re: What is the greatest thing to ever happen to music?

The Stones didn't exactly have a disco phase -- they made one disco song, which was awesome. And that fits into Some Girls, in which the Stones were exploring the NY scene and putting their own stamp on it (Shattered reads like a punk song as well).

I'd argue that Zep is far more of the mimics, and they were mimicking the Stones, primarily. And I don't buy that Zep had more influence. Pretty much every blues-based rock band owes a debt to the Stones, which is a huge portion of rock n roll. Zeppelin lead to the cul de sac of hair metal, and we'll try not to blame them for that. Zeppelin is a band that is more hated for what they wrought than what they did, though what they wrought was pretty stinking awful.

But I think "who was the mimics" is answered by how they treated the source material and how those original artists treated them. the Stones are largely considered part of the blues by the artists themselves -- Zeppelin is seen by those same artists as rip off artists. A lot of that has to do with ripping them off of royalties, but it also stems from their attitudes. The Stones were rooted in the blues and branched out. Zeppelin were mimicking the blues, so had no problems stealing from them.

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RS absolutely just jumped on the burgeoning blues rock milieu.

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Yes bc in my opinion they were the ones defining it better than any other.

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When compared to LZ, who straight up stoles chunks of songs and put their credentials on them, yes

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so you're agreeing they are plagiarists. But that's not to say it all was and they didn't have their moments.

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But really most art is just clever disguise.

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or your interpretation of what's been done before.

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it's just appropriation of genre du jour (see: their disco phase)

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mostly influenced from record execs. Hell even teh Grateful dead had a "disco" album. But I'd say the few RS tunes you're calling disco is more do to the drumbeats than Donna Summer ringing your bell.

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multitudinous

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*breaks out dictionary*

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being more refined than they really are

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You may have to elaborate more on that refined so I'm sure I'm really following you.

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I think a band like Led Zeppelin is a touch more influential than RS

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maybe to Hair Metal bands.


It's going to boil down to most people seem to fall on the preference of Stones or Zep. I think the Stones far exceeded anything Zep did.

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It's going to boil down to most people seem to fall on the preference of Stones or Zep. I think the Stones far exceeded anything Zep did.

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Agreed. Will post a longer reply when I get to a comp (and not a phone)

I'm not saying the blues "belongs" to anyone, but songwriters do own the rights to those songs. The Stones, largely, gave credit for what they did and even helped earlier artists get their royalties. There's using a 12-bar blues riff and then there's ripping off the melody of "You Need Love" for "Whole Lotta Love". Or stealing Muddy Waters' "The Lemon Song" outright. It was straight up theft without credit. Zeppelin owes a career to Willie Dixon, who should have gotten songwriting credits on a lot of the first two albums (well, now he does).

The Stones viewed the blues musicians as peers. Zep viewed them as bits of the past, which made it easier to steal from them. And let's not kid ourselves, it was theft. It's worse than Vanilla Ice's theft of "Under Pressure".

This discussion has gotten way too deep for me..


Lot's of interesting POV's though.

I've read all these articles on Zeppelin rip offs and it doesn't take away anything they did for me. They took some similiar guitar riffs and lyrics on some songs and made them better; o well. Robert Plant had awesome hair and everybody wanted to rip off him. Plant aint sorry for partying. Not that I read your post thinking you were digging them bc that's not what I got from it, just saying.

Youtube - made it free to sample, listen to any song.

Pandora - free, let's you pick a genre and hear new, alike music. Never had sat. But sounds like the same thing except you pay for it.

iTunes- just a store, but it does have a short sampler, which I think is silly, play the whole song which is why I end up youtubing.

Youtube2mp3 - music is free, support you favs by buying cds, merch, and going to their concerts.

Q the Youtube link

The LP form. It's absurdly versatile. You can create a long form piece of music, and at the same time package the smaller 3-4 minute songs into it. Without groups like the Beatles, and the Beach Boys playing with it and turning it into something bigger and better than a way to sell a single twice to a fan Pop music and Rock probably don't develop into what they are today.

Without the LP the beatles would be just a bubblegum pop band. They'd be a really really good one, probably the best. But they still wouldn't be what they became.

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Pretty much every blues-based rock band owes a debt to the Stones, which is a huge portion of rock n roll. Zeppelin lead to the cul de sac of hair metal

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I think this is a false dichotomy, or at least it's an incomplete analogy. Because while I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly, you don't mention that Zep towers just as high, if not higher (depending who you ask) in the debts that rock bands owe to their predecessors—not just hair metal.

There's no doubt that Jimmy Page's glittering pentatonic guitar runs on tracks like "Good Times, Bad Times" was like opening a pandora's box of masturbatory guitar work.

But...

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Zeppelin is seen by those same artists as rip off artists

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It's not fair to limit them to the blues scope.

Works like LZIII and Physical Graffiti represent the ends of a rope that are distant from one another. The former is damn-near pastoral in its folksy melancholy (with exceptions like The Immigrant Song and Since I've Been Loving You) and the latter is a sprawling double album scrapheap of experimental jams and genre hopping.

The Rolling Stones had a narrow but significant influence. LZ could comfortably link arms with Black Sabbath, RS, King Crimson, and Queen as the godfathers of metal, blues, experimentation, and arena gods.

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CDawg: You may have to elaborate more on that refined so I'm sure I'm really following you.

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Yeah, I was struggling to find the right word. I think that a lot of their output is pop, but when you speak to avid followers who can ping off intimate knowledge of their collection, then they may be more hesitant to describe them as such. Like LZ they also have their moments where they branch out, but I think we might agree that they are less ambitious in their genre explorations. I've listened to ~8 of their best albums pretty heavily, and none of them match the creativity of Physical Graffiti. But at the same time, I like Exil On Main Street a lot better than Physical Graffiti.

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It's going to boil down to most people seem to fall on the preference of Stones or Zep. I think the Stones far exceeded anything Zep did.

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And to get back to this, I think it's good you've isolated this early. I think you and Baloo will find ways to look upon RS more favorably and likewise myself with LZ.

But, I'm willing to sit here and rhetorically shell the hell out of each other all day