Big F***ing (Male) Rock Star

Robert Plant has a new recording out--I heard some bits of it on NPR, All Things Considered, today, and it sounds damn good. This, from the girl who traded LZ IV to her brother for a copy of Teaser and the Firecat (LPs both, Cat Stevens for anyone too young to know the latter recording).

I remember reading some excerpts from Hammer of the Gods, was it?--the profile of the Zep written sometime in the early 80s, I think. Like everyone else in the world, I have been drawn to the, whaddyacallit, daimonic, dark male thing about rock and roll. (By the way, there's a piece in the current Rolling Stone about Motley Crue [sorry about the missing umlauts], sort of a poor man's Zep--you could do a declension, couldn't you? from the Zep to Aerosmith to MC, with maybe a sordid detour into GnR, plus a bunch of other hair metallique bands. Anyway, with regard to the Crue, it's the same set of hotel/bus/groupie stories, except with less talent, as Zeppelin. Sickening, says feminist Yoda.)

So how did I find myself in the position of (a) reacquiring a copy of IV (there will be another post on this topic of reacquiring the music of my youth, coming soon), and (b) thinking about acquiring a copy of this new CD? Robert Plant has appeared in several publications recently, doing the requisite PR, and he sounds alternately idiotic (reliving the glory days, which seem at least a little pathetic, to me at least) and poetic (he talks about his early days in Zeppelin, when his voice was just one sound competing with others; he says he supposes that back then, when he sang, he "took the hammer to the pearl"). He also talks about the writing of songs as being a kind of theater.

Am I the only one who plays this push me/pull you game with new music? Who needs another raw-edged, whiskey-soaked, white man's blues band? And who can resist one? Faced with an at least semi-reconstructed Robert Plant, I found myself at least a little fascinated. Sue me.