Rock and Roll, and Other Subjects About Which Dan Collins Knows Nothing

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Granted, this could be a very long post, but I just happened to notice Dan blathering on about some artsy New Wave poseurs and felt a need to point out the Neutral Objective Fact that no genuinely great rock and roll music was recorded after Sept. 25, 1980, the day John Bonham died.

How awesome was Led Zeppelin? For the most part, the lyrics were incomprehensible gibberish. More often than not, Robert Plant sang flat.

And nobody f–kin’ cared, because it was so f–kin’ awesome.

Also, we were all stoned out of our minds, because it was the ’70s.

What callow punks like Dan Collins probably don’t understand is that Zep played some great dance music. Believe it or not, kids, back in the day, long-haired freaks used to dance to rock and roll. And it was beautiful, too, because you had these hippie-type chicks in floral midriff tops and hiphugger bellbottom jeans groovin’ to the crazy syncopated rhythms that Bonzo laid down.

Picture in your mind the multicolored blacklight day-glo posters on the wall, and a sweaty smoke-filled roomful of hippie-type girls — with long, long hair — shakin’ it to “Misty Mountain Hop”:

No, wait — better yet — “The Ocean”:

“Trampled Underfoot”:

“D’Yer Mak’er”:

“Black Dog”:

If you lack the imagination to realize how f–kin’ awesome that was, there’s no point in my trying to explain it to you. Kathy Shaidle recently asserted that The Who were better than Zep. But she’s Canadian, which is kind of a synonym for “retarded” anyway.

Back in the day, you could call people “retarded” without being accused of insensitivity. You never saw headlines like this:

Anheuser-Busch Warns UFC About
Fighters’ Sexist, Homophobic Comments

Bite me, you faggot bitches.

See? You could say stuff like that back in the 1970s and nobody really cared, because everything was cool back then.

Until John Bonham died, and it’s all been going to hell ever since.

 





 

64 comments

  7. One measure of Led Zeppelin’s greatness: at one point they had six albums all on the charts at the same time.

    I was having a discussion with friends and we were trying to think of bands that have had six albums total that charted at any time since 1990.  The list is awfully short, the only ones we were able to come up with is Pearl Jam, They Might Be Giants, and “Weird Al” Yankovic.

    Edit: I think Foo Fighters have also charted six albums.

  10. I was never a huge Zep fan but the larger point should be made here:

    There is no doubt that the rock artists of the 70s were stand-outs in the history of popular American music. They had a good combo of serious musicianship plus contemporary attitude.

    Just take a look at the artists who were at their peak in that decade:

    The Moody Blues
    Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
    Pink Floyd
    Yes
    Queen
    Alan Parsons Project
    Styx
    Electric Light Orchestra
    Jethro Tull
    Chicago
    Elton John
    Rolling Stones
    The Eagles
    The Who
    Paul McCartney/Wings
    Fleetwood Mac
    Earth, Wind & Fire
    KISS
    Lynyrd Skynyrd
    Aerosmith
    Grateful Dead
    The Beach Boys
    Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young
    Billy Joel
    Creedence Clearwater Revival
    Three Dog Night
    King Crimson
    Boston
    Commodores
    AC/DC
    Doobie Brothers
    ZZ Top
    The Guess Who
    Steely Dan
    Santana
    Journey
    Foreigner
    Kansas
    Heart
    The Doors
    Meatloaf

    and so on.

    And I haven’t even scratched the surface with this list. Admittedly, I’m an art rock fan so I put those bands at the top of my list while others might list artists like Stevie Wonder, Orleans, Little River Band, The BeeGees, Supertramp, Genesis, Blue Oyster Cult, The Band, Todd Rundgren, Jefferson Starship, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and so on.

    It was a wealth of musical riches in the 70s. Top 40 radio actually played listenable music. I was a DJ back in those days and while there were some clunkers, it’s amazing to think back about the general high quality of that era’s popular music.

    And hey, I haven’t even mentioned the highly listenable, if oft maligned “Middle of the Road” artists of the 70s like The Carpenters, Barry Manilow, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Jim Croce, Bread, America, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.

    Certainly today we have a lot of Indy artists like Maroon 5 and Daniel Powter who perform in the MOR space so musicianship is not totally dead but unfortunately, those artists are more rare than they once were.I blame poor musical education for the drop in quality (of both the artists and the listeners).

  12.  It’s all flash and dazzle now. Artists are picked for their sex appeal, and their ability to dance. And that’s all choreographed. Sure, they have to be able to sing, technically speaking. But there’s no great songwriters today, not in comparison to the numerous ones of the sixties, seventies, and even eighties. And in concert, the production is everything, and takes precedence over the song. It seems that groups are discouraged. After all, a single artist can’t break up with himself.

    And while the singer is performing, you have high-wire artists and jugglers in the background, light shows and fireworks. It’s only a matter of time before some clown sits on a portable commode and takes a shit in the middle of a song, probably one by Lady Gaga.

  14. Zep was cool, but I’m more of a Metallica (pre-black album), White Zombie, Disturbed, and Tool are good “pop music”.
    Dick Dale, Eddie House, Gary Davis, Bessie Smith, Big Bill, Flatt and Scruggs, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Coltrane, Frankie and Dean, and both Stevies…that’s if I’m in a classics type of mood.And classical music…that’s good at all times. (Sam Barber never gets enough love for his Adagio imhao).Rolling Stones and Co. just don’t do a thing for me.

  16. …although, I do like listening to Jim Croce and KC & the Sunshine Band, Sly and the Family Stone ever so often.

  18. As a non-jock, non-stoner former high school cadet, I object violently to the characterization of The Who as a jock band. >:(

  19. There were soooo many things you could say in the ’70s that you can’t say now, because back then people didn’t carry a perpetual chip on their shoulders, like they do now. Go watch one of those old Dean Martin Roasts… hilarious stuff, but you’d never be able to air something like that today.

    Political correctness has done more to kill freedom of speech than any govt regulation ever has, and we’ve imposed it upon ourselves.

  22. Loved Zep and had all their albums in vinyl and then replaced them with CDs.  BUT it has to be acknowledged that they plagiarized so many songs that calling them “the greatest” is a total sham.

    Page and Bonham were among the best on their instruments, but stealing from poor old bluesmen isn’t an honorable way to get rich.

  23. “…the Neutral Objective Fact that no genuinely great rock and roll music was recorded after Sept. 25, 1980, the day John Bonham died.”

    Amen, Brother!

    Zeppelin makes the Beatles look like the Jonas Brothers.

  24. Exactly.  Ever watch “Blazing Saddles” on a movie channel?  It’s a freakin’ SATIRE, and they still bleep out all the epithets.  Last time I saw it, they even bleeped out the farts in the campfire scene!

  28. Yeah, it’s pretty cool to see your kid play “Dazed and Confused,” even if it’s just a few bars.

  32. Most of the bands on your list may have played in the 70’s, but they good ones started in the 60″s

  34. It’s my theory that every form of music reaches a level of incoherence after a while.  What happened to Jazz, starting with Be-Bop, happened to Rock And Roll in the 1990’s.

  35. I, too, did at first, but then I sussed out that Mr. Surber was speaking of the fans who liked them.

    It is ironic that any jocks would like The Who, who were pro-Mod.

  37. Wrong.

    Are you a blues fan?  Everybody steals everything from everybody.

    Zeppelin made one mistake: not acknowledging Willie Dixon as an author of Whole Lotta Love, but they gave him the proper credits on the first album.

  39. Zep was an FORCE, everything died with Bonzo though. They knew it and so they broke up. I’m 100% on board with RSM about that. There has however been a lot of good music since then but the Nadir of Rock and Roll was 1979. BTW I too like Disturbed PW, but it doesn’t come close to Maynard’s bands Tool and A Perfect Circle.

  40. Zeppelin quit while they were still on the top of the charts. Their entire catalog of albums were in the Billboard top 200 at the time of Bonham’s death.

    When I’m in my shop listening to Zeppelin as I carve, I turn it up and disturb the neighbors by pumpin’ da noise through a pair of Bose 2000 speakers in tandem with a pair of KLH series 20 speakers.

  41. Eh, I still think the old blues guys did the songs better.
    Sorry…I like Zep, but they always seemed a bit overrated (lots of individual talent, but not “the greatest ever”); the whole scene was overrated actually.
    …dancing (standing in place looking for all the world like a grand mal), ratty clothes wearing (there’s something way wrong about rich whitebread college kids buying up ratty clothes at the Goodwill store; their parents should have kicked their collective butt), long (greasy) haired hippies (smelling like kitty litter due to the combo of stank, pot, and patchouli)…I don’t see how anybody found that alluring even if it did put out quicker than a Pattaya hooker.
    (I am so glad I did not grow up back then…so glad.)

  44. On April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the top 5 positions on the Billboard play chart, and had a total of 12 songs in the top 100.

  45.  I’ve never heard of them, but everybody has heard of Lady Gaga, and tens of millions of people hang on her every word and appearance. That’s the shame of the current state of music today. A woman can come out carried in an egg, or dressed in meat, and people pass her off as a great artist. The fact that her music is mediocre at best is irrelevant to these hucksters.

  46.  It depends on what channel you watch, and what time. USA is horrible for stuff like that. They made one of my all time favorite movies, The Usual Suspects, almost unwatchable.

  47.  John Paul Jones was/is no slouch himself. One of the all time great bass players, and can play practically any other instrument on top of that. And still going strong.

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