The Freedom of Music: Robert Flirts With Cabaret
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.
Led Zeppelin was really a blues band. I love bluegrass music and think it is a legit musical expression. It is difficult to play it and fake it, I say. Plant does well and Allison is genius in the genre. I think Plant has found his calling and he knows he would look a fool doing tours of Zepplin songs at his age.