Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Article: Chuck Klosterman on Led Zeppelin's last stand - Grantland

Chuck Klosterman on Led Zeppelin's last stand - Grantland
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6696852/in-evening

...Details that have been lost to social memory can still thrive within the context of modern products, even if no one recalls who made them up or what deserves the credit; while we're always predisposed to credit the progenitors of certain ideas, it's those who normalize the concepts that define what our social experience is. I think of that when I watch this footage of "In the Evening." This is, I suppose, a monolith on the cusp of hemorrhage: Nothing in the clip is classic, the band is on its last legs, and no part of the performance would be included among the 500 greatest moments in Zeppelin's history. But watch it again. Watch it 10 times. When is the last time you went to a concert and something like this actually happened, despite the groups overt efforts to make it so? When is the last time you watched a band play this well, for this long, without even trying? How often are you able to see the very premise of rock music, produced on the largest possible scale, as an act of utter normalcy? How many bands aspire to this alleged mediocrity and totally fail?

This is Led Zeppelin when they sucked. And wouldn't it be wonderful if all things were this bad?

(via Instapaper)