Music Note

Are you a Led Zeppelin fan? One of the nice things about the Web is that occasionally I stumble across something that strikes me as a hidden gem. Like finding a ten-dollar bill on the ground or in the pocket of a jacket hanging in your closet, it doesn't happen very often, but it's nice when it does. This is an analysis of Robert Plant's voice as he aged, written by a person who signs theirself* "Kashmir Zoso." It's a Quora response. Originally published in 2016. Fascinating. The conclusion that the band would have fared very differently if Plant had been 24 when the band started up, instead of 20, is startling, but well supported. Also new to me is the idea that his voice hasn't just changed as he got old; it's been changing right along.

Just passing this along.

As an aside, I'll mention that I'm surprised there isn't more curation on the Web. It's very good at adjudicating questions of popularity, but not very good doing the same thing with quality. I try to pass good things along when I can.

Mike

*Themself? Theyself? I'm trying.

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Featured Comments from:

Richard Tugwell: "Ahh...allow me a Led Zeppelin reminiscence. As a student at Edinburgh University in 1973, I saw them live at the Kings Theatre. This is an old classical theatre, before the time of stadium concerts. The concert started with the lights off, and then that great intro to the song "Rock and Roll" started. The lights came on as Plant launched into 'It's been a long time since I rock and rolled.' I still feel the sensation.

"During the concert, some of the antique stucco plaster ceiling fell off—something which would probably have resulted in a mass evacuation these days. But the set went on. It was however the last time the Kings Theatre hosted a rock band. Saw many great and famous bands in the early 'seventies in Edinburgh, all in small intimate venues."

Mike replies: I have a friend who saw Led Zeppelin as an opening act. Another friend has a T-shirt that says, "I might be old, but I got to see all the good bands." You might need one of those!

Andrew Lamb: "My dad was friends with John Bonham. They used to play snooker at the same club (there is movie footage of the club in The Song Remains The Same). Bonham was a major car fan and when I was 14, he took me for a 120-MPH spin in his Maserati Ghibli. I'd never been in a car so low to the ground. Given my youth, I wasn't able to ask any insightful questions about the band. I just about managed 'When's the next album coming out?' He said in a couple of weeks. That was Zeppelin IV. I have his autograph somewhere. I met him a few more times in that club. Top guy. Very friendly. Still a big fan of Robert Plant. Love his albums with Alison Krauss."

Comments

[Zyni]

In at least one English dialect where 'they' is or can be used as native neutral 3s pronoun (yes, there are such: Shakespeare spoke one and they still exist today) then I believe either 'themselves' or perhaps 'themself' is natural.

This is not my dialect however (no English dialect is native to me!): I asked a friend for whom it is native (his father, born 1936, used it, so does he). His dialect is probably quite prestigious as he went to private schools in home counties, so this is not some 'regional' (meaning far from home counties...) dialect as Shakespeare perhaps spoke.

[Daniel]

Led Zeppelin? Try WhenThe Levee Breaks from them.
Then watch & listen to Zepparella - When The Levee Breaks. All woman band who does a great job.

[Eric Rose]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing this. Zepp was a huge part of my youth.

[Scott]

Interesting. Adam Lambert finished second on American Idol in 2009, when he was 27. One of his knockout performances on the show (IMHO) was Zep’s and Plant’s Whole Lotta Love. Since 2011, he has Ben singing with Queen, doing a more than credible job of covering Freddie Mercury’s vocals. I prefer Plant and Mercury, but then I’m an old guy.

[Jnny]

Plant is (was?) a smoker. We know this colors the voice as well as age.

[David Saxe]

Way back in 1971, I wanted a Canon F1 but it was $450.00 and way out of my range. I had to settle for an Ftb for $260.00. It still took great pictures and the F1 would not have improved on that. Unless you are a working photographer there is very minimal difference between a Z8 and a Z5 in visible picture quality. Once you make a print there is no difference.

[Joel Becker]

Curation is Really Hard. If you try to do it automatically (algorithms), you are fighting all of the bad actors trying to steal your views (think recipe sites with garbage stories or a million computer generated Yahoo answers). It's a sea of shit. The algorithms actually do an amazing job, and it's still not great.

If you want human curation to help you find the gems, you have a common place like Reddit or Facebook, specialist places like dpreview, or -- often best -- individuals like TOP.

But you have to find that curator!! I know TOP from Luminous Landscape. How would I find it today? Anyone looking for good curation is going to search the topic ... and get lost in the sea of shit.

[Kye Wood]

IN the year 2000, I won an international software competition. It was a big deal (for me). I'd give you the specifics so that you could search Google and behold my glittering intellect... but... Google no longer shows any sign of it ever occurring.

The wayback machine will get part way there, to some of the information. But Google just goes meh, who cares about the past.

These days, Google shows me just three pages of results where before it would show me hundreds, if not more. The first two pages are mostly advertising. And bogus links, where the precis shown does not and never has existing at the address that link will take you to.

Once you put monetisation above all else, you inevitably head straight for the metaphorical toilet.

Other engines like DuckDuckGo are trending exactly as Google did. Rubbish search results. Dangnabit.

[Keith]

I got to see Plant and Page years ago when they were touring to promote their recent collaboration. They also played a lot of the old Zeppelin stuff. Yes, Plant's voice had changed, he couldn't quite reach the highs like the early days. But Page was as brilliant as ever. What impresses me about Plant is how varied his musical genres has changed over the years, and yet he continues to put out original and quality stuff. Reminds me of the growth and evolution of Herbie Hancock as a musician/artist exploring different styles.

[Rick Denney]

And yet Jon Anderson can sing just has high and clear as when he was in his 20's. And write lyrics just as absurdly inscrutable.

The concept of curation clarifies for me the distinction between objectives and data. The popular paradigm is to be "data-driven." But that means we tend to follow the path others have followed, creating as they did so the current data pointing the way for us. Search engine results (and the advertisers that pay for them) are hopelessly data-driven.

But good curators are driven by objectives rooted in principles, not by data. They have a point of view their selections illustrate or at least challenge. Maybe good curators will be the defense of humankind against ChatGPT and its progeny.

Content creators too often play into the data-driven model favored by the search engines rather than representing their own objectives and points of view, and that's not even considering that much content these days is autogenerated by such as ChatGPT precisely to chase the data. I'm finding that what is really driving down good search results is that the first wave of worthy content, driven as it often was by amateurs motivated by their topic, is starting to disappear as those amateurs lose interest, age out or die off and they stop paying their ISP bills.