Comments on: Robert Plant vs. Mark E Smith

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 13:40:48 +0000

I’m coming in late on this discussion but moved nonetheless to comment in full, and old enough to remember the late JP’s early 60′s dj sessions in socal with the likes of the beach boys etc. Peal introduced Zep to me in ’69, and like everyone else I was blown away. Zep were never Prog, hard blues is the best handle i can dial into. See Knebworth 78 and you’ll see what i mean, the dvd is better than the gig..Also, Robert is active on the Bristol scene and backing the best up and coming…

…And here I am sitting in my Shanghai apartment where every Fall album sits right up there on the ‘most played’ playlist. Sure, an acquired taste, but better by far where creativity and relevance are concerned.

I wish ME and the old gang well, and look forward to the next release – it will be painful to digest on first listening but well worth the effort

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Mon, 30 May 2005 12:33:07 +0000

OK, so my line about John Peel was bit of a cheap shot.

But while he played a lot of classic and progressive rock in the early seventies, he dropped them like a stone the moment punk came along. He spent the next twenty years helping to promote the dreadful memes that the early 70s were a uniquely bad era, and that progressive rock was the worst kind of music ever, which punk saved us from.

I’m sick of hearing these memes repeated by people who were too young to remember the 70s, and haven’t heard a note of any 70s progressive rock bands.

It’s socially acceptable to sneer at prog rock, but if I dismiss bands like The Fall in the same manner, I can guarantee angry responses.

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 27 May 2005 15:21:45 +0000

‘When The Levee Breaks’ is my favourite Zep track but Plant managed to make this relentless juggernaut of a song sound tepid. So much for the re-working…
The Fall were exponentially better – still bafflingly fresh and unsettling – even allowing for the fact that Mark E. Smith came on like a park bench mutterer.
As for Peel being a champion of unlistenably bad music, this simply misrepresents him. Peel was highly eclectic in his tastes and embraced everything from ‘classic’ rock to avant-garde music. The reason I like both Led Zep and the Fall is because I heard them both on his old radio one shows. Admittedly The Fall are an acquired taste but to dismiss them out of hand is simply crass, as is the assumption that the type of comparison that inspired the above article even needed to be made.

By: Chris Hall

Chris Hall — Sun, 22 May 2005 23:44:22 +0000

Mark E Smith must have have been drunk. He was crap and his band were like a bunch of over keen sixth formers (but who were also crap). Punk is what it has always been – a con for people too insecure to say it’s a load of crap. Not that I’m advocating Tim’s dodgy prog bands