Greta Van Fleet

And sounds like he's got the worst case of hemorrhoids

Haha, there was a thread for this band the whole time?

lolllll

I was genuinely hoping that the rockism thread would culminate in being consumed by a protracted discussion of Greta Van Fleet.

At this point it’s more like a prolapsed discussion

Just listened to all of Anthem.... Not sure I'd pay for it but I enjoyed a bunch of it. It's the kind of AOR fast food I have a soft spot for. There was more early Rush/Heart pomp in there than I expected. I didn't like "You're the One" or "Anthem" that much but I like "The Cold Wind" and "Watching Over". Guy's high register actually seems impressive to me. The screeching on "When the Curtain Falls" seems like the least interesting thing he does.

ok, i'm gonna try porting my gvf commentary over from the rockism thread:

"engagement with the details of the music can miss the wood for the trees and a review like that has its own use and value. there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary, its like asking to take the politics out of an issue or insisting we can just rationally debate the facts

― ogmor"

ogmor very much otm, i have no use for this "what about the MUSIC maaaan" nonsense.

"people have made the point that lots of kids still go a Zep phase, so it makes sense that there's a band like GVF - do kids still go through a Doors phase? it would be cool if there was a successful band that's like GVF but for the Doors instead of Zep, with a singer who looks like Bruce McCulloch in that Kids In The Hall skit

― soref"

my "zep phase" turned thirty this year

weren't the cult the successful band that was like the doors? or are they different?

there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and social commentary

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all, or at least I don't think it's any truer than saying "there is no clear distinction between aesthetics and physics".

of all the complaining i have seen about this band, why is no one complaining about their name?! i guess there is an abundance of wrong to complain about and still i am stuck on their band name.

Get ready to eat your burritos to this winter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1fuYS_3SZg

(add a second "this")

xxp I recall there’s a little chunk of posts on their name deep upthread in the “Rockism” mega-discussion

(Their name suxx, btw)

Iirc, it was the name of an old musician from their hometown?

wtf "zep phase?" Like, always?

i had a period where i literally listened to led zeppelin and nothing else for months when i was 13.

i still love led zeppelin, but that is a zep phase.

I mentioned this on the other thread, but in 7th grade I tried to do a history fair project about Led Zeppelin. That's a Zep phase.

Like when you tune in to Get the Led Out every time it's on even though 95% of the songs they play are on the 3-CD remasters box you own (prior to actually owning all of the albums).

Zep phase is like flu season, reliably hits me about once a year.

I had two weeks in September where I just played either Achilles or In My Time of Dying on repeat for my entire commute.

My Zep phase was devouring Zep 1-4 and Houses of the Holy on an almost daily basis for most of my teenage life. Then I realized in my mid-thirties that Physical Graffiti is their best album and half of Presence is amazing. I rarely listen to the others nowadays but that's a result of overexposure, it's still some of the greatest rock and roll ever put down imo

I'm amazed at how much attention these guys are getting. The negative Pitchfork review is a top trending item on Twitter.

xpost I've even warmed to Coda over the years. Ragged, strung-out Zep can still surprise me.

as much as I wanna shit on these guys I know deep down that if a bunch of Jonas-brother lookalikes went all out to imitate Yes I'd probably love 'em unconditionally even if they weren't very good

That Icelandic prog orchestra featuring Jon Anderson is pretty much better than Yes anyway

Admittedly that is playing the literal songs of Yes, which isn't what gore talking about. Prog is full of dreadful copyists

well yeah but most of those dudes are in their 30s or 40s and therefore have had plenty of time to come up with their own ideas. if it was a group of kids fresh out of high school who wound up sounding like Starcastle I'd be a lot more forgiving.

oh yeah true

If there was a teen band that played Yes-like prog I think I would be OK with that, since prog is still innately cult. Of course, if there were teens that could play Yes then Adrian Belew or Jeff Beck would hire them for their bands.

But anyway, teen Zep? No thanks. I recently cancelled satellite radio, so have been listening to the local stuff, and I came across these guys all the time starting a few months back, and each time I thought, wtf is this shit, and turned the channel. It was only after the 5th or so stumble-upon that I looked them up and saw that they were selling out sizable venues. I didn't know where the fuck they came from but suddenly they were everywhere and, in the words of a friend, I smelled a rat.

as was mentioned elsewhere iirc the problem w/a lot of Zeppelin copycats or bands influenced by Zeppelin is they only ever adhere to the most obvious aspects of the Zeppelin sound, and the aspects that are the easiest to ape. I guess one on hand you have GVF and Kingdom Come, and on another hand you have The White Stripes, who obviously had some Zeppelin influences all over the place but absorbed them into their own sound.

starcastle is one of the most underrated 70s american prog bands (along with like ETHOS, LIFT, YEZDA URFA, and CATHEDRAL). so glad overplay hasn't worn out their charm

xxxpostsss

honestly i have never had a Zep phase

Take two Carouselambras and call me in the morning.

weren't the cult the successful band that was like the doors? or are they different?

Astbury wanted to be Jim Morrison (and actully got to be him with that Doors reunion), which eventually was counterbalanced by his band wanting to be AC/DC.

I cant think of any wannabe arena-sized Doors knockoffs that actually sounded like them ie. with the Manzarek keys and the Krieger jazzy flourishes

(Any that were were nowhere near as successful as the original)

i dunno the early cult/southern death cult was way more goth of that time, the doors obv are an influence on goth as as whole but the vibe is closer to echo & the bunnymen

then they kinda moved into some mix of u2 and hard rock then just hard rock/metal

his vox can be pretty morrison and also just the way he looked and dressed

xpost agree, no one really sounds like The Doors

the closest modern-ish dude to early Morrison in terms of looks and frontman vibe was maybe Hutchence, though his thing was less shaman rock sex god and more pure urbane rock sex god.

the Doors were a very weird band
the only band that I can think of sometimes sounds like the Doors is Stranglers...they have prominent organ/keys like that...that's the thing the Doors their darkness and image and vibe is big but not many bands were like them...like they *feel* heavy but the guitar is generally pretty clean and it's so organ driven

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHnK7m2PNVI

The Cult's Electric seemed to kick off this 3 or 4 year cycle of some relatively rookie band getting a big push as the next Zeppelin. Soundgarden's Louder than Love was marketed that way, stuff like Wolfmother as mentioned elsewhere. GVF biggest failing is that there's nothing sinister about them.

Robert Plant in RS in 1988:

Frike: What’s your opinion of the current reincarnations of Led Zeppelin – bands like the Cult, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi and the Mission U.K.?

Plant: They’re all different, aren’t they? I can’t tell you honestly whether Bon Jovi is better than anybody else. I know that the success ratio is fantastic. And I think that’s what counts to them. The aesthetics of the thing have nothing to do with it.

Frike: So are they just imitating Zeppelin or are they getting it right, the whole package with the risks as well as the noise and the strut?

Plant: The Mission are getting it right to me. The Sisters of Mercy too. They’re trying it, and they mean it. It’s not just a parody of a pastiche of a parody. If they nick a few chord shapes, that’s okay. But at least they’re doing it in the spirit of it. I prefer that to the pretty-boy-wailing department.

Didn't Plant also refer to David Coverdale as "David CoverVersion" around that time?

Kingdom Come was nicknamed Kingdom Clone, iirc.

Said it before, but the best Zep imitator was Billy Squier, but he never gets dismissed outright, because he and his songs were good.

Yes, as a novice to hard rock radio circa 1981, I thought "My Kinda Lover" and "In the Dark" were LZ songs, as "Fool in the Rain" and "All of My Love" were still in very heavy rotation at the time.

John Paul Jones was asked on MTV around 1989 or so about Kingdom Come and other bands who claimed a Zep influence. He said that these bands' rhythm sections were all (in his words) "BOOM. BASH. BOOM. BASH." He stressed that he and Bonham were James Brown fanatics, and that that element was completely missed/missing from the new bands' approach.

Wow that anyone heard Bon Jovi as a Led Zeppelin reincarnation at any point!

I love posting this, because this Squier is the best Zep rip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlu3A3BBgE

Shit, now I'm gonna spend the afternoon listening to the first four Squier albums. (Until today, I thought he was Canadian for some reason.)

Billy Squier rules

also, like Zeppelin (When the Levee Breaks) also was funky enough to have an iconic hip hop breakbeat (The Big Beat), more popular than Zep's

RS review: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/review-greta-van-fleet-and-the-struts-revel-in-the-reliable-power-of-classic-rock-744694/

Greta Van Fleet seem like they lept fully-formed from the skull of a rock critic in 1975. Three brothers and a bud from a tourist town near Saginaw, Michigan, they come bearing shamelessly recycled Zeppelin-isms with a frontman who seems to have heard Rush’s “2112” a few times.

lol contemporary critics HATED Zep

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6c/9f/82/6c9f82167eb87c518c42a3c530c0fade.jpg

Age of Machine is a nearly seven-minute-long cosmic doozy

You know, if the band was called Cosmic Doozy, I think I would dislike them less.

Critics are hard to press, in particular to the Zeppelin reference, which we’re humbled by. We’re honored by that affiliation, but again there’s a point within factions of society that are drawn to ignorant criticism.

I, uh, can't say I noticed those blues influences in the guitar playing on GVF songs.

sure was a lot of Howlin' Wolf in that All in the Family theme redux that they did

It hit me that the main thing with this band is that they just don't have songs. Their songs are not memorable or good. Everything else is actually ok and would be just fine if they had good songs - yes the singer would still be absurd and yes the guitar player would be a sub-par imitation of a cliche, but the band plays well overall and the guy can, in some sense, sing. No songs man. To paraphrase something I heard a drunk music industry hasbeen say "They've got guns but no bullets."

Exactly, all technique and no substance - and even the technique is questionable.

every time somebody bumps this thread I am reminded that I totally forget this band exists until somebody bumps the thread.

greta van fleeting

https://guitar.com/news/music-news/greta-van-fleet-are-being-mocked-relentlessly-on-tiktok/

if any of those people make money off mocking gvf on tiktok, they are even worse

jealousy is unproductive, you could be working on monetizing this thread instead

lots and lots (and lots) of gvf tiktoks here. some of these are funny. he must burn through 12 different facial expressions in those five seconds, and some people capture them with devilish precision.

https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-6985074040071260933?traffic_type=google&referer_url=amp_seewherewevebeen&referer_video_id=6987786701598936325

this family singalong is too cute.

https://www.tiktok.com/@ddevlinjr/video/6986834018918599942

if any of those people make money off mocking gvf on tiktok, they are even worse

― "Rocky Top" and "Funky Bitch" are songs I never look forward to (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, July 23, 2021 10:36 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Lol, give them a MacArthur grant and Presidential Medal of Freedom, imo.

The only problem with the TikTokers is that their mockery is "light-hearted."

GVF NFT, or GTFO!

head-drop-as-mic-drop is classic, even if light-hearted.

Yeah, this seems p affectionate tbh.

Let he who has not mimed along to a singer's weird tics and overexertions or sang a random song in the style of Tom Petty/Bob Dylan/Eddie Vedder cast the first stone.

https://www.billboard.com/culture/pride/greta-van-fleet-singer-josh-kiszka-comes-out-member-lgbtq-community-1235358577/

good on him, also a band that probably has more to lose than others

Yeah, for real, lotta respect for that guy.

lol I hate this band's music but I guess I'm Capn Save a Greta, saw this on Twitter today, crowd is very interesting, much younger and much more female than I would have expected

Thanks to all the @GretaVanFleet fans who came to the Starcatcher listening party this afternoon! Three lucky fans won the grand prizes. 🩶 Reserve the Starcatcher indie exclusive white/glitter vinyl now (out Fri). #GVFrecordstore https://t.co/s4dvLcLuJc pic.twitter.com/jG3fFhz36c

— Electric Fetus MPLS (@efetusmpls) July 19, 2023

Joe Bonamassa is somewhere crying on a pile of '58 Goldtops.

Yeah, they’re fun to make fun of, but seem to be okay people

more women under 30 than men over 40 is not something i would have guessed

XP The GVF guitar guy can be a bit insufferable in interviews

led zeppelin clone band: mr. yuk face
led zeppelin clone band but none of them are loathsome human beings like jimmy page: interested head tilt

I just visited JPC.de and was confronted with this publicity shot:

https://www.jpc.de/tools/cmsimage.php?id=1254278&size=w980ct

Guy on the left looks strikingly like the guy on the left from Army of Lovers:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F65%2Fe5%2Fc9%2F65e5c9b9f75d67654380a8b2502bec9a.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=c0113de63c7252a0131610c0a9df9422020e0d832f3c7bd9772970ce2abb807a&ipo=images

Love to play this game on the train where I guess what concert I’m the city are all these people going to. Should have got this one cuz they all look like they are in the band.

I really can't particularly hate or like these guys, it just feels like they're never quite sure why they're doing what they're doing - musically, performatively, and in that publicity shot. What are they going for? How does it fit into the band's ethos? Does the band have an ethos?

Like they have the received trappings of decadence, but they don't actually seem decadent? They're like an America's Got Talent act.

Yeah my impression of seeing a live video was 'sexless.' Led Zeppelin 1970 but all wearing purity rings.

Hopefully that means they’ll be less likely to reproduce.