Led Zeppelin ... I Dig Them

That notion may come as a collossal shock-o-roonie to you, Gate, but I assure you, it's quite true. I dig Led Zeppelin.

When I lived in San Antonio in the early 80s, Led Zep was on the radio stations practically every third song. In fact the radio stations seemed five to ten years behind the contemporary musical currents ... music seemed never to have progressed beyond 1975 or at best 1978. Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult, Fleetwood Mac, Boston, AC/DC, Led Zep, and Black Sabbath were among the heavily played faves in S.A.  It wasn't until I happened on the local college radio station that I was able to escape from the excess of 70s sludge.

But back to Led Zep.  Back then I didn't think one way or another about them. Their songs were on the radio and you listened to them and thought they were pretty trippy (or loud) and maybe one of the stoners had heard something about Aleister Crowley and that was that.  Many years later and after having expanded my musical horizons considerably, I heard Misty Mountain Hop and realized that Led Zep were playing the blues ... loud and thunderous to be sure, but basically the blues. At this point I was able to reassess them and then I really began to dig them.

Their first album followed in the tradition of Jimmie Hendrix's fuzzed-out, psychedelia ... only played LOUDLY, their subsequent albums showed a greater depth both musically and lyrically ... featuring shifting tempo changes, layered musical textures, a heaping of Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn, and playing in a variety of genres from straight ahead rock 'n roll, to English folk to the blues.  Take The Battle of Evermore, from Led Zeppelin (4), with Sandy Dennis's etheral vocals, other worldly lyrics and a plaintive accoustic accompaniment. This is surely the Precursor for Current 93 and David Tibet. The inevitable Stairway to Heaven starts out the English folk style then suddenly turns into a thunderous blues which reminds me of Blind Willie Johnson on one of his visionary freak outs.  Their cover of Memphis Minnie's When the Levee Breaks is an apocalyptic vision of a watery end, practically an invocation to Gotterdammerung.

Led Zep would go on to wallow in their own excesses and Houses of the Holy is their last great album ... with some parts of Physical Graffiti bringing up the rear. By In Through the Out Door they'd become repetitious and anachronistic ... what was innovative in 1971 was shopworn by 1979 and besides,  punk had arrived from Britain.