Friday, March 07, 2008

Robert Plant and Fred Rogers

VH1 Classic is playing what appears to be the video from the "How The West Was Won" DVD. It's tremendous, of course. Watching the young, sweaty Jimmy Page blazing on "In My Time of Dying", Robert doing the whole metal god pose out thing, to one of my favorite songs-Wow.

How all the metal cliches became cliches.

It's easy to forget that Led Zeppelin could really bring the fucking noise when they put their mind to it. "The Ocean" crunches like hell, and of course, the solo from Stairway on the demonic two necked guitar. No machines, just putting the music out there, pure and clean and transcendent, no retakes, no overdubs, no bullshit.

Oh, what I would give to have seen them like this, at the peak of their powers.

Another brilliant "Mitchell and Webb Look" tonight. A particularly clever sketch had a husband in bed reading while his wife unpacks his suitcase from a business trip. Unpacking an enormous bra, she asks calmly, "Did you sleep with Alice again?" Distracted, the husband answers, "Uh, yeah." They calmly discuss it, then move on to her admission that she has a gambling problem, only to fall into a hysteric screaming match over his having left the refigerator door open. It was funny, but the genius part was the exact inversion of how it would have been-the refrigerator door leading to the admission of infidelity.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=UcvRMHz4mb4

Heard this on NPR's Driveway Moments podcast. In this world, it is nearly impossible to find a voice devoid of snark, cruelty, irony, or hip detachment. RIP, Mr. Rogers.

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