Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Blues Brothers: The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin...

Sasha Frere-Jones (The New Yorker)

These two bands matter so much to so many that any summary feels both insulting and pointless. Led Zeppelin has been absorbed by such a wide range of musicians that their scope impoverishes the idea of something like “heavy metal.” They fuelled the language of Beastie Boys and Tori Amos, provided snippets for music for many human beings with samplers, and changed the idea of how bands were supposed to play. Their catalog has, at worst, maybe five weak songs in it before Led Zeppelin stopped short with drummer John Bonham’s death in 1980. The Rolling Stones kicked in seven years earlier, the young British blues fans who helped start a hybrid that helped codify what rock bands did and didn’t do. After several albums worth of American blues covers, the band started writing its own songs. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was an early sign that maybe the band had a pretty good idea of how to wield its own language.  Read more

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