Re:Bands that now blow(NZC!!)

[MacAulayMark@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

(much snipped)
> You're taking the piss, right? ;-P
> BTW, Neil Young has never sucked, Lou Reed has never sucked, and as 
> we
> all know, Zep never sucked for even one second.

Would be that were true. Lou Reed went through a bad period in the 
1970's, starting with Metal Machine Music (although wildly funny!) 
and some uninspired studio and live records for Arista, a label with 
a dubious track record in itself. Reed came back strongly with The 
Blue Mask and New Sensations, but his more commercial recordings 
since have been deeply uninspired. He does best with frankly 
uncommercial work like Sons For Drella and Magic and Loss, and he is 
by no means finished as an artist.

As for Neil, he has also suffered through fallow periods; most of his 
80's work from Re-Ac-Tor onward betrayed a man running out of ideas. 
His forays into computer/sythesizer and rockabilly had some merit, 
but he only really his his stride again with Freedom, and peaked 
again in 1991. Later material has been modestly decent, but the last 
live recording of his that I listened to (Don't Spook the Horse) was 
meandering and tired. Bob Mould commented after seeing him in 1996 
"Neil, when are you going to stop fucking around with that E-chord 
and actually play the thing?".

I think it's fair to say that LZ's later work (post-1975 in 
particular) and many live shows in the later period (paticularly the 
truncated 1980 tour)is not as rich and inventive as the first five 
albums. Drugs, exhaustion, and rampant hedonism took a discernible 
toll. I would like to think that LZ would have cleaned up and come 
back strongly by 1985 if Bonham had not died, but I will say that I 
am glad that LZ did not replace him with Cozy Powell or Carmine 
Appice (ugh!)or Ginger Baker (hmmm...) and, in the words of Rolling 
Stone, "loyally called it a day". If Napoleon had a bomber at 
Waterloo...

My 2c,

Mark.