beyond eclectic predelictions and epochs 'ten years gone'

So I think I figured it out: Led Zeppelin by anyone’s measure will always be the 3^rd best band behind (take your pick) the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Aerosmith, Dylan & co, anything having to do with Jeff Beck, The Kinks, Elvis Costello, etc, etc,

And in a delightful family debate whether “All of My Love” belongs in Led Zeppelin’s top 10 or top 20, I’ve come to realize that this band (like the Beatles, like Pink Floyd) is beyond such lists. They combine Chicago blues with various covers that far excel the originals with ample originality—no one stoked the top three on my list but themselves. The echo justifiably is that Pink Floyd and the Beatles recorded NO SUCH covers—they played themselves and no others. Indeed, this is a musicological quandary, on par with the debate that Sophocles without ‘Ur-texts’ exceeds Shakespeare with his ample supply of Ur-Hamlets and such. Of the more-than-ten Led Zeppelin songs I list below, plenty of them are ‘ur’—the Rolling Stones would nod their heads empathetically. But they are great in a Shakespearean way. But certainly ten of these would never have existed except that Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones made them happen indigenously.

Ten Years Gone

Kashmir

The Immigrant Song

When the Levee Breaks

The Rover

Mountain Misty Hop

Over the Hill and Far Away

Going to California

Whole Lotta Love

Four Sticks

The Rain Song

Babe I’m Gonna Leave You

Dazed and Confused

All of My Love

No Quarter

Carouselambra

Stairway to Heaven

Black Dog

Battle for Evermore

Dancing Days

That’s the Way

Yes, that’s 21 songs on a STLTA&A list, but would anyone really deny #21? It makes me cry more than probably any of the far better songs above it. There is no genius in Page and Plant—there is genius in the God that made them. And since this band is so prone to covers, I think they’d not disagree. I’d listen to many lists agin and agin, but this focused journey crumbled me in ways no other source did—I’ll keep them 3^rd for sanity’s sake, but gosh they are far more than listenable for such evaluations, and, to anchor the point, “Ten Years Gone” was never more resonant to me than after Josh’s encouragement to tune it in before the turn of this millennium. It remains the absolute best motif/riff/subtle verse/bridge/jazz and jam solo/back to underappreciated riff. Concerts wouldn’t relay this song nearly as successfully as songs down the list, but ‘agin and agin’ implies the advent of record players and luxurious return. Led Zeppelin invites this as well as any musician, and the exercise alone to validate ‘agin and agin’ confirms our need to listen to compositions in their ‘on-offs’, and then again in their lure to be heard, well, again and again…. Led Zeppelin has done that more than just this extraordinary summer.

Eager to hear from others…