I am just not a Zeppelin fan

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Grew up with em. Was cool at the time, got bored with them pretty quick. Plant had pipes but grated on me. He’s much more pleasing to me now that he’s lost the youthful gymnastics. That album with Allison Krause was good.
Page is kinda meh, lost his charm when I learned the blues box and how to bend a string.
At least doz British guitarists that I know about that I’d rather listen to.
Sorry but I’m with Sunvalleylaw on the Zep.
 
If you were alive in the year when Whole Lotta Love hit the airwaves, and although it was 2 years after Purple Haze they both seemed to get attention around the same time in the US, you would realize how they single-handedly changed rock music forever. Much like an extension of the Beatle's influence, but veering off into "hard" rock. There was nothing like it on the radio at the time and it sounded as if aliens had landed. That's all taken for granted now, but listing the lineage of hard rock and later metal that was spawned by that influence would be massive. Ever since rock (Brit rock to start with) broke in the early to mid sixties and on up to the early seventies, almost every couple of months radio listeners heard sounds that had never been heard before in the history of music. Your head was always spinning just anticipating what might come next. That hasn't been the case for the last several decades now. A whole generation wouldn't even know what it's like to grow up with such swift and massive cultural and social changes.

Now you will probably say you still don't like Zeppelin, which is understandable. But they changed the musical world you live in today.
 
rickenvox said:
If you were alive in the year when Whole Lotta Love hit the airwaves, and although it was 2 years after Purple Haze they both seemed to get attention around the same time in the US, you would realize how they single-handedly changed rock music forever. Much like an extension of the Beatle's influence, but veering off into "hard" rock. There was nothing like it on the radio at the time and it sounded as if aliens had landed. That's all taken for granted now, but listing the lineage of hard rock and later metal that was spawned by that influence would be massive. Ever since rock (Brit rock to start with) broke in the early to mid sixties and on up to the early seventies, almost every couple of months radio listeners heard sounds that had never been heard before in the history of music. Your head was always spinning just anticipating what might come next. That hasn't been the case for the last several decades now. A whole generation wouldn't even know what it's like to grow up with such swift and massive cultural and social changes.

Now you will probably say you still don't like Zeppelin, which is understandable. But they changed the musical world you live in today.
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I was around in those days but was (and remain) more of a soft, acoustic type of guy. As I've said before, even the Beatles got too heavy for my tastes at times. But there is no doubt folks like Hendrix, Zep, and Cream brought in a whole new type of music.
 
rickenvox said:
If you were alive in the year when Whole Lotta Love hit the airwaves, and although it was 2 years after Purple Haze they both seemed to get attention around the same time in the US, you would realize how they single-handedly changed rock music forever. Much like an extension of the Beatle's influence, but veering off into "hard" rock. There was nothing like it on the radio at the time and it sounded as if aliens had landed. That's all taken for granted now, but listing the lineage of hard rock and later metal that was spawned by that influence would be massive. Ever since rock (Brit rock to start with) broke in the early to mid sixties and on up to the early seventies, almost every couple of months radio listeners heard sounds that had never been heard before in the history of music. Your head was always spinning just anticipating what might come next. That hasn't been the case for the last several decades now. A whole generation wouldn't even know what it's like to grow up with such swift and massive cultural and social changes.

Now you will probably say you still don't like Zeppelin, which is understandable. But they changed the musical world you live in today.
Click to expand...
Of course, and yes. I am still not a fan. I was certainly alive then, but was the oldest kid, had no older music influences interested in any of the Woodstock-ish era music and/or transition into hard rock. To me Zep started in the mid-70's, and then it was never ending Stairway, Black Dog, etc. So meh.
 
I've said it before, but my primary complaint about Zep is I *hate* how loose and sloppy they often veered, particularly live. For example:



vs.



I have a huge sonic appreciation for how they engineered and explored sounds. I rightfully recognize Bonzo as one of the most influential drummers around, and I find both Page and Plant far more interesting outside of the LZ sound. The real star of the show is Jones.
 
sunvalleylaw said:
Of course, and yes. I am still not a fan. I was certainly alive then, but was the oldest kid, had no older music influences interested in any of the Woodstock-ish era music and/or transition into hard rock. To me Zep started in the mid-70's, and then it was never ending Stairway, Black Dog, etc. So meh.
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And Presence? Their sound completely changed on that album in my opinion. Being an old Zep fan I didn't like that album when it first came out. But now it's the most played Zep album on my turntable.
 
I'm still learning little things from Page (or someone showing a Page lick). There's a bend on the A at the opening riff of Whole Lotta Love that I'd always heard, but never realized until I watched a Joe Walsh video. It's obvious as hell when you hear it explained, but I never picked up on it.

Most of us grew up with Zep. I don't think it's unreasonable to say you've enjoyed them, were inspired by and maybe even learned some stuff from them. Our musical tastes change, and there's nothing wrong with saying that you've moved on, or even "not a fan" anymore.
 
Funny thing is when IV came out is was much more esoteric and underground sounding than any of their previous albums. Songs like Four Sticks and Battle of Evermore were a move away from the straight forward rock of their previous albums and precursors to Kashmir. Stairway to Heaven was the most atypical song on that album and didn't get any airplay for around a year after the album came out. Zep IV seemed more like a progressive rock album. Sandy Denny singing co-vocals with Plant on Battle was an unusual touch. And even the riff and beat in Black Dog were anything but straightforward as mentioned in this excerpt from an article below:

But generally, they were innovators, albeit with a strong desire to imitate, learn from, compete ambitiously with the best. Zeppelin were also of course nostalgically (nostalgia: an illness that Led Zep combined with modernism, never more so than on “Black Dog”) drawn back to places and times that preceded their births – the blues. But anyone who thinks that this is merely standardized routine 12/32-bar repetition has rather missed the dropped beats, the odd meters, the changes in tempo, the vocal/guitar inflection, cadences and intonations that can make subtle or shocking transformations of feel: those elastic moveable pulses.

So notice how on “Black Dog” the gaps between the end of the last vocal line in each verse gets shorter each time, before the band crashes the silence, as the song progresses. And this is progressive rock, if that term means anything. Recorded by Genesis or Gentle Giant, no one would even consider to doubt the fact. It is progressive for three reasons: (i) it aggressively refuses the norm of the pop/rock song by obsessive messing with one’s sense of time; (ii) this means you have to listen to it (i.e. regressive listening is not an option); (iii) the song itself progresses, getting more complex and also more emotional as it takes flight and then – of course – crashes.

So if we now look at “Black Dog”, composed and recorded (mostly live – the overdubs are largely Page’s synthetic-sounding hyper-treated guitar parts) when Zep were at the height of their powers, we hear a group that can perform a track with 98 times changes, absent sheet music or a conductor. Not only that but amongst these strict changes in time signature (including the tense and extremely funky simultaneous use of two different ones) the song hides syncopation on a grand scale. Listen to the “oh baby pretty baby” sections and focus on the pick-up on the snare drum before the main backbeat, and how Bonham is always following Page – not Jones, his bassist, which would be the norm – Jones had to watch Bonzo’s kick drum, to keep up, or rather to keep just behind.

“Black Dog,” so brilliantly analyzed by Erik Davis,[3] changes time-signatures, tempo, syncopation and pulsing, throughout the song: from the verse/vocal part stolen from Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” to the twisting riff.[4] But of course the most striking surprise, surely one of the most shocking moments in rock history, occurs when Page and Jones go into a riff in 5:4 time and Bonham play across them in 4:4 time. Thus reaching a point of connection every 20 beats. [It’s actually three 9s plus a 5 – see MuzeEd’s correction in Comments below, and chart at top of post.]

The story goes that originally John Bonham tried playing 8th notes, in keeping with the 5:4 time, but that he either lacked the technical ability to do this or that the effect sounded too much like The Mahavishnu Orchestra! In any case they toyed, they experimented, they played (that’s what musicians do – we are children) and they were willing to play this game: ignore la langue (the rules of rock) and make a new utterance (parole) – 4s over 5s until it resolves, then repeat the joke.

For this accidental joke, one of the funkiest musical japes I have heard, did apparently reduce the four of them to laughter, the first time they played it, in rehearsal.[5] But these kid’s giggles, you can hear them stifling the raucous laughter that is to follow, is surely not ironic or pomo or a poking of fun at the audience: it was that of highly skilled musicians who just pulled off a new trick, barely having the time to think of the intention behind it (if such there was), collective or otherwise.

The thing is, they kept playing, through the tension of the 5/4 toe-curling and the mind-scrunching concentration it takes at first to play the drums and not listen to the guitars too much, and the same goes of course for the bass/guitar. And then someone, or all of them, saw the brilliance of what they had done (progressive rock in all but name but it sounds like a straight blues rock throwaway) and they did this intentionally. They intended to play with the mistake and then they intended to keep it.

Because it was good.

https://hooksanalysis.wordpress.com...-pulse-tempo-in-led-zeppelins-black-dog-1971/
 
rickenvox said:
If you were alive in the year when Whole Lotta Love hit the airwaves [...] you would realize how they single-handedly changed rock music forever. But they changed the musical world you live in today.
Click to expand...

Please, what is “rock music”?

I personally think that after Clapton and Hendrix the genie was out of the bottle and if Plant had never Planted hagiography would instead have more to say about Blue Cheer or whatever. Black Sabbath were formed in 68, and their influence on actual metal surely dwarfs Zep.

But who under 50 is nostalgic for any part of this world or even lives in it?
 
There are a lot of things in the LZ experience that I love, but I don't think they have a song that I enjoy listening to from beginning to end.
 
vonbladet said:
Please, what is “rock music”?

I personally think that after Clapton and Hendrix the genie was out of the bottle and if Plant had never Planted hagiography would instead have more to say about Blue Cheer or whatever. Black Sabbath were formed in 68, and their influence on actual metal surely dwarfs Zep.

But who under 50 is nostalgic for any part of this world or even lives in it?
Click to expand...

What is life? I can't say. But my love is there for you anytime of day.
 
Chicken Man said:
There are a lot of things in the LZ experience that I love, but I don't think they have a song that I enjoy listening to from beginning to end.
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I like Zep a lot, but certain songs of theirs have been so overplayed that I'll change the station. But I will never turn off "Since I Been Lovin' You" and "Gallows Pole." I have a deep and abiding love for those songs.
 
I was on the fence for a long time. Two things pushed me to the negative, don't like ;em side.

1. Making out with a girl in high school and Cashmere came on the radio. While our lips are locked, she starts humming a long. It was weird.
2. See "The Song Remains The Same" and the theater is filled with drunk beer drinking stoners acting really stupid and obnoxious. I may have partook in the same things but this crowd was over the top.

All that said, I love "Heartbreaker." I just do. And the Black Crowes/Jimmy Page record is great.
 
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