punks who liked led zeppelin

yeah, true dat -- but i was thinking more the old crusty punk and post-punk dudes than the flannel crew.

I was too young, but even subsequently never liked them. But was I a punk? guess not.

"flipper" had an album called "american grafishy".

a.c. newman (dork-punk) said that the next "new pornographers" album will be less rock,but when it does rock, it will be in a led zep kinda way.

oops,forgot "the who" and maybe "kinks" for some...

a

I think American is the key word there.

The rise of classic rock radio ruined Zep's cool factor for a decade.

And I'm old enough to have experienced all this first-hand

Zep was blasting from every El Camino, Firebird, and Camaro in the land. Behind the wheel was some drunk who was about to either kill you in his car or get out and beat you up or puke on you. This was your big brother or your dad.

The other younger bands that were rising out of Zep's primordial blooze -- the LA Sunset Strip scene, Ratt, Crue, hair metal.

None of this was "cool." If you hung with the smart set back then, you had to hide your Zep love away.

Clearly, LZ represented the aristocracy of UK music— alongside ELP, the Bee Gees, Yes, Elton John, Queen and every other rilly big band— to which punks were ideologically opposed.

Judging from the way that they then proceeded to chase us all 'round the area hurling insults, death threats, bottles, bricks and anything else that came to hand however, I somehow don't think they exactly saw us as fellow travellers....

"Nobody "cool" liked Zep from about 1982 to I dunno know when. 1990 or something?"

Nobody I knew or considered cool would have admitted to liking Led Zeppelin from about 1976 to about 1982.

Iirc it was Killing Joke who were largely responsible for rehabilitating Zep for post-punk audiences; indeed, unlikely 'though it may seem, Jaz later (iirc) arranged and wrote the score for the London Symphony Orchestra's performance of "Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin"; and he and Youth produced the album and wrote the sleevenotes.

Where's Alex In NYC when you need him?

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000040V9.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

OTM

"the clash also != cool"

Maybe not, but between 1977 and 1982 they were certainly a far better facsimile of cool than Led Zeppelin.

This Heat, y'all.

I can honestly say I own no zeppelin records, and still don't care for them. (I borrowed the recent live compilation thingy, but never got round to actually playing it).

Which of two British bands any given bunch of Septics considered to be more "cool" at any given point, is actually of quite breathtaking lack of interest or relevance to me.

"Well, everyone seemed to be into Zeppelin, then when punk happened, there were a lot that denied that they ever were..... That also went for Yes, ELP and all the rest."

OTM

"I confess to a couple of Rick Wakeman albums (won in a competition)"

I confess to Yessongs and [shuffles feet nervously] Frampton Comes Alive [hangs head in shame].

At the risk of going off at a complete tangent, what did the average US punker think of Boston / Cheap Trick / Foreigner / Grand Funk Railroad / Heart / Journey / Kansas / Kiss / Montrose / Ted Nugent / REO Speedwagon / Styx in 1977?

Did you all try to sing "Do You Feel Like We Do?" as if you were using a talkbox too?

Well, at least, I was in 1976.

Actually no, I was probably right the first time.

Which of two British bands any given bunch of Septics considered to be more "cool" at any given point, is actually of quite breathtaking lack of interest or relevance to me.

i think we may be agreeing with each other here. at any rate, i feel the same as you.

Which has the more obvious debt to Zeppelin? Those bands or Ratt and Motley Crue?

(septics= Yanks)

Quite a few bands were quite vocal in their love of Cheap Trick and Kiss (not always the same bands, though). Not so much the other bands you mention, though I suspect there may have been a few punks into Grand Funk.

I can not believe how many of the elite young punk bands of today will unironically rock out to some of those bands. I used to play cards with one such band, and around midnight they would break out Boston vinyl and even Huey Lewis.

I just don't hear that. It may have been more profound, but it was not more obvious.

The people how were in - and into - bands like Bad Brains and Minor Threat actually expressed admiration for that beer-swillin', gun 'totin', racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, good ol' boy, redneck throwback twat "Nuge"?

You astonish me.

I had "Dog eat dog" as a promo single, again won in a comp. Radio 210 used to have phone in competitions that were 1) easy 2) undersubscribed.

MacKaye: That’s pretty hard to say. When I was a kid I listened to Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and Janis Joplin. In the '70s I was a huge Ted Nugent fan. In the '70s I actually thought of Nugent as an animal rights guy because at that time the everyone ate meat, you just didn’t even think about it. Anyone who didn’t eat meat was considered a freak and the meat we ate just came in these little packages. I read this interview with Nugent and he was saying “I don’t eat meat from packages and if I eat meat it’s the meat I’m gonna kill.” Now I thought that seemed fair enough. I had in my mind that he was a real animal rights sort of guy. He and I are politically eons apart but me and Rollins used to go see him play. We liked him quite a bit.

Zep, Crue, Ratt, hair metal: Heavily blues-based hard rock. Singer sports large bulge in tight pants. Lots of heroin for Zep, more coke for the bands that came after.

Seattle grunge: hardly any blues apparent. Large bulges, if any, tucked away discreetly. Also lots of heroin.

Zep had a dumb side and a smart side. These two camps reflect those poles.

http://www.geocities.com/harryenf/2-1fab5.jpg

"Who was the lead singer of Genesis before Phil Collins? Please send
your answers on a postcard to Peter Gabriel Competition"

(multiple x-post)

c

When I was 9 I was - ahem "into" Gary Glitter. Obviously no-one had even the faintest suspicion back then....

I suppose you're going to tell me that there's some hidden reference to rampant paedophilia somewhere in the lyrics?

Kurt Cobain was fascinated with Leadbelly -- who was much less a Son House style bluesman than he was a Mance Lipscomb-style performer of multiple styles, a "songster."

That's the song about it being 11:59, almost time one more minute to go..

Chorus: "Happy birthday, you're gonna get it on your..."
repeat etc...

So, he's actually waiting until she's legal.

So, he's actually waiting until she's legal."

I assumed "it" was a cake or birthday present or something.

I was only 9.

(you won't, put it that way)

'Full On Kevin's Mom,' hell, most of the stuff off of Loud Love or UltramegaOK could be argued as Brownsville Station inspired.
Mudhoney, The Melvins, Soundgarden, Green River, The U-Men, Mother Love Bone... None of them were all that far from the '70s hard rock (or '80s hard rock either). And Nirvana's Aero Zepplin is a bit of tribute.

I'm not sure if Sonic Youth count but they said the four symbols (one for each member) on Daydream Nation were an homage of sorts to Zep IV, not to mention the whole double-album concept. "Quest for the Cup" apparently quotes "Whole Lotta Love" but I'm not sure I've heard it.

2xpost

Plenty of hardcore kids were into Zep in mid-eighties Montreal. It wasn't a main staple, sure, and you weren't likely to hear the Immigrant Song blasting at a skate session, but the stuff was not taboo.

Not at all, my surprise is very genuine - I would have expected Ted Nugent to have been seen as representing the very antithesis of everything that Bad Brains, Minor Threat and their ilk were all about; in much the same way as Led Zep; together with "ELP, the Bee Gees, Yes, Elton John, Queen and every other rilly big band"; were seen as being the antithesis of everything The Clash and their ilk were all about in the UK.

Only more so.

And probably being equally revisionist in the process.

Is that a "punks who liked Steely Dan" thread I see on yonder horizon?

At the risk of pissing on your fireworks 'though, I'm afraid I wouldn't have said he counted as a punk really, no.

This is true, although many of them have claimed that they were.

Here's what I believe now: it was very unfashionable for hip people to be into Zeppelin from about 1976 to 1986, when the Beasties started sampling them and the Replacements were running rampant. But these were bands on the vanguard of the new era -- they ushered in the 1990s, both of 'em, in their own ways.

Wildly popular Klosterman-approved bands like Motley Crue, Ratt, Warrant, VH, et al were the forces to be brought down -- perhaps because bands like Soundgarden believed that they had bastardized and cheapened Zep's legacy. Which was correct, in my view.

Grunge finished what the Beasties and the 'Mats started, as did the passing of time. No longer was Zeppelin big brother rock. And now the DVD and the White Stripes have reinforced Zep's cool status.

And Robert Plant was quoted many, many times back when it was happening that he loved punk. Later on, I read interviews where he stated that he told his producer on some solo shit that he wanted it to sound like Big Black.

So yeah, Robert Plant was punk.
If he wasn't, he woulda been David Coverdale.

A cool person.

this song was aimed at the growing punk culture that saw hating Led Zeppelin as essential to their punk image. the song actually has sort of a Zeppelinized punk feel to it. it was the last song on the band's last album, CODA, an album that they actually considered releasing under an assumed name to prevent the punk influence from hurting sales. i think the song is basically saying that they (zeppelin's members) saw themselves as being mentally little different from the punks that hated them so much, and that they didn`t understand the hate they were shown by punk bands and their followers.

http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=7815

Of course, in the same link, someone else used Occam's Razor:

I think it's about lovemaking, 'ya know' ;-)

Problem is that terms like "hip" and "fashionable" don't graft well onto many of the punk/post-punk/underground scenes in that time period, esp. in the States. At the Roxy in London or the Mudd Clubb in NYC, yeah sure. But in some suburban backwater, where a bunch of combat-booted outcasts would loiter at Macdonalds while huddled over copies of Maximum Rock N Roll? (kinda overblown, sorry) Not so much.

compare footage of Sex Pistols fans in London with footage in the States. In London everybody's in leather with "punk" hairstyles. In the States, you get kinda gay-seeming dudes in afros and cut-offs, totally sloppy.

How the fuck do the Replacements get invoked into a conversation about Led Zeppelin?

because they covered led zep (and kiss and grand funk railroad for that matter).

You can't make conclusions about UK vs US punks by comparing the Pistols' tour through the US, playing to heartland audiences that by and large at that point barely knew what punk was (and by and large were not "Pistols fans"), to their gigs in London clubs, where the scene had its epicenter.

FWIW, I see a similar process going on right now (on a smaller scale) with Guns N' Roses. Most of today's hipsters despise them right now, but I'll bet in five years or so there will be a revival.

Maybe there's a better class of hipster where you live, ZR.

because they covered led zep (and kiss and grand funk railroad for that matter).

Drunken warbling covers don't exactly count. I still can't think of a Replacements song that sounds directly influenced by Led Zeppelin.

haha pete, that's easily my favorite ivy shirt

Zep had some seriously cheesy moments and their more obvious, crass followers were often morons.

Zep was one of the band's that went into Spinal Tap's blender, and for a period of years after that movie, you couldn't take any band with as many druidical overtones as Zep seriously at all, no matter how powerful their music. The stuff was considered a laughingstock and an embarassment.

Creed. Staind. Nickelback. Hoobastank.

I don't think there will ever be a revival for them.

Psst...the Plugz' Electrify Me is the greatest L.A. punk album.

There's a story in Rollins' Hallucinations Of Grandeur tour diary (don't know if it made it into Get In The Van) about sleeping in some Italian squat on a Euro BF tour, playing ZZ Top's Tres Hombres on the communal jambox and telling all the punks that it was the new Anti-Nowhere League album, bumming them out something fierce.

Probably? He wrote a glowing review of IV when it came out.

they were one of the first bands i ever loved. although maybe i was a hipster when i was 11, who knows.

Apart from Alice who loves "Sweet child of mine", so I'll give them points for that one.

Axl Rose was bloody good at that Freddie Mercury tribute gig a few years back 'though wasn't he?

He certainly made a better replacement for Freddie Mercury than Paul Rdgers does anyway.

x-post, Stew - *before* I liked Glam obv, Bowie, much chartpop, The Who, Pink Floyd etc etc. But never LZ, because a) they didn't make singles b) I associated them with sisters' boyfriends. Not cool.

America's, Blighty! If it wasn't for us, you'd be playing Skiffle for Nazis!

I'm guessing they weren't very cool in the UK in the early-to-mid 70s

At a rough estimate I'd say about half the threads that deal broadly in punk / post punk etc. have contained elements of TS: usa vs. uk.

"how many punk/hardcore dudes were in metal bands by like '89, '90?!?!?"

I'm sure we've covered this before but off the top of my head (and once again from an entirely anglocentric standpoint):

Algy Ward: The Saints The Damned > Tank
Paul Gray: Eddie & The Hot Rods > The Damned > UFO (what is it about The Damned that...? no, on second thoughts, don;t answer that 'cos I don't think I want to hear it!)
Fred Purser: Penetration > Tygers Of Pan Tang
Slaughter & The Dogs > Studio Sweethears > Slaughter (not, not that Slaughter, the British ones who had previously been Slaughter & the Dogs and were shite)
Discharge: a great band > a crap one
Southern Death Cult > Death Cult > The Cult (see "Discharge")

When it's 1977 and they like Led Zep. In my house.

-- Stewart Osborne (stewart.osborn...), February 9th, 2006 3:30 PM. (later)

"Killing Joke, obviously."

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), February 11th, 2006 1:12 PM. (later)

It may have taken a little time, but my incantations managed to summons forth The Beast from his lair eventually.

Good to have you back Mr. In NYC Sir, you've been sorely missed - and I think you're going to be raining down some good old fashioned fire and brimstone on some of the fatuous cheese-monkeys 'round here when you see the frankly disgraceful amount of fire-dishonouring that's been going on in your absence!

Hahahahaha!!! Awesome. :)Thats very, very cool.