At Home in Hespeler

Sammy Hagar and the Circle, featuring Hagar, his old pal Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, Led Zeppelin’s Jason Bonham, and guitarist Vic Johnson take a roll through Hagar’s career, with some Led Zeppelin added in for good measure, in the new live album At Your Service. Recorded at various shows during last years fall tour, At Your Service covers Hagar’s solo material, his Montrose years as well as 80’s era Van Halen (in a nod to both Hagar and Anthony).

The Circle is a band of solid professionals who all know their business. There is nothing here that’s not very well done. Whatever era of Hagar – or Led Zeppelin – you are a fan of, you will be pleased by the performances of those songs. There is no weak points or performances here.

The album features four Led Zeppelin songs, and aside from Good Times Bad Times having a bit of an 80’s feel to it, they are performed excellently. Hagar is, perhaps a bit surprisingly, a good singer of Led Zeppelin.

The highlight of the album however is the final track, when Hagar and Johnson take a seat for an acoustic arrangement of Van Halen’s Dreams, from 5150. Stripped of Eddie Van Halen’s keyboards and pyrotechnic guitar licks, it’s an extremely pretty song.

Sammy Hagar and the Circle’s At Your Service is a very enjoyable live recording that is both worth having and makes you hope this particular lineup continues to tour, and that they come to a town near me soon.

Tracklist

CD 1

1. There’s Only One Way to Rock
2. Rock Candy
3. Good Times Bad Times
4. Poundcake
5. I Can’t Drive ’55
6. Mikey Bass Solo
7. When It’s Love
8. Whole Lotta Love
9. Little White Lie
10. When the Levee Breaks

CD 2

11. Jason Drum Solo/Moby Dick
12. Why Can’t This Be Love
13. Finish What You Started
14. Heavy Metal
15. Vic Guitar Solo
16. Best of Both Worlds
17. Right Now
18. Rock and Roll
19. Dreams (acoustic)

for certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

Review, The Mighty Zep At Your Service, Dreams, Good Times Bad Times, Jason Bonham, Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar, The Circle

Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience singer James Dylan is, by day, an artist. Last year at this time, James offered a pencil drawing of Robert Plant. This year, he turned his hand to John Bonham. 

These pencil drawing look incredibly like photographs, and lend credence to the idea that James is as good an artist, if not better, than singer. No small praise that.

Cost of the pictures is $95 for a 9 x 13 print signed by Dylan or $65 for a 6.5 x 10 signed print (plus shipping) and can be ordered from JamesDylanOfficial.com. There appears to be Robert Plant prints still available too.

Last year the original pencil drawing was also made available for $2,000 (plus S & H). No word on whether the original is available this time.

via Ramble On Radio, the only Led Zeppelin Podcast.

The Mighty Zep James Dylan, Jason Bonham, John Bonham, Led Zeppelin Experience, Robert Plant

I came home from New York with my Jimmy Page pictorial autobiography,Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page, and my wife picked it up. It’s a big book, and heavy, but beautifully laid out with high quality paper and exquisite pictures throughout. She started nosing through the book, and next thing she is asking questions about Page, looking him up in Wikipedia to see his marital history and does he have kids. You need to understand, she usually rolls her eyes at my Led Zeppelin habit, and has never shown any interest in anything Led Zeppelin related. But here she was keeping me from my Jimmy Page book.

It’s not a cheap book, retailing for $70+ up here in Canada, I bought it for $50 at Jimmy Page’s Q&A in New York last week. But it’s not a book you’ll ever look at and think, “why did spend so much on this?” It’s a beautiful book, it really is. It weighs about as much as a Datsun, the lettering on the cover is gold inlay and the paper photographic quality. It may be a bit steep for a book, but it’s good value for the money.

But the real magic happens when you open it up. Page one, 10 or 12-year old Jimmy Page as a choir boy, and the caption “it might get loud.” It did. The last page is a now famous shot of Page by his friend Ross Halfin, grey haired and holding his guitar in front of him. “It might get louder.”

In between choir boy and mature gentleman, between loud and louder, is more than 500 pages of pictures, telling the story of the musical life of Jimmy Page. Playing his guitar outside his school, his earliest bands, his session days. And look at the pose on his schoolboy picture, or on his knees playing for Neil Christian and the Crusaders. He had those Jimmy Page moves long before anyone called him “Jimmy F-in Page.” Onward to the Yardbirds, then Led Zeppelin. Onstage, backstage, leaping through the air and tuning his guitars behind and amp, massive crowd in the background. All minimally captioned, walking you through the story, but letting the pictures do the yeoman’s work, the captioned merely filling in the details.

Open Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page to any page, and you’ll find a picture to enjoy. And if you don’t happen to like any of the pictures on that page, try the next one, it’s sure to have something. So many of the pictures are excellent, so many interesting. There’s very few you won’t study a bit, absorb the story it tells. Page reportedly spent a lot of time tracking down pictures and it shows. If you’re a Led Zeppelin fan, you’ll have seen many of them, but never in this detail, not in this quality. And there are plenty others that you’ve never seen, won’t see outside of this book.

If there’s one thing missing, considering he does refer to it as an autobiography, it’s any pictures of Page when he’s not, in one way or another, at work. There’s no pictures of any of his children (or his granddaughter for that matter) and only one of any of his wives, a fairly well known shot of he and Charlotte Martin exiting a helicopter backstage at Knebworth in 1979. This book is strictly about Jimmy Page, musician.

Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page, the pictorial autobiography of the Led Zeppelin guitarist is, simply put, an excellent book.

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Book Review, The Mighty Zep Jimmy Page, Jimmy Page OBE

It came up last Christmas, one of my guests asked the question that comes up too often: “What the hell is wrong with Robert Plant? Why won’t he do a Led Zeppelin reunion?” It seems so easy, just sing the old songs, make a big pile of money and everybody gets to go away happy. So why won’t he do it? It doesn’t help that Plant tends to answer the question with a series of non-sequiturs: I don’t want to be singing cabaret; I want to move forward with new material – even as he spreads the old liberally through his set lists &tc.

In his new book, Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelinby Dave Thompson looks at Plant and examines the man through the lens of his history, and the effect it has on Plant today. There are two major events in the Plant narrative, the death of his son Karac in 1977 and the death of his best friend from youth, whom he brought into Led Zeppelin, John Bonham.

On Karac Thompson writes:

His (Plant’s) lifestyle, he knew, had already placed his marriage under incredible strain—the months he spent away touring, leaving Maureen to raise two children on her own. Now there was just one, and Plant could not help but wonder whether things might have been different if he had been at home.

and on John Bonham:

It was John Bonham who sat next to him on the hastily arranged flight back to London, and then for the drive up to the farm. There the boy was buried, at a funeral where Bonham was the only one of the singer’s bandmates or management to even bother attending… Now, the very person who had stood alongside him throughout that terrible night, providing much of the glue with which he repaired his shattered psyche, had himself been taken away.

Those two quotes represent, as much as anything does, the thesis of The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin. Those two events, presented as they are above, explain so much about Plant’s decisions, including the one not to re-unite Led Zeppelin in any long-term way. Thompson delves into what makes Plant tick far more deeply than into what Plant does or says, using the former to explain the latter. It’s a good thing that he does such a good job of examining Plant the person, because he gets far too many of his facts wrong.

Details like what year Page and Plant played Glastonbury, what they played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction or the heretofore unheard claim that Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja actually rehearsed with Plant, Page and John Bonham before turning down the job of bassist in Led Zeppelin and John Paul Jones was brought on board. Furthermore some of his opinion statements, such as the tone of Zeppelin’s songs come from Plant’s lyrics or that the last five albums in Plant’s career – Dreamland to lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar – are the best set of five he has done, including say Led Zeppelin II through Physical Graffiti, are laughable.

But Thompson isn’t after the facts of the case, so much as explaining Plant through the lens of those facts. The fact he got a date wrong here, a song wrong there doesn’t do unrepairable damage to the book. Neither does the obvious fact that Thompson’s trying, for reasons unknown, to tear down the mythology of Led Zeppelin and raise the myth of Robert Plant in it’s place.

In fact, Thompson’s conversational writing style, of which I have been a fan for a long time, makes The Voice that Sailed the Zeppelin a thoroughly enjoyable read. I did not always agree with Thompson, and he gets some of the basics wrong, but Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin by Dave Thompson is one of my favourite of the Led Zeppelin books out there. It’s well worth the read.

Book Review, The Mighty Zep Dave Thompson, Led, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, The Voice that Sailed the Zeppelin, zeppelin

Jimmy Page

Picture Courtesy of Neal Preston, Sound and Fury©

Picture Courtesy of Neal Preston, Sound and Fury©

Pictures Courtesy of Neal Preston, from his book Sound and Fury.

Birthday Wishes, The Mighty Zep Birthday, Jimmy Page, Neal Preston, Sound and Fury

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The Freedom of Music, The Mighty Zep, This Week on my I-Pod Celebration Day, Chris Dreja, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, O2 arena, Queen, Rolling Stones, The Who, Yardbirds

Robert Plant shot to fame over 40 years ago as the Golden God fronting Led Zeppelin. His 40 years in the spotlight has seen a remarkable career, which has changed direction a number of times.

Currently, Plant is performing old time American style bluegrass with rock crossover. He performs smaller halls and, although one of the most famous names in rock, travels without a posse. He is, in short, still an active creative musician willing to do the yeoman’s work of bringing his music to the people, regardless of how little he needs to do so.

Happy 64th Birthday Robert Plant CBE. For keeping the flame alive, and for the greatest opening line in rock music:

Hey Hey Mama, said the way you move,
gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove.

Birthday Wishes, The Mighty Zep Birthday, Robert Plant CBE

If you came of age in the mid-1970’s, as I did, Led Zeppelin IV (aka ZOSO) was always there. You go to the carnival, and the Tilt-a-Whirl guy is blasting Rock and Roll, Black Dog and When the Levee Breaks. Guys driving down the street would be blasting it out of their 8-track player. You didn’t hear it for the first time, you absorbed it over time.

IV wasn’t even the first Zeppelin album I found and loved. That honour would fall to their third album, which I “borrowed” from my older brother on such a regular basis he bought me my own copy for Christmas the next year.

The follow up fourth album soon joined III as a staple of my record player. Mostly side one, it has to be confessed, for the obvious reasons. Frankly, song  for song, I’ll still take side one even now, with the exception of When the Levee Breaks which may be my favourite song on the album.

Everybody has favourites, and most Zeppelin fans will probably chose an album other than IV as their’s. But make no mistake, none will deny the greatness of Led Zeppelin IV. From song 1 to song 8, it contains no flaws, no misses. And in fact, in age when artists worried about the flow of the entire album, IV has two very different, but flawless sides, and still works as a complete unit. In other words, whether you throw on side 1, side 2 or the good old standby, 8-track and hear the whole thing through, it works.

But it’s still the songs that make the album, and IV features Led Zeppelin at their best. Rock and Roll, the bands answer to critics who said they had gone soft. Black Dog, a unique call and response style song unlike anything recorded before or since.

Battle of Evermore, the prelude to Stairway: Angry Hobbits with mandolins. Page and Jones, with just mandolins, acoustic guitar and, reportedly, a Dulcimer make the earth shake. Stairway to Heaven, in the aftermath of Battle of Evermore is like the dawn after battle. It’s message of hope in direct conflict with Evermore’s war call. Stairway to Heaven, the song that ended a thousand dances, more of a ritual than a rock song.

Side 2, if your using old school formats like me (or actually track 3 and 4, which is how I have listened to IV the last few times I’ve had it on), starts with the albums two weakest songs. Misty Mountain Hop, the hippy anthem. This falls in the category of second tier Zeppelin songs that prove just how good Zeppelin was. Four Sticks is a drum driven song with rather complex time structure. Again, most bands would kill to have this song in their repertoire, for Led Zeppelin in 1971, it was weak.

Going to California is the ultimate Zeppelin folk song. They had done folk before, had built the third album around folk songs, but Going to California trumps them all. Give Led Zeppelin acoustic guitars and mandolins and they were still the best rock band in the world, and Going to California is exhibit A.

Finally, the tour de force. Of all the songs on Led Zeppelin IV, When the Levee Breaks may have aged the most gracefully, which is odd considering it has all the grace of a charging Rhino. Built around John Bonham’s great drum pattern, the most sampled drum pattern in all of rap, Zeppelin rolls for 7 minutes of chicago blues like no other. It is pure driving rock yet, thanks to Bonham, swings like an old soul song.

Left off the album destined to  appear on 1975’s Physical Graffiti, the songs Night Flight, Down By the Seaside and Boogie With Stu. Those three songs, the afterthoughts, those are a career for some bands.

Forty years ago today, November 8, 1971 Led Zeppelin IV was released. It  may have been the best album of the rock era, yet not Led Zeppelin best album. It is good enough to be called that, and Zeppelin good enough to transcend it.

From RambleOnRadio.com

The Mighty Zep 4, IV, Led Zeppelin, ZOSO

Copyright Brian Gardiner 2011. Use by permission only

Picture of the Day, The Mighty Zep Jason Bonham

Haley Reinhart got voted off American Idol this week after performing Led Zeppelin’s What is and What Should Never Be. Conventional wisdom is she lost out because she slipped and fell on the stairs while performing. I say, it’s because she cut the slide solo out of the song – although in fairness, Jimmy Page is a much better guitar player than Haley Reinhart’s dad.

Cool For Cats, The Mighty Zep American Idol, Haley Reinhart, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, What is and What Should Never Be

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

“Their first two albums are OK,” said Rick, a casual friend who was older and patiently explaining Led Zeppelin to me. “3 is great, 4 is the best, the next two good as well.”

It was 1980, and I had just mentioned that Led Zeppelin where the greatest band in the world. “Presence is crap, In Through The Out Door I never even bothered listening too.”

I cringed. “I’m not so sure about Presence being crap,” I said.

“Don’t tell me I don’t understand it,” he interrupted me sharply. “I was there, I bought it on the first day. I understand it, and it’s crap.”

The fact is, it’s not that I disagreed with him, but I didn’t agree either. “I wasn’t going to say that,” I answered him defensively. “I don’t really like it either, but off hand, I don’t know why I don’t like it.”

It was as true as far as it goes. Why didn’t I like it? I couldn’t think of a song I didn’t like. Sure Achilles Last Stand was 10 minutes long, and who did 10 minute songs anymore? So too was Tea For One, which was a pale imitation of Since I’ve Been Loving You anyway. For Your Life was a hard song to grasp: it was heavy handed with lots of stops and time changes throughout.

On the other hand Royal Orleans is a great rocker, Hots on for Nowhere and Candy Store Rock are both good fun rock and roll. And Nobody’s Fault But Mine was destined to be a classic, that was obvious even then.

So why the ambivalence? What’s not to like?

I suspect the answer is that Presence was a dark album. It was heavy not musically, but in character. It weighed on you, almost oppressively. That means, I’m sorry to say Rick, that if you don’t understand it, you will never get it.

Presence, however, has aged well. Knowing what we know now, the darkness that was beginning to surround that band, it’s easier to understand Presence. No longer being affected by current styles, the length of a song is not so important. Thus, we return to the point, what’s not to like?

Achilles Last Stand is an epic masterwork: Jimmy Page at his very best, both creatively and as a guitar player. His layered lines, chromatic runs and one of the best guitar solos of all time all contribute. The unbelievable rhythm section, Jones and Bonham simply pounding behind Page’s layers, is a tour de force. Lyrically, Achilles Last Stand is brilliant. Robert Plant’s sense of humour, which baffles and frustrates fans to this day, is all over this elegant and poetic opus.

The year before Presence had been a tough one for Led Zeppelin. Their 1975 American tour didn’t go as well as hoped, drugs had crept into the Zeppelin family and were taking their toll. From the balcony of the Hyatt House hotel in Los Angeles, Plant yelled out during a photo shoot, “I am a golden God.” The remark was well reported and much maligned. After returning in triumph to England with five nights at the Royal Albert Hall, Plant had a car accident on vacation in Greece. He suffered a severely broken ankle while his wife suffered life threatening injuries. That’s the backstory behind Achilles Last Stand, Plant’s ode to himself, the golden God with the broken ankle.

For Your Life is, as noted earlier, a musically complex song. Stops and starts with time changes throughout, set to a dirge tempo that makes it ponderously heavy. It is a hard song to like: not a bad song, possibly even a great song, but inaccessible on casual listening. A song about drug addiction, couched in Plant’s more usual sexual innuendo, it is a song that reveals itself upon repetitive listening.

For it’s heaviness, Presence has a group of songs that are almost pop. Heavy handed and demanding, yes, but with definite pop sensibilities. Royal Orleans, about bassist John Paul Jones encounter with a transvestite at the Royal Orleans Hotel in New Orleans is the first of these. The other two, Candy Store Rock and Hots on for Nowhere center the second side. Candy Store Rock is a 50’s style straight up rock and roll number. Hots on for Nowhere features one of my favorite lines in a Led Zeppelin song:

(On the) corner of Bleeker and nowhere,
In the land of not quite day…

Every time I go to New York, I can’t help wandering down to Bleeker Street and singing this line to myself.

Those two songs are sandwiched between some standard blues, Nobody’s Fault But Mine and Tea for One. Tea for One is an original Led Zeppelin slow blues in the style of Since I’ve Been Loving You. Written by Plant in a New York hotel while on tour, Tea for One has a literal meaning: the lonely Plant, away from his family.

Nobody’s Fault But Mine is an old blues that has been covered by many artists since the 1960s. Other than the title and lyrics, Led Zeppelin’s version is unrecognizable as the original.

Presence, the first Led Zeppelin album without an acoustic guitar son, was a backwards album for Led Zeppelin. When it was released 35 years ago this week, the critics liked it, the fans less so. Every previous Led Zeppelin album had been received opposite to that: loved by the fans, hated by critics.

It has also aged very well, improving on listening through the years. A powerful, dynamic album, it was Led Zeppelin at their best. It has aged well and has become over the years, my personal favourite Led Zeppelin album.

No Rick, it is not crap and yes, if you just understood it you would know that.

The Freedom of Music, The Mighty Zep Led Zeppelin, Presence

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

Gibson Guitars had a list of the top 50 front men (and women) of all time on their webpage. Actually, they had two lists: one put together by Josh Todd of Buckcherry, Chad Kroeger of Nickelback and Ric Olsen of Berlin, plus staff at Gibson.com. The other list was chosen by readers. Here’s the top 10 of each list:

Gibson

1.Mick Jagger
2. Freddie Mercury
3. Robert Plant
4. Elvis
5. James Brown
6. Jimi Hendrix
7. Michael Jackson
8. Roger Daltrey
9. Prince
10. Jim Morrison

Readers

1. Freddie Mercury
2. Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden)
3. Marc Bolan
4. Bon Scott
5. Robert Plant
6. Brian Johnson
7. Mick Jagger
8. Bono
9. Robin Zander
10. Elvis

We can pick and natter about the list, and ultimately that’s what these lists are for. So lets:

Really? Freddie Mercury is pretty much the undisputed best? Really?? While the “experts” pick Jagger, the readers placed him well enough down the list to make Freddie indisputable. One suspects however that too many fans think of Mick circa 2005, or 1995, when he looked like a skeletal old man refusing to acknowledge his age. Longevity has it’s curses…

There is an argument to be made that Elvis wasn’t really a front man, he was the act. And if we are allowing guys like Elvis, why not Frank Sinatra? Could you make a list of front men, and not have Sinatra on the top 25, never mind the top 50? Hell, Neil Diamond is there. And not to pick on Elvis, the same questions apply to Jackie Wilson, Otis Redding, Garth Brooks and, too a lesser degree, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elton John &tc….

And what’s this about Stephen Tyler being at #11 on the Gibson list and #22 on the fan list, yet Rod Stewart is #22 on the Gibson and doesn’t make the fan list? People don’t seem to realize how much Tyler copped Stewart’s Faces act. Oh, I know, I know, he copped Jagger not Stewart. Except other than looking kinda, sorta like Jagger, there is little comparison. He dresses more like an early 70’s Keith than Mick, but his stage stuff is all Stewart. The scarves hanging off the microphone, the dragging the mike stand around the stage. All Rod, before Aerosmith came along. Granted, Tyler uses silk scarves and Stewart football scarves, but that’s details. The point is, if Stephen Tyler is to be so high on the list (and don’t get me wrong, he belongs up there), then Faces era Stewart belongs in that neighbourhood.

Quibbles and Bits,however, as the dog is always saying when we argue philosophy (these discussions usually involve vodka). If Gibson readers think Freddie Mercury over Bruce Dickinson, then I’ll not argue. He wouldn’t top my list – and you know there’ll be a list – but then again, Bruce Dickinson? Not on my list.

Dickinson and Robin Zander. When I said top front men, did Bruce Dickinson and Robin Zander come to mind? Iron Maiden and Cheap Trick’s front men? Is Zander even Cheap Trick’s guy, wouldn’t Rick Neilson really qualify as Cheapest Trick? But lets face reality. A couple of fan web sites put fans on notice there was a readers poll and a “lets get Robin to the top of the list,” button. Even accounting for that, however, Marc Bolan? Who’d a thunk it?

For those who don’t know, Marc Bolan was the leader of T. Rex, although that was by no means his only band. T. Rex had a significant American hit with Bang a Gong. Bolan was their singer and guitar player, had male model good looks (in fact he did some modelling), the requisite big curly hair, and played a Les Paul on stage. He is credited with inventing Glam Rock, what we here in America tended to call Glitter. Think Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie, and you have Glam (or think Cherrie Currie dressing up as David Bowie in “The Runaway’s” and you’re there).

T. Rex released nine albums from 1970-1977, a decent output, to put it mildly. In fact, Bolan’s discography is impressive. In September 1977, however, Bolan was killed in a car crash, a passenger in a purple mini, in London. He was two weeks shy of being 30.

The thing is, I have never, ever, had somebody mention how good Marc Bolan is to me. In all the years, and all the music conversations, never once has his name even come up. It’s not a name that would have ever occurred to me. And to be clear, I’m not poo-poohing the idea that Bolan is the third best front man ever: I have no idea if he is or not. I have zero frame of reference.

Or at least I had no frame of reference. What did we do before the internet? Before YouTube?

Marc Bolan fan: Marc Bolan is the greatest.
me: Is he now?
Marc Bolan fan: Don’t argue with me, I’m telling you
me: Never seen ‘im.
Marc Bolan fan: Well you should check out… um…er…

But with YouTube, there he is, in full purple colour (the 70’s were incredible for music, but they really were a crime against fashion). He is more charismatic than athletic, all good looks and pretty smile. The physical manifestations of the job he leaves for others, the heavy Les Paul keeps him pretty rooted in spot. But for that, he’s not bad. I see what they are talking about, although he’s not about to make my list.

My list: you knew it was coming… here it is, my list of the top ten (plus some)front men (and women).

1. Roger Daltrey – he moved constantly, he had all that blonde curly hair. He had the most powerful voice in rock, and didn’t have trouble singing on stage. He would twirl his microphone by the cord sending it twenty feet in the air and during Who Are You he ran on the spot through the whole song. In Won’t Get Fooled Again he offered up the greatest scream in rock and roll, that counts here.

2. Mick Jagger – Not tired old guy circa now Mick Jagger, but the young Mick Jagger that preened and pranced. Pre 1980’s Mick who exuded sexuality out of every pore. Once he put on the knee pads it was pretty much over, but I’ll even give him the knee pads tour of 1981. Mick pretty much invented the genre and virtually everybody else is an imitator to one degree or another. He deserves to be much higher than seven.

3. Robert Plant – The best band in the world, bar none (even the dog doesn’t argue that point with me). By a long, long shot. Heads and shoulders above the next. So how low can their front man be? Not below 3, that’s how low.

4. Bruce Springsteen – Even now he fronts an energy packed band, never stopping, never seeming to breathe for two, two-and-a-half, three hours. If you’ve never seen him, it’s exhausting. And yet, those in the know will tell you he’s nothing compared to what he was in 1978.

5. Janis Joplin – Rent the DVD Festival Express and skip to Cry Baby. Those chills running up and down your spine, that’s why Janis Joplin is not just the token woman on this list.

6. Russel Mael – Every one who makes one of these lists, every critic needs their obscure, arty band to prove their bona fides: Sparks are mine.

7. Stephen Tyler – He really is good, no matter who did what first.

8. Alice Cooper – He hung himself, onstage, with mascara running down his face. He wore a boa constrictor for a necklace. He danced with a corpse, and with skeletons in top hat and tails (with walking sticks, naturally). That stuff counts for something.

9. Rod Sewart – Of the Faces, not of Do You Think I’m Sexy. He tied scarves around his mike, duct taped the mic to the stand and taught Stephen Tyler how it’s done – the tutu is a but much though.

10. Freddie Mercury – I have no frame of reference having never seen Queen live or watched any Queen concert footage, but if he’s #2 for the Gibson experts and #1 for their readers, that’s good enough for me.

10a. Elton John – The electric boots, the mohair suits: OK that technically isn’t Elton John, but he has worn both. Also, he has dressed by like Luis XIV, worn oversized glasses with windshield wipers on them and played Crocodile Rock on stage opposite a crocodile. At the end of the day, this is supposed to be entertainment.

10b. Ian Hunter – The shades, the rock star hair and cockney accent. Ian Hunter was still doing Glam in 1980, and getting away with it. You couldn’t get away with Glam in 1980.

10c. J.Geils – More fun on stage than anybody you have ever seen, that has to count for something.

10d. David Lee Roth – He can jump microphone high, and do the splits. He wore yellow jumpsuits. He once said, “I’m not like this because I’m a rock star; I’m a rock star because I’m like this.” Some people are born to be front men, some have front men-ish-ness thrust upon them. Diamond Dave is of the former.

10e. Bob Seger – Since we’re allowing Bruce Springsteen…
The most fun you will ever have at a concert.

The Freedom of Music, The Mighty Zep, This Week on my I-Pod Aerosmith, Bruce Dickinson, Cerrie Currie, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Faces, Frank SInatra, Freddie MErcury, James Brown, Kieth Richards, Marc Bolan, Mick Jagger, Neil Diamond, Queen, Robert Plant, Robin Zander, Rod Stewart, Rolling Stones, Stephen Tyler, The Runaways, The Who

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

“Now there’s a man who’s never let you down.” So remarks a friend of Nick Hornby when he tells him he is a Rod Stewart fan. Yes, admits Hornby. “…it‘s true Rod‘s record is not without its blemishes.” Us old Robert Plant fans know a thing or two about disappointment.

On his last solo album, Mighty Rearranger, Plant wrote,

My peers may flirt with cabaret,
Some fake the rebel yell.

I assumed he was talking about Rod Stewart’s American Songbook. But then his next album was a duet of old bluegrass songs with Alison Krauss. No rebel yell in sight, Plant became a crooner, and not a very good one.

It wasn’t just new songs either. He is currently on tour with his new band, Band of Joy, and bootlegs have been circulating since the first show . Get your hands one and see what he’s done to the old Zeppelin classic, Houses of the Holy to learn about butcher’s block song arranging. At least Rod Stewart still sings Stay With Me as a rocker. Plant can’t even work up the enthusiasm to sing Rock ‘n‘ Roll from the nutsack, preferring a rockabilly arrangement. I’d have a hard time deciding whether to laugh or cry if I could just keep my eyes open.

But disappointment is about more than a real shitty version of Tall Cool One.

I have a list. A mental list, not a sheet of paper with a bunch of bullet points, but a list nonetheless. It is artists who have earned a pass from me, who’s work I buy automatically based on past performance. All members of Led Zeppelin are on the list. Or at least they were, until Raising Sand.

I did what I always do with a Robert Plant album, I listened to it a number of times. I convinced myself I liked it. Then one day I listened to one of the Plant/Krauss live shows. A couple of songs stood out: in the Mood, a Plant hit from his second solo album, The Principle of Moments. It’s a great song, and the producers of Glee should be all over it, because it would work. The other was Battle of Evermore, the Zeppelin mandolin masterpiece. I wondered if Plant and Krauss would do it, thought it was the perfect song for them as it was folk/acoustic and a duet with a female singer not dissimilar to Krauss. I was excited at the possibility, and never more disappointed in the reality. The arrangement sucked all the energy, and thus all the life out of the song. Folk was out, bad acoustic country was in.

As I listened, a realization dawned on me, like the Grinch listening to the Who’s singing on Christmas morning. There he stood, the Emperor, Robert Plant, clothe-less. In a flash I’d realized, I hadn’t enjoyed Robert Plant in more than twenty years. Other than the odd song, you have to go to Now and Zen since I liked what Robert Plant had done. His first two solo albums were, in my opinion, brilliant. Now and Zen, his fourth, was good, very good even. But everything else since the passing of John Bonham was sub par, even lousy sometimes.

Oh sure, the Page/Plant thing was good, that first Unleaded album a treat. But the follow up, Walking into Clarksville simply isn’t good. And it isn’t the guitar work, or the music that doesn’t work on that album. No, Robert Plant has been, for the better part of thirty years, disappointing. As the time approaches when he releases his next effort, I’m prepared to be disappointed, prepared not to like it, fully prepared not to buy it.

So what happened?

Plant released his first single from the new album, Los Lobos Angel Dance. It’s in that tempo, he sings it in that voice. By all rights, I should be feeling pretty smug that I’m not being fooled by this guy again. Except…

Except, I like it.  It has a groove I can latch on to, and if he’s not giving a Viking yell over an oar pounding rhythm, he at least sounds interested.

Damn You Robert Plant, nice clothes.

I still don’t know if I can sit through a whole album of new Robert Plant, not sure it won’t be breathtakingly dull after three or four songs. But Angel Dance is Plant’s best song in at least three albums.

It’s not gonna put Plant back on my list, but maybe, just maybe, he won’t disappoint this time.

The Freedom of Music, The Mighty Zep, This Week on my I-Pod Led Zeppelin, Los Lobos, Robert Plant, Rod Stewart

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

Thirty years seems like a long time.  Long enough that if you fight for that long, they’ll call it the 30-year war, unlike, say WWII, which they don’t call the 6.002 year war. No, in warfare, thirty years is a long time. Not so many years ago, 5 times 30 or so, 30 years was pretty much a human lifespan, much less if the Germanic countries are in the middle of 30 years of killing each other. Yes, thirty years seems a long time.

Then I woke up yesterday and check my e mail to find out it’s a thirty year anniversary.  On August 15, 1979 Led Zeppelin released their final studio album, In Through The Out Door. It’s not just their last album, however, it is also the only one I have a direct reference to it’s release. Being sixteen in the summer of 1979, I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan and had spent the last two years loving learning their catalogue. In Through The Out Door I waited for anxiously all that summer, as the release date was more a suggestion, and nobody knew for sure when it would hit the stores. I was in London at the time, where Led Zeppelin was in the middle of their triumphant return to English soil and were kings (or despised aristocrats who weren’t fit to lick the boots of the punks like the Sex Pistols and the Clash: sometimes point of view is everything). I bought extra copies because rumour incorrectly suggested the album would be released in Europe before America, and how cool would it be to be the first on the block to have a copy of the new Led Zeppelin album?

Can it really be thirty years? Suddenly thirty years doesn’t seem like such a long time.

In Through The Out Door is a much maligned Led Zeppelin album, undeservedly so. Even Jimmy Page has disparaged it, citing All My Love as not a very Zeppelin song. However, the music world was changing leading into the 1980’s, and whether Jimmy Page likes it or not, the long solos and extended jams where not going to cut it much longer. The three to five minute song was back, and Led Zeppelin let it be known with In Through The out Door that they were ready to face the new decade. All My Love may not have been a very Zeppelin song, but was very much a song of it’s time.

Besides, the album also had Fool in the Rain and In The Evening on it. For all their great music through the years, Fool in the Rain belongs among the top few. A great song that sound so unlike something Zeppelin would do, and yet was immediately identifiable as Zeppelin. And it’s not just Robert Plant’s voice that gave the game away, John Bonham is recognizable as the drummer on Fool in the Rain within a few bars of the opening. Not many drummers have such a unique sound, but not many drummers back a band as good as Led Zeppelin.

As for In The Evening, When Guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Plant got together in the 90’s for a couple of albums and tours In The Evening was one of the songs they played. How bad can it be if they still considered it worthwhile fifteen years later, especially when you have Zeppelin’s catalogue to pick through.

In the world of rock and roll, however, a good to great album is not in the hits, not in the top three songs, it’s in the filler. Sometimes, the filler is just that, throw away music that had negligible impact on your listening life. In better albums, the filler is almost as good as the top songs. In Through The Out Door has some very effective fill. South Bound Saurez, full of honky tonk piano and vocal hooks. Hot Dog, the mock-country song that you can’t help but laugh along with.

In Through The Out Door is not one of the seminal Led Zeppelin works, although it ranks among my favourites. Historically it is important because it was Led Zeppelins last. But in truth, it’s anniversary is a big deal because I will never be sixteen again, never be that excited because band is releasing new music.

It can’t really have been thirteen years, can it?

The Freedom of Music, The Mighty Zep, This Week on my I-Pod 1979, In Through the Out Door, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, London, Sex Pistols, The CLash

Dr. Jimmy Page, OBE.

It hardly seems right. Proof that the world really is running amok. Jimmy Page OBE, was strange enough. Dr. Jimmy Page, almost beyond words. Jimmy Page, senior citizen is almost too much to bear.

The only man in the world who can make a pair of pants with a dragon crawling up the leg seem cool, a true master of the guitar, the guy who put the Led in the Zeppelin, Jimmy Page is today 65 years old.

At Home in Hespeler mourns his youth, and celebrates some of the finest music ever made.  With luck, Jimmy Page will spend part of his 65th year on various stages around the world, spreading the gospel, astounding the believers.

Happy 65th Birthday Jimmy Page.

Rockin' and Rollin' and Never Forgettin', The Mighty Zep, Uncategorized