Greta van Fleet's success doesn't baffle me one bit, there is just no accounting for (bad) taste in a country that put Led Zep on a pedestal in the first place. Sins of the fathers ... but the songs remain the same.
I've never seen them live (but would go just out of interest although now warned by Rob), they have a certain boyish charm (I prefer little girls fawning over them than to what they usually fawn over). Compared to the one before, their new album is really labored though - that first track sounds like a young Geddy Lee on helium singing outside of his range and that is screaming something, I cracked up laughing when I first heard it ...
And who gave them a mellotron without adult supervision?! I've always held that Moody Blues records are dangerous for children, so here we have parental failure yet again.
Of course, this post wouldn't be complete without a little mean jab against you know who.
Last I heard, Greta van Fleet at least didn't steal their recharged blues licks from a subjugated ethnicity and then not even give them credit and royalties unless sued. Let's not even speak of one-of-a-kind chord progressions ... obviously, sometimes deeds have two meanings. I have yet to hear a Greta van Fleet track as apishly close to a Zep chord progression as the STH intro was/is to Spirit's Taurus. But I forgot, Jimmy Page is an honest artist - so honest he toured Led Zep initiallly as The New Yardbirds - endowed with divine inspiration while the Fleet guys are just copy-cats.
Finally, why is it always dreary Led Zep that gets ripped? Why don't get five fresh youngsters together and sound
exactly like Blackmore-Gillan-Glover-Lord-Paice or, for that matter, Blackmore-Coverdale-Hughes-Lord-Paice? Whenever I read about a new band sounding like DP, I slavishly buy their product and come away disappointed, they sound nothing like Purple if you know Purple as well as I do. Is it easier to rip off Plant's banshee wails, Page's sloppy strumming and studdering soloing and Bonham's behind-the-beat lumbering (plus a bass relegated to the background of the mix) than to copy and paste Gillan, Blackmore & Paice plus add an overly loud Hammond organ with some classical flourishes (and a bass you can actually hear)? I really wonder.
With the defense I just delivered for the Fleetsters, I'm hoping for a free greet-and-flee(t) next time they are in town! Who knows, maybe they'll let me have one of their unused teenage groupies?