Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)
by Erik Davis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Erik DavisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-18
ISBN: 0826416586
Number of pages: 184
Publisher: Continuum
Book Reviews of Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)
Book Review: The Red Pill Of Rock
Summary: 5 Stars
Neither a tome, nor a grimoire --not quite a cultural critique-- nor a mere record review. Perhaps it's an elfen rune, or recipe book for the imaginal mediascapes of nostalgia. Maybe it's a long bong-hit's rant in a Linklater film. In fact, it's almost the inverse of Jorge Luis Borges' longwinded tales of hypothetical texts, because it's about an alien implant embedded deep within our psyches: Led Zep's fourth record.
It's got no gossip. It's just a wildly entertaining and jawdroppingly smart ride through every level of the subject: as an object, as a spell, as a pop phenomenon, as a myth, as sound, as legend, as a money making music machine. It's more about the mythology of the music makers than it is about the band as real people. The idea of the artist folds into the artist as magician, and Led Zepplin is the perfect vehicle.
Erik Davis takes the entire idea of a record review and rather than going gonzo like Lester Bangs, he goes meta. And the way you walk through the matrix may never be the same afterwards.
Summary of Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)
In this wickedly entertaining and thoroughly informed homage to one of rock music?s towering pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic?black or otherwise?that surrounds this album. Carefully peeling the layers from each song, Davis reveals their dark and often mystical roots?and leaves the reader to decide whether [FOUR SYMBOLS] is some form of occult induction or just an inspired, brilliantly played rock album. Excerpt: Stripping Led Zeppelin?s famous name off the fourth record was an almost petulant attempt to let their Great Work symbolically stand on its own two feet. But the wordless jacket also lent the album charisma. Fans hunted for hidden meanings, or, in failing to find them, sensed a strange reflection of their own mute refusal to communicate with the outside world. This helped to create one of the supreme paradoxes of rock history: an esoteric megahit, a blockbuster arcanum. Stripped of words and numbers, the album no longer referred to anything but itself: a concrete talisman that drew you into its world, into the frame. All the stopgap titles we throw at the thing are lame: Led Zeppelin IV, [Untitled], Runes, Zoso, Four Symbols. In an almost Lovecraftian sense, the album was nameless, a thing from beyond, charged with manna. And yet this uncanny fetish was about as easy to buy as a jockstrap.Music Books
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