It’s a soggy night in the Ozarks. It just finished raining hard for about 90 minutes. When it’s coming down like that, the old Winnebago seems more confining because you can hear and feel it surrounding you. It was actually quite warm today; got up to 61. We dodged the bullet on the ice. They got hit hard north of here and slammed to the west in Oklahoma.
I went to see my neurologist, Dr. Hopewell this morning. That is his real name, by the way. He doesn’t win the 1st prize for the ironic doctor name in these parts though; there is a gynecologist in Branson named Richard Stiff. Sounds made up but it’s true.
Anyway, nothing out of the ordinary from Dr. Hopewell. He seems to think I’m holding pretty steady and doesn’t want to see me again for six months. That’s cool because I have been going every three months up until now.
I’ve been to YouTube and checked out a lot of the videos from the Led Zeppelin show last night. It sounds to me like those guys were playing well. The audience clips are poor quality video and the audio is worse so, that’s why I didn’t put one of them up. The BBC news clips have bits and pieces of the show and those sound great but can’t be embedded.
Anyway, they sounded great; sounded like a band. As always, there is far too much emphasis on how they looked. I heard one review that said Robert Plant looked like an “Anglo, Wild Bill Hickock” and another that called him a “Viking Elder”. They looked like 60-year-old guys playing music, that’s all.
I saw a bit of a Fox News thing this morning, one of those goofy round table discussions and the topic was; Should Led Zeppelin be doing concerts in their 60’s? Like, should we allow these geezers to perform? The attitude is just bizarre to me. When I was young, I would see somebody like Basie and his band or Duke Ellington, older guys who were setting an example. You put the suit on and go to work, until you leave this earth. That’s what you do, put the suit on and go to work. It was what was expected of a musician.
The common wisdom seems to be that older rock and roll guys shouldn’t be playing because they can’t maintain the visual image that goes along with the music. Do you think for a second that Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club was not a visual act? Duke matured, his music matured and the audience matured. That’s how it’s supposed to evolve.
But, the media is constantly hawking this youth-centric culture. So, the story is old guys playing rock and roll. That’s what they can sink their teeth into. They aren’t going to talk about whether it has substance, just how it looks.
The big question they’re all asking is; Will Zep tour or, will it be a one off? And, what you hear about is twenty million people visited the website to try and get a ticket and Zep could make big money.
Those guys don’t need the money. If they do tour, it will be for a better reason. The reason they did the show last night was to honor Ahmet Ertegen. That is an indication of where their heads are. They could have gone for the dough at any time instead they did it to honor this guy they admired.
I think that if they had fun and, if they think they are making good music, they will tour. They’ll put the suit on and go to work.
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Tags: Led Zeppelin
phlembol wrote,
I knew a urologist named Dr. Ho.
You are so right about it being about the music, not the look. It seems though that a tour of these guys would not be a good thing. They are legends. The music is legendary. Surely they wouldn’t be happy doing the same old songs forever though. And I doubt that the fans would be quick to embrace new songs or sounds. I’m afraid everyone would be let down.
phlembol’s last blog post..Christmas is mine too.
Link | December 12th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Pribek wrote,
Good to have you in phlembol. Earlier today, I heard that Zep is already kicking around the idea of playing a string of dates at Madison Square Garden.
Part of the problem is that they are “legends”. Because of that, the perception is that every thing they undertake has to be a huge spectacle.
“Surely they wouldn’t be happy doing the same old songs forever though. And I doubt that the fans would be quick to embrace new songs or sounds.”
That speaks directly to the heart of the issue. I have a few observations on this.
To begin with, whether they play the same songs or new ones shouldn’t matter (in a perfect world). If you look at performers who have logged an entire career, some continue to develop new songs, others slow down on that but continue to interpret their working catalogue. Either can be interesting.
You may be right about the notion that the fans would not embrace this. If so, then the problem is with the fans. They are wanting to cling to something that no longer exists.
In all of the glowing reviews I read about the Zep show, the only negatives I came across were comments about some arrangements (”Stairway To Heaven” in particular) differing from the recorded version and, some of the crowd weren’t too enthused with the improvisational parts of the show.
These guys are musicians. I don’t understand why a musician would be expected to give the same performance every time. That isn’t music, it’s acting. Music is a form of communication. If you feel different, it comes out different. So, if the fans can’t accept it, it means that they are unwilling or unable to hold down one end of a dialogue. The same way some people can’t carry on a conversation because they don’t listen.
Link | December 12th, 2007 at 5:40 pm