"Bring on Sha-Na-Na!"

Like the Oscars, I’m not sure how relevant the Grammys ever were, but I have to congratulate Robert Plant on winning a bunch last night, especially after the general disrespect the music industry showed Led Zeppelin during their heyday. Though his album with Alison Krauss came out well over a year ago, it’s quite good as far as mellow country-tinged albums go. Great to listen to while writing or just sitting around the house.

I’ve been a little bummed out about the direction of the music industry lately. It may just be that I’m getting older. Let’s face it—most music these days is geared towards the 14-18 crowd. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but over the years it’s led to music becoming more disposable. Today Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are old pros, and though they’re both talented I can’t see them standing the test of time. My generation never had a Beatles, a Led Zeppelin, a Guns N’ Roses—even Pearl Jam and Nirvana were a little before our time. While we can still enjoy the old music, there hasn’t been a seminal event in music for decades, and the old styles are becoming more and more tired.

This could all just be due to the fact that I’m out of touch. Apparently Chris Brown got into some kind of trouble that prevented him from attending the awards last night, and to be honest with you I’m not 100% sure who that is. People come and go now without my noticing. As Grandpa Simpson once said, “I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me.” There’s a good chance I’m already far down that road. Have I become the kind of joyless old man who screams out “Bring on Sha-na-na!” at Woodstock? I hope not.

But I don’t think I’m mistaking in the lack of passion in the industry today. Musicians tend to hop in and go with the flow, and individual expression falls by the wayside. During the entire 8 years of the Bush administration, there was a deafening silence in anti-war songs or any serious statements from mainstream musicians (with few notable exceptions), and it’s strange that something as liberating as music has become, in an odd way, so conservative.

Yet there’s no way to give up on music. Arthur Machen once called it “the perfect art,” and I couldn’t agree more. As writers, “We are forced to devise incidents and circumstances and plots, to ‘make up a story;’ we translate a hill into a tale, conceive lovers to explain a brook, turn the perfect into the imperfect.” Musicians, on the other hand, have the power to speak directly to an emotion, without covering it up in the mechanisms of plot. For a writer to express a broken heart, for example, she has to create characters and a story and work her way to the emotion indirectly; a musician can strum the right notes and we instantly feel what they feel. Bruce Springsteen’s song, “The Wrestler,” conveys everything in three minutes that the movie spends two hours and millions of dollars showing us.

But we might just be experiencing a lull right now. There are great musicians out there, great songs are still being written. The whole world moves at a faster and faster pace, and it’s easy for great music to get buried as the industry moves on to someone else. This kid gives me a lot of hope, and he might just be on to something.

As Eric Cartman once so eloquently put it, “Real guitars are for old people.”

What Happened, Zeppelin? You Used To Be Cool

There’s been a lot of talk on and off lately about a Zeppelin reunion tour, reuniting some of the members of the band. In a lot of ways this might seem like a good idea. After all, Zeppelin rules, right? Maybe not.
For many years, Presence was the only Led Zeppelin album I had never heard. I always knew it was out there, but I had plenty of quality Zeppelin to listen to without the need to branch out. I guess it’s my fault—I let the thing take on a kind of mythical quality. So when I finally bought the album I was expecting a lot. And what I got was Presence.

Now there’s a lot of history behind the album’s creation: It was recorded in 18 days, Plant had just been in a car crash, Page was struggling with heroin addiction, blah, blah, blah. True as that may be, the album just isn’t very good, and listening to it was a disappointment of epic proportions. At its best, Zeppelin is a barely coherent mix of late 60’s hard rock, stolen blues riffs, bizarre pagan mythology, British folk music, and forty minute solos. Presence is more like generic rock music, with all of the over-indulgence and none of the craftsmanship. It's like the worst of Foreigner.

“Achilles Last Stand,” remains one of Zeppelin’s greatest tracks, and if you think of Presence as that song plus seven bonus tracks, maybe it's worthwhile. There is no finer example of the raw power and awesomeness of Led Zeppelin than the relentless drums of John Bonham on “Achilles.” Plant’s voice is haunting, and the song has a driving, gentle sadness to it despite the hard edge. It’s an underrated, somewhat unknown Zeppelin track, mostly popular among hardcore Zeppelin fans, and its worth about a million listens. (Which is still a somewhat low number for a Zeppelin song; indeed, most Zeppelin albums are worth at least five trillion listens, according to top Zeppelin scientists.)

Presence eliminates itself from the debate of “greatest Zeppelin album” almost as quickly as the even more regrettable Coda. Perhaps someday I will try to make a list of the best Zeppelin albums, but it’s hard to make decent comparisons out of what’s left. Without hyperbole, I can confidently state that Led Zeppelin is one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind, and slight mistakes such as Presence will be forgotten in the grand scheme of things.

And now the point: What won’t be forgotten is if Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones attempt to run around the country touring as Led Zeppelin without Robert Plant. I understand the need to cash in on success as much as the next guy, but Zeppelin, like The Beatles, is one of the few great bands who quit while the iron was (relatively) hot, never subjecting their legacy to the spectacle of increasingly elderly men trying to run around the stage like they did when they were 23.

If Plant were on board, then yes, I’d be rushing to buy tickets, whether it tarnished their image or not. But with any other singer, it’s just a bunch of old men. Zeppelin fans can forgive Presence, they can forgive Coda, and most of us have come to terms with “The Crunge.” But let’s leave them in the 70s where they belong. Otherwise Presence won’t be the biggest thing to worry about.