Post a controversial opinion

Zeppelin's "Tolkien stuff" is literally a handful of lines in a total of three songs of all the songs they did and people act like they did LoTR concept albums

I think the broadness of its appeal is part of its greatness. They found a way to talk about contemporary topics that felt inclusive to both hipsters and squares, where a lot of their peers made music that felt more oppositional and closed off.

xp to Left

Make up my mind to make a new start
Walking into Mordor with the one ring
'Gainst my heart

i listened to their first 5 albums several times each & the tolkien stuff is all i remember apart from the (stolen) lemon line

shit was ubiquitous in all music, remember "Betcha By Gollum Wow"?

ramble on
misty mountain hop
battle of evermore

that's it iirc

so you only listened to II and IV I guess

no i heard the shitty reggae song too

leonard nimoy did it better anyway

tolkien i mean not reggae

What are some Led Zeppilin songs? I think “Immigrant Song” might be the only one I’ve heard, via the rathergood dot com animation for it

i think Stairway's 'mystical' lyrics and the gargantuan shadow that song casts, and the bombastic bands they influenced years later has people retroactively remembering much more fantasy-styled lyrics a la Tolkien than were actually there.

hell, what about the damn love songs

"Since I've Been Loving You" is my personal fav but i'm sure I'm alone on that

"when the curtain falls" is a good one

Zeppelin's "Tolkien stuff" is literally a handful of lines in a total of three songs of all the songs they did and people act like they did LoTR concept albums

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download)

Like it's totally normal or reasonable to devote multiple lines across *three* songs to your Tolkien/orc bullshit fixation.

Silby, check out "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers".

I probably won’t tbqh my current project is getting into the contemporary emo revival, thanks brad

Anyway the main one i was thinking of is Camel (Nimrodel/procession/the white rider) xxp

I can only think of a few others with specific, direct Tolkien references tbf, but more vaguely Tolkien-inspired nonsense is more common.

And Rick Wakeman did a LOTR concept album eventually.

p sure Genesis *did* go there, in at least 1 song

"I Can't Dance"

Zeppelin's "Tolkien stuff" is literally a handful of lines in a total of three songs of all the songs they did and people act like they did LoTR concept albums

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download)

Like it's totally normal or reasonable to devote multiple lines across *three* songs to your Tolkien/orc bullshit fixation.

― Fauna Sukkot (Deflatormouse), Wednesday, June 30, 2021 11:48 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no it's too cool to be normal

did rush do any tolkien shit, it would fit my stereotype of them

Yes, they did.

lol

from rush:

rivendell
the necromancer

p sure that's it unless i'm forgetting something

Where’s the Tolkien/orc bullshit of today?

re: genesis i found this:

Genesis
It’s no great surprise that prog bands were way into Lord of the Rings. “Stagnation,” from Genesis’ 1970 LP Trespass, isn’t explicitly about Middle Earth, but many fans have noticed lyrics that seem to evoke Gollum: “Will I wait forever, besides the silent mirror/And fish for bitter minnows amongst the weeds and slimy water.” The song came out within months of “Ramble On” and “The Wizard.” Clearly, 1970 was a good year for LOTR-rock.

seems like they are stretching a bit, never actually heard trespass

p sure Genesis *did* go there, in at least 1 song

― Fauna Sukkot (Deflatormouse), Wednesday, June 30, 2021 11:56 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's no fun
being an unseated Aragorn

"Stagnation" is explicitly a post-apocalyptic song about the last human on earth.

ok yeah seemed a little bullshitty

if there is Tolkienism in rock today, I'd guess it was some power metal bands that are too obscure for me to know about

I used to wonder if side 2 of Fly By Night was Tolkien-inspired:

"Fly By Night" (from the Shire)
"Making Memories" (on the road)
"Rivendell"
"In the End" (OK, they skipped some stuff in the middle)

"The Wizard" is a good example of vaguely Tolkien-inspired nonsense, or is it Tolkien-specific?

greta van fleet must have something like this somewhere

lol their first EP has a song called flower power

The Decemberists had a video that recreated a chapter from Infinite Jest

OK, they skipped some stuff in the middle)

Lol

I don't think Uriah Heep use any actual Tolkien language, but the fantasy elements are very similar.

Ha, I was thinking of Black Sabbath.

Geezer said he was reading LOTR when he wrote the Wizard

oh I just thought of a good possibility (post 70s)....Enya??

Blind Guardian wrote an entire album about the Silmarillion

the band Shadowfax obv

Yeah, if we're not limiting this to 70's/UK, all bets are off really

unfortunately tolkien also is popular with nazi metal bands as a way to do unsubtly coded race war type stuff

Never mind Tolkien actually, where’s my Earthsea bands???

I mean something like "olias of sunhillow" is tolkienesque af, the thing about 70's English prog not being as tolkien-oriented as people tend to think only makes sense to me if it doesn't count unless the singer says "mordor"

No, I actually do think that people overstate the Tolkien/fantasy/sci fi element wrt the major albums by the major British prog bands.

Tbf, I don't read that much fantasy or sci fi so I could be missing a lot of references.

I thought "The Wizard" was about the local LSD dealer?

Hard to tell, he's never talkin