WELL: My friend Lauren was nice enough yesterday to make me a list of 50 bands I should be listening to*, which she can do because she listens to American indie rock, and no one's ever heard of any of them (the mooney suzuki? ranier maria? the salteens? didn't think so). I briefly considered making one for her, but my list mostly consists for 90s Britpop and things any faithful listener to rock music would know (Patti Smith? Pulp? Let's Active?), and who needs someone to tell them Led Zeppelin is worth listening to?
Then it occurred to me that, you know, really famous bands like Led Zeppelin are good and all, but the proportion of really good songs they have is low compared to how famous they are. For instance, I could take everything you need to know about Led Zeppelin down to five songs:
1. "Friends"
2. "Hey Hey What Can I Do"
3. "Immigrant Song" --Live at the BBC
4. "When the Levee Breaks"
5. "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp"
and you could never listen to anything else they'd ever done and not be missing terribly much. It occurs to me you could probably do this with other famous bands: The Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Beatles, Eric Clapton, etc etc.
*actually contains 24 bands
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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