My radio show, experiment alpha (an alaskan show good enough that the BBC played a few episodes), usually started with a 10-15 minute pre-show show on a "station named KZEP" which boasted 25 hours a day of the Zep classics you crave - all Zep, all the time. We had to eventually stop doing that since giving out false call letters is an FCC violation, albeit one we committed weekly for 2 years.
It made the 25 hours a day claim because of the Dreaded Zeb Doublecast where we played two zep albums at once - do you think you can handle it? We awarded prizes to a random listener we called who could name both songs currently playing, and had one of our friends blow the guess and say he was going to shoot himself and then hang up.
Our public service contribution was to recite the lyrics from truly brain-dead crap like "The Song Remains the Same" as coffeehouse poetry and then marvel at its nuances. Most of our audience loved it as a hilarious send up (our DJ nicks for that showlet were Bob Page and Jim Plant). Some Zep fans were furious and howled for our blood, or more appropriately, cancellation. However, a majority of Zep fans that called us took the show quite seriously, saw nothing amiss about it, and were only startled when our real show suddenly preempted it (usually after some situation-comedyesque misfrortune had befallen the two Zep DJs). Even then, they didn't grasp that the Zep station didn't exist or that it was satire.
I think that's indicative of something.
By the way, while Zep certainly have a few quite good songs, the idea that "being important to guitarists" is the only way to evaluate music really sickens me. By that standard, why aren't Zeperationists out demanding that Blind Lemon Jefferson and Elizabeth Cotton and Leadbelly and BB King get all the Rock Grammies? It's also the kind of thinking that leads to idolization of, at best, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, and at worst, Joe Satriani or Yngwie Malmstein. Can you play guitar like them? Neither can I. Therefore, QED they must be the best musicians living.
The truth is, music is a spiritual child. At its best, within a band. At least, between a performer and her or his audience. Masturbating with your guitar IS craftsmanship, but it doesn't even deserve pop success, let alone cult status. In fact a nerd locked in his bedroom with his beloved computer is much closer to interesting-dude-whose-opinion-I-would-care-about-re-music status than a pretentious moron jerking his Stratocast off, even if the latter has groupies and heroin lying around as props.
Zep rarely if ever communicated anything worth communicating except a love of rockified blues. Green Day, on the other hand, got mind expanding ideas across to moshing rugrats. History will vindicate us, the discerning.
