Least appealing song on "Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin"

(Which doesn't mean the zero's not reasonable--I'm sure there are other horrors on there.)

All of these pale in the face of knowledge that a couple of years ago Train inexplicably covered Zep II in its entirety:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA8MykYXoq0

i like rollins' cover of franklin's tower, but on the other hand nobody in the dead could sing!

yeah see... like if 4 non blondes had not been on here, but Train had formed a little earlier and made it in, i feel pretty confident they would have taken this in a walk. i just learned they STARTED AS A LED ZEPPELIN COVER BAND so my god did we dodge a bullet there. i think most on ILM would agree they are a worse band than 4 Non Blondes and they kept...making...songs. but there are tons of mainstream 90s dude bands of this period that ime do NOT get a free pass or license to suck on ILM. Live, The Offspring, Collective Soul, Counting Crows, 311, Silverchair, Bush. all of those have folks here repping for this or that song, but all of them had more than one hit song. and yet generally they do not have cred on this board afaik. even considerably better bands like Smashing Pumpkins have more detractors here than fans. if Soul Coughing, a band i like a lot, were on here i am confident they would have attracted whole new voters to come out and slam them. i think people who hate soul coughing and the pumpkins hate them in a lot of the same ways/reasons people hate 4 Non Blondes - inescapably attention-grabbing and unconventional vocalist front and center, with painstakingly enunciated lyrics that come off as pretentious bullshit if you feel superior to the particular brand of 90s-ness being peddled.

i'm belaboring all this not because i want to prove that women in rock don't face all the asymmetrical uphill bullshit that's being pointed out. they totally do. but because katherine indicated the equal "stature" of the bands was an important factor here.... and as nitpicky as it probably seems, i think it's weird to suggest that STP and 4 Non Blondes are bands of the same stature. STP have sold forty million records and among their sixteen or so high-charting singles, have at least a dozen songs that are still in regular rotation. hootie were coming off their sixteen times platinum debut (including three huuuuge singles) and hadn't yet sophomore-slumped. 4 non blondes had had one moderate-sized hit two years before, and then four singles that did not make the hot 100, and had already broken up by the time this album was released. if one aspect of the poll is "which of these acts seems the most pitifully out of their league trying to cover zeppelin" then some of that does enter the picture and i don't think ALL of it is gendered.

that doesn't mean that the questions of who gets cred, who gets stature, who's seen as appropriate to sit at the big-kids' rock table, aren't profoundly gendered. they totally are and even as i'm typing the above i'm struggling to write it in a way that doesn't fall into tropes that are typically masculine rockist dudebro tropes. i think this is super interesting and important and i'm glad katherine brought it up as it's giving me some things to think about and challenge in my own assumptions. i just, still, sincerely question whether a single-vote radio button poll, with so many other variables in play, can really be that revealing. or again if it's THAT noteworthy that a notoriously hated one-hit wonder band would take a particular beating on a label cash-in album thread, especially when their song is one of the two singles/videos that people are likely to have actually heard, and the other one of those two (STP) took third place.

the two tori amos votes could be people who don't like tori amos or people who think the idea of robert plant showing up to his own covers record is gross, who knows... but it got less votes than hootie and the same number as duran duran and big head todd. if a plant-free tori - surely the actual best artist here, by some distance - had won this by the margin 4NB did, then i would be a lot more "wtf ILM."

Thing about STP too is 70s-flavored hard rock was a thing they dabbled in a lot. DeLeo loved his slide guitar (which he used much more later on) so I get the pick.

I think this is one of the few Zep songs they wouldn't fuck up because Weiland always seemed more suited to 70s glam than wailing bluesy hard rock, but this isn't a very demanding song vocally...no Plant wailing, few ad libs, straightforward as hell.

Imagine STP doing "Immigrant Song" on the other hand

which would actually be GOOD casting for 4 Non Blondes!

they STARTED AS A LED ZEPPELIN COVER BAND so my god did we dodge a bullet there.

they released an album last year on which they covered the entirety of led zeppelin ii, so potentially we didn't dodge a bullet at
all

now she's back from the atmosphere
with drops of lemon juice in her hair

It's not actually horrible, but it's like paying to hear a tribute band

How soft your fields so green
Can whisper tales of gore
Of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords

Tell me
Did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back toward the Milky Way

this thread just prompted a "Zeparella" rabbit hole on YouTube - thank u thread

Kinda nice that Plant sings with Tori as Zeppelin was her favourite band as a child and inspired her playing in the conservatory.

IIRC, she asked him to join her, going so far as to let him pick the song. He picked DBTS because it was a track he felt he'd contributed a lot to, writing-wise, that was at the same time reasonably obscure and underexposed (did they ever even do it live?).

There's a Tori interview where she says she was asked to do the song via a phone call; don't think they've performed it live though.

IIRC, she asked him to join her, going so far as to let him pick the song. He picked DBTS because it was a track he felt he'd contributed a lot to, writing-wise, that was at the same time reasonably obscure and underexposed (did they ever even do it live?).

― to fly across the city and find Aerosmith's car (C. Grisso/McCain)

good pick, i think; i think the _encomium_ version of it is probably better than the zep version.

Well, speaking of Linda Perry and covers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_wtzVvstfA

Violent J has really shed some pounds!

wtf with the 4 non blondes revisionism in evidence here, they are terrible, what's going on is terrible, this cover is terrible.

still say the STP cover is p nice if not incendiary