what it was like when they went solo in the early 8o's . AS you can imagine discovering Zeppelin was a trully wonderful experience but also frustrating as I just missed out on seeing them. So in 1982 when Plant released his first album Pictures at eleven was very exciting for me as the 80's was unkind to Zeppelin and it was the height of uncool to like them then, it wouldn't be untill 1990 after the release of Remasters that the new generation would reapraise their body of work and then it was cool again to like Zeppelin.

 

To go and see Plant in 1983 for the first time (which was the beginning of many)was great then The Firm and Jimmy on his Outrider tour was also really great if again very uncool in the 80's to like it...but who cares. they were all great concerts andIi dont think I have ever seen a duff concert solo wise by any of them over the last 25/30 years. I have to say though I loved the Page/Plant gigs in the 1990's but was dissapointed and still am with Walking into Clarksdale album, I am a big fan of Coverdale/Page album, to me its the best Page stuff after or since Zeppelin.and also finally seeing the reformed Zeppelin in 2007 was the end of a life long journey following them (well not the end as we now have TCV,BCC and Planty doing his stuff).

 

Anyway hope that answered a few questions but wait o hear from the guys who saw them first time round :)

 

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All this business about the 70's bands and particularly Zep being somehow massively denigrated in the 80's, must be a 

geographical or top 40 thing. Where I lived, Long Island, NY, 40 min from NYC, 90% of the rock stations played either

classic rock or a mild mix of the "new wave" and the rest classic or current "rock". Full new wave or punk stations, etc., 

were mainly college or very close to the city. Of course top 40 played all the popular "new wave" or whatever, certainly

no Zep. Zep was played a lot on radio where I lived, many of these posts are actually quite baffling. Must mention as well

that where I lived you rarely saw people dressed punk or new wave.. You had to drive at least 20 minutes towards the

city to hit clubs where there were substantial numbers of punks or new wavers, and a DJ playing just those genres.

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