I know there was probably a good deal of show prep that happened before the concert; sound checks, setting the stage, etc.  Still, it looks like the boys just walked into the Royal Albert Hall off the street, strapped on their guitars and started to jam.  Zep’s air of casual awesomeness–especially early in their run–is fairly amazing to modern eyes more used to big light shows, complex staging, massive video screens and a dozen costume changes in the course of a concert.

Led Zeppelin’s minimalist concert brings up a larger question:  Could  the greatest rock band that ever existed survive in a 21st century pop scene?  I really don’t know.  Zep’s constant experimentation and abiding interest in music outside the accepted rock-n-roll canon might make them a tough sell in today’s entertainment industry. 

“We’re Gonna Groove” is a cover of an old Ben E. King soul ditty.  This is just one example of LZ’s diverse musical palette.  While the group was certainly grounded in a blues-rock foundation, Zep was capable of doing anything they set their mind to do.  Interested in a funk tune?  Here you go.  Have a hankering for gentle folk?  Done.  Dig Indian-influenced ragas?  At your service.  Wanna strut your stuff to some country?  So does Zeppelin.  Like world music?  Let Jimmy Page be your tour guide.  Wanna cut the crap and go punk?  John Bonham can help you out with that.  Hell, looking for an ten minute experimental keyboard-driven disco song?  John Paul Jones and Robert Plant are up to the challenge.

Beyond their musical diversity between songs, look at how Led Zeppelin changed over the course of their career. Their first disc, Led Zeppelin, which was released in 1969, is a heavy blues-centric workout.  Ten years and seven albums later, In Through The Outdoor is a synthesizer-driven affair that shows a band that has abandoned traditional blues song structures in favor of dance-rock and avant-garde experimentation. 

In between all that, Led Zeppelin’s sound would continuously change from record to record.  Each full play effort was marked by a very different tone from the albums that came before and after it.  Led Zeppelin III’s country and folk stylings felt quite a bit different than the thumping blues of Led Zeppelin II.  1975′s Physical Grafitti was a double album that swung from the keyboard grandeur of  “In The Light” to the delicate acoustic fingerpicking of “Bron-Yr-Aur”.  1977′s Presence was Zep at it’s most single-mindedly rocked out, driven by hard electric guitars and heavy rhythms.        

Would any major record label today accept a band that went through those kinds of mutations over the course of a decade?  Even though music companies have grown less important over the last decade then they once were, the answer is probably not.  At some point…probably right around the time the mandolins kick in on Led Zeppelin III…the record label’s A&R dude would go into vapor lock and the record would be shelved.  The band would be told to rethink their priorities, get a pop-minded producer and make ‘Whole Lotta Love-The Sequel” for the next three records

More importantly than a music corporation’s behavior, would a modern band be able to survive the sort of creative contortions Led Zeppelin put themselves through?  We don’t really have to speculate on that question.  It’s pretty obvious that the vast majority of rock groups simply don’t attempt to push their musical boundaries all that much.  For every Radiohead that has rearranged their sound over the course of their career, there are only about a thousand other bands that have pretty much stayed in the same general artistic space they occupied on their first albums. 

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point bands started to recognize that they were also brands.  Brands require consistency in order to be successful.  McDonalds’ cannot go from selling cheap American-style fast food to gourmet $50 a plate Japanese-Mexican-Dutch fusion cuisine within a few years.  Nobody would buy the change and McDonald’s would kill their company.  The same process has changed the way rock music operates.  Bands are very conscious of the creative space they occupy and hold to it.

It seemed that Led Zeppelin wasn’t all that worried about branding themselves, at least to the degree modern groups do.  To be fair, Zep definitely created an image for themselves.  Visually, they made certain to carve out a niche.  One could consider these things examples of  branding.  But when it came to music, which is ultimately what a band is known for,  the guys in Zep were unafraid to change things up when the mood suited them. 

When discussing LZ, we can talk about the legendary three hour concerts, the cool album covers, the record sales and the mind-blowing music that has stood the test of time.  But all of that great stuff ultimately is borne out of confidence.  Zep’s strength to go against expectations and forge ahead with their singular artistic vision set them apart from many of their contemporaries.  Amazingly, it also sets them apart from many bands today.

Turns out the director of the video is an up-n-coming fellow by the name of Vernon Furniss . If this is his first viral ad, then I’d say the dude’s got some serious potential.

To follow up on the ad, here’s Ladd Ehlinger’s take on this year’s Congressional elections.

What’s important now is to send to Washington, D.C. representatives who will protect us from whoever wins the Presidential election, whether it be Obama or a GOP candidate. Granted, a conservative veto-proof majority in the House and Senate is not perfect protection against a big-government POTUS, but it’s better than nothing.

So if you’re a conservative activist who’s been spending your focus and energy on the Presidential race, gyrating linguistically to defend your candidate, look to your own back yard. Your efforts, heartfelt though they are, have little chance of turning the course of the GOP Presidential Primary. But you can vet candidates in your backyard. Find the one that you believe in most, and fight for him or her with all your heart.

Bingo.

While I don’t think it’s as bad as Ehlinger thinks it is, the truth of the matter is that conservative activists have to have back-up plans for an Obama victory. Getting as many right-of-center people in Congress is a top priority. Ads like Mr. Furniss’ would do a lot to get conservatives elected.

Besides Mark Oxner is running against none other than Alan Grayson. Grayson is such a left-wing hammer head that he got booted out of the House in 2010. But since the prick just won’t take a hint, he’s decided to run in Florida’s new district. Wouldn’t it be lovely to send this massive progtard packing twice within two election cycles?

I’m already starting to get a massive schadenfreude overdose just thinking about it.

To be fair, I was catching up on the zany antics of everyone’s favorite misanthrope doctor on “House” (Spoiler Alert: Crotchety title character says rude things to people) so I missed the first hour of the debate. Once I got around to Brian Williams & Co.’s turgid after-school detention session cleverly masquerading itself as a debate, within a minute it was clear something was up. Turns out that NBC made applause verboten within the auditorium. What should’ve been ‘Newt v. Mitt-Thunderdome’ morphed into a Lunesta-enhanced quaalude-soaked Ambien-fortified paint-drying observation session. With socialists as the hosts. By the time Mitt or Newt or Santorum or whoever started talking about self-deportation–I was starting to get drowsy, so the memory is hazy–I was wishing I could self-deport myself to a time when I didn’t know NBC was holding their shitty debate.

I saw no questions about Solyndra, Fast-n-Furious or the looming collapse of the Eurozone. So of course the candidates had to answer a question about Terri Schiavo. Apparently America has so few pressing problems that we have to go back seven years to find trouble.

Naturally, I did a fair amount of pissing and moaning about this on Twitter. Because whining about stuff always helps, right? Leave it up to the professionals at Hot Air to actually try to do something about it.

Last night, my friend Peter Ingemi expressed his dissatisfaction with the NBC debate — and the presidential debates in general — by proposing that Hot Air run a Republican primary debate, moderated by yours truly. Peter says he’s “dead serious” about this:

Just watched yet another GOP debate and was totally unamazed by the lack of questions on fast and furious and BS questions such as: “Why did the Bush Tax Cuts fail?”. I think political types are sick of questions from people who want the GOP to fail.
I have a solution:
I suggest Hotair send an invitation to each candidate for a 2 hour debate moderated by Ed Morrissey.

This got quite a response on Twitter last night and this morning. It even has its own hashtag, #hotairdebate, and it’s been endorsed by the Boss Emeritus, Senate primary candidate Jamie Radtke, and a number of bloggers. It even got an Instapundit endorsement, who said the proposal “sounds like a winner.”

Sounds like a winner to me too.

For those of you who have teh Twitterz, I say we all tweet Mitt, Newt, Santorum and Paul’s Twitter accounts asking them–politely–if they could take part in a Hot Air debate. Hashtag the message with #hotairdebate. Lather, rinse, repeat for a good long while until somebody responds.

If they say yes, fine. If they say no, ask for an explanation. I mean, why would the GOP nominees allow themselves to be hammered by the raft of CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC lefty hack reporters, yet not take part in a debate at Hot Air?

Every single one of these candidates professes his fidelity to American conservatism. They seek the nomination of a party that advertises itself as a right-leaning caucus. All four of these men should jump at the chance to defend their records, define their ideas and make the case for their campaigns in front of a Hot Air audience.

Conservatives are rightfully annoyed by the debates.  They’ve been run by liberals and for liberals.  A Hot Air debate would do much to rectify the MSM bias in this primary season.

UPDATE:  Dan Collins over at the great Conservatory links!  Big ups, homie.  Thanks.

This is the latest single from British stoner metal band Orange Goblin.

Since they first started putting out music, I had more or less lumped them in with the Kyuss/Fu Manchu/Electric Wizard sludgy-doomy metal that’s been cooking since the early 90′s. As such, I hadn’t really listened to them all that much.

Then the other day, I was listening to the radio and this came on. I didn’t recognize the vocalist, but the thumpy rhythm and great riff caught my ear. I was kinda shocked when the DJ said it was an Orange Goblin tune. The whole sequence got me a-thinking.

Lots of rock fans–especially hipster scene scabs–sneer at anything played on the radio. It doesn’t matter if it’s the blandest of bland Top 40 stations or the most free-form college radio. For those types of music fans, if a song or a band has managed to get on the airwaves there must be something wrong.

I used to think the same way. Then I turned 19.

The truth is, radio can be incredibly lame. Too many stations are too locked into their narrow formats. Too many places on the dial are too wedded to their constrictive playlists. But I probably wouldn’t have heard “Red Tide Rising” if it hadn’t been for that radio station deciding to play that song. The station benefited, Orange Goblin benefited and so did I. Win-Win-Win.

In any case, this Orange Goblin ditty is the jam. Big drums and big guitars are always a winner. Add to that a cool 21st century take on Sabbathy sludge and you’ve got yourself magic.

Enjoy.

“Newt:  Here are your absurdly extra-large paradigm-shifting third wave chicken nuggets.”

Oh well.  I tried. 

Your turn. 

Via @GayPatriot, @TVAmy and @GingerGibson.  Thanks, ya’all.

UPDATE:  Just to make this post slightly less goofy, here’s a link to Mr. G Guy’s blog.  He’s on the ground live-covering the South Carolina Primary.

Rick Perry is a good man, and he deserved a better campaign than he got, but his political advisers — Dave Carney and those other guys — had all the wrong ideas, and thus Perry’s “mission” was destined to failure from the outset. Exactly how these men, so widely hailed as shrewd strategists, got so many things so badly wrong is a story that I’m sure will be the subject of many campaign post mortems, like Jennifer Jacobs’s excellent examination of what went wrong with Michele Bachmann’s campaign. But I have neither time nor inclination to offer a full analysis today.

Yeah, it’s over.

I wasn’t nearly as down on the Perry candidacy as McCain was…or still is.  I liked the fact that Perry was getting better as the debates progressed.  I dug his tenacity even in the face of his campaign going terminally pear-shaped.  In the end though, all of Perry’s strengths couldn’t overcome that horrendous beginning. 

In any case, now we’re stuck with Mittens versus the AntiRomney horde.  Tonight’s debate should answer some questions; specifically will Ron Paul break out his fanciest tin-foil hat for this solemn occasion?  Can Mittster flip-flop his positions within a single answer?  Will Rachel Maddow be there to ask Newt Gingrich about the pleasures of an open marriage?  Will George Stephanopanoloppalopopafloppaopapophloppoloploppoppoapaopapoaoulous be on hand to ask  Rick Santorum if Gingrich should’ve worn a jimmy-hat while carrying on his multiple affairs?

As for me I’ll be on Twitter if ya’all wanna chat during the debate.  I’ll be snipping at Romney–and everyone else.  See you on teh intertubes.

She’s a fan of “Portlandia”, a show on IFC.  Check out her take.

The real white people are not in New Hampshire, and certainly not in Iowa or South Carolina. The real white people are in the Pacific North-West, and they are California transplants.

We started watching Portlandia on a Big Hollywood tip, and I can’t believe nobody told us about it last year. Like Stuff White People Like, a blog I proudly feature on my blogroll under humor, Portlandia ridicules mores and tastes of white upper middle class liberals.

…Liberals making fun of themselves, quite maliciously so at times, is nothing new. What’s surprising is that self-mockery is coming from Carrie Brownstein of a super-earnest grrrl band Sleater-Kinny and Fred Armisen who sabotages Obama skits on SNL. I suspect Brownstein and Armisen feel liberated to be funny on Portlandia only when they are performing for an elite audience of like-minded white liberals.

Read the rest.

All I know is that this is the funniest Fred Armisen has ever been in his entire half-assed comedy career.

Watch him in this Saturday Night Live opening skit.  Get your pillow and blankie for when you doze off 25 seconds in.

Granted, the writers gave Armisen a whole 2.3 jokes to fill a three minute bit.  It’s hard to be funny there isn’t anything remotely resembling humor anywhere in the material.  That doesn’t excuse Fragile Fred for his ponderous performance.  Armisen doesn’t deliver a punchline so much as wrestle it to the ground, tear it open, light it on fire, stuff it into your mailbox, then look at you with pleading eyes desperately craving your approval.   

One gets the sense that Armisen–and SNL in general–can’t really go after Obama all that hard.  They don’t want to hammer the President because he’s their guy.  SNL, along with the rest of the court jester/palace guard media, will not humiliate the politician that most reflects their values.  So they pull their punches at every opportunity, which not only makes them kool-aid drinkers but incredibly boring as well.

But the shackles come off when slightly famous liberals can make fun of average everyday liberals on a cable TV show.  Oh well.  We’ll call that progress. 

Funny, timely and just a little self-deprecating to boot.  Wow.  It’s amazing what one can do when you’re not shooting jokes in the balls so they don’t hurt your side of the political spectrum.

What’s really cool is how “Portlandia” is pretty much the proggy version of Larry The Cable Guy.  I know liberals–especially bitter old hacks like David Cross– hate Larry The Cable Guy.   What the lefties can’t get is that Larry isn’t glorifying the hillbilly peckerwood lifestyle, he’s satirizing it.  His material pokes fun at the silliness of the South.  He’s a conservative Southerner laughing with–and at–other Southerners.

It’s easier to take jokes from your own people, rather than take them from an outsider.  Irishmen can call their fellow Emerald Islanders drunk bog-trotting micks and it’s all good.  If Germans were actually capable of generating humor, they’d start by calling themselves humorless krauts and then they’d politely giggle about it under their breath. 

Same thing with Southerners.  They know Cable Guy is having a laugh at their expense.  But they can take it from him because a) he’s one of theirs and b) they know Larry’s bits are based in the reality of Southern life.

“Portlandia” is the comforting laugh that lefties can have on themselves.  Conveniently, it’s also the laugh conservatives can have on liberalism too.  That’s always nice.

Marijuana Arrested for Possession of Snoop Dogg!

A marijuana cigarette (aliases include “Mary Jane” “pot” and “reefer“) was arrested at a border checkpoint in West Texas today for possession of the rapper Snoop Dogg.

According to the local sheriff’s office it was after a border agent pulled the marijuana cigarette’s tour bus over that a sniffer dog detected the presence of Snoop Dog (real name Calvin Broadus) in the back of the bus.

Since this was not the first time that marijuana was caught in possession of Snoop Dogg the cigarette was immediately placed under arrest.

Through his lawyer the marijuana cigarette said that he has a prescription for medicinal Snoop Dogg in his home state of California because he suffers from migraines, blurred vision and the munchies.

Read. The. Rest.

The runner-up (from an oldie but goodie):

By the way, Dr. King pretty much nailed it on that whole ‘judge people by their character, not their skin color’ thing.

Try remembering that salient point one of these days, leftists.

Helmet is the brainchild of Page Hamilton.  Originally a jazz guitar student, Hamilton stumbled on a distortion pedal sometime in the 80′s and it seems to have changed his life.  For a time he was a member of the experimental New York City post-punk collective Band of Susans and he appeared on their Love Agenda album.  That group’s use of feedback, repetition, noise and unconventional song structures rubbed off on Hamilton’s later work.  

It wasn’t until Hamilton founded Helmet in the early 90′s that he found his signature sound.  Rock journalist Greg Kot once described Helmet as ‘the death of melody’.  That might’ve been an overstatement, but not by much.  Hamilton’s use of the drop-D guitar tuning (sometimes drop-C)  and his fondness for pummeling rhythms left little room for catchy sounds.  Moreover Hamilton’s vocals, alternating between a guttural snarl and an Ozzy-like lament, contributed to the overall menacing vibe of the band.  

For a time, Helmet loomed large on the heavy music scene.  Pantera and Sepultura both nicked Helmet’s syncopated start-stop rhythm style.  Bands like 311, Korn and Deftones tuned their snare drums very high, emulating Helmet drummer John Stanier’s Caribbean-influenced tone.  Given their outsized influence, it’s safe to say the nineties simply wouldn’t have been quite as heavy without Helmet.

Interestingly, while Helmet changed the sound of rock, they never really seemed to click with mainstream audiences.  Hamilton’s single-minded focus on rhythm meant their wasn’t a lot of change between albums.  Also, it’s not like Hamilton was writing pop songs.  Helmet released singles like “Sinatra”, a slow burn punker-than-thou jazzbo number and “Unsung”, which was big on relentless hammering and easy on melodic hooks.  Not exactly ear candy, even by premillennial metal standards

But even though the band never really took off, that doesn’t mean they aren’t cool.  I dunno if Hamilton ever really wanted to be a pop sensation.  It seems like Helmet was meant to reflect Hamilton’s focused musical vision.  While I’m not in love with Helmet’s post-90′s work, they’re still great.  Check it out.

Bad Mood:

Sinatra:

Unsung:

FBLA II:

Wilma’s Rainbow:

Milquetoast:

Driving Nowhere: