Zepwar!: Fred is a good friend and a perceptive listener, but his logical faculties seem to have deserted him here. I don’t dislike Zep because they rock too hard, silly, I dislike them because they don’t rock enough: I like my rock fast, hard, and loud, and preferably without some caterwauling castrato hippie on top. As for me being unable to appreciate Led Zep because I’m a wimpy Brit….what nationality were that band again? (Mind you, I am a wimpy Brit, albeit one who bought a Motorhead best-of at the same time as that Zep disc. But I still rock harder than Fred.).
There was a red rag in my Zeppelin review – my gross generalisations about the blues – and there was a bear pit, which Fred merrily leaps into with his mind/body dualisms. You can’t think about Zep, he bleats, you need to feel them. That’s a cop-out argument at the best of times, the direct equivalent of fans of Zappa or Mr.Bungle upbraiding people for not being clever enough to ‘get’ the music: you can think music and feel it, right at the same time. More on this in the forum, if you like.