If only Fast had stuck to the band's music. Maybe I'm stereotyping but it's tough for me to picture the typical Led Zeppelin fan wading all the way through the dense prose dripping with rampant Said, Sontag and Foucaultisms. And like a typical occupant of the postmodern ivory tower, overflowing with liberal guilt, Fast sees racism at every turn, at one point, launching into a homily on the lack of acceptance of rap music by the largely white fans of Zeppelin, brought on by an analysis of "Come With Me", Puff Daddy's reworking of Led Zeppelin's groundbreaking 1975 song "Kashmir", which Puff coaxed Jimmy Page to play guitar on, much to Page's fans' collective chagrin). Soon after, she goes off on a jag against Eric Clapton, because the white Clapton dared to have Muddy Waters, his childhood idol, open for him on a tour.
Fast claims there's nothing cynical about the band's music (even as her own writing at times drips with it), and while that's true, she ignores the astonishingly cynical undertones of their lone film, The Song Remains The Same, which presents Led Zeppelin's band members as living in bucolic splendor in England and Scotland, but shows America as a smog filled cesspool, their fans as cannon fodder drug addled teenagers, and their stateside promoters as rapacious con artists to be thumped by the band's then manager, the late woolly mammoth Peter Grant.
Fast also spends little time analyzing the most peculiar dualities of the band: Page and Jones were (and are) masters of musical technology and of hard, bludgeoning electric riffs, but the band's lyrics, especially as vocalist Robert Plant began to be their chief lyricist, indicated a paradoxical obsession with Tolkein, mysticism, and a general desire to return to a pre-industrial (even medieval) era that would have rendered their music (not to mention the wealth that it brought the band) impossible, not just due to the lack of technology, but the lack of sexual freedom, lack of youth with disposable income, and a level of morality seemingly incompatible with rock music in general.
Article comments
1 - dan walters
Fast's book on Zep stands in stark contrast to all the other monkey crap books written by bald white guys who couldn't make it in their own broke-dick band. She explores theoretical arenas that most others are too chicken to even mention. Most guys reconstruct Zeppelin through their own spooge-tinged glasses...Fast's book is unique, brave, and significant! Don't get hung up on postmodernism; it's just a nerdy conceptual fabrication that rips apart new thoughts and meanings just as quickly as it builds them. Fast's book is fun.
2 - Rich
Your website contains the googlewhack "spooge jodhpurs"
Congratulations
3 - Eric Olsen
thanks I think, what is a googlewhack?
4 - Rich
You type two words into Google and the search results in only one hit.
The words must not be in inverted commas, both words must be shown as underlined in Google to prove they are in www.dictionary.com, and the resulting hit must not be a dictionary, thesaurus or other word-list webpage.
It just so happens that the unlikely pairing of 'spooge' and 'jodhpurs' resulted in my stumbling upon your site!
I believe it is traditional, if 'tradition' could be ascribed to an activity of less than 5 years' history, to now search for your own googlewhack and spread the word/s.
Nice site btw!
Regards
Rich
5 - Ed Driscoll
I want to hear more about these spooge jodhpurs. Did Ron Jeremy start doing ads for Dockers?
6 - Nick
Led Zeppelin remains the greatest rock band ever....
7 - jim
"Houses of the Holy" may have been Zeppelin at its height; the band could have called it quits after this record and still be assured easy classic-rock status. It's simply another great Zeppelin album that adds to a string of greats. The guys kept their style simple, yet branched out a bit and explored new avenues. Some would even say that all Zeppelin albums after this one were pleasant icing on the cake. Of course, the same thing has been said about Pink Floyd after 1973, as well.
8 - chris
It is full of fascinating musicological and sociological insight. But to appreciate the book, those are the things you have to want to get out of it.
For the kind of book it is, it is one of the most READABLE books on a rock band that has ever been published.