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The music that inspired Page & Plant

Jump on the train for another ride - Down the Tracks: The Music That Inspired Led Zeppelin. This time around the series takes a look at a variety of American Blues musicians such as Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Bukka White & B.B. King; early Rock ’N’ Rollers like Elvis and Sam Phillips, the man who started Sun Records where Elvis and many others got their start; and Skiffle artists such as Lonnie Donegan & Chas McDevitt , all seen and heard through a lot of cool archive footage.

McDevitt appears in current interviews and does a little performing for this documentary. Other interviewees include many Blues historians (all Caucasian, oddly enough, producers Joe Boyd and Larry Cohn and a handful of authors. Some of the same people interviewed also appear on Down the Tracks: Bob Dylan and there are a couple of new people as well.

Unlike the Dylan DVD, which seemingly references Dylan and how certain musicians influenced him throughout the documentary, the Zep DVD mentions the band in the first few minutes and they aren’t mentioned again until approximately thirty minutes into the show, and then the references are sparse. The program even mentions Aleister Crowley and his influence on Jimmy Page, although technically that isn’t a musical influence.

The influences mentioned are also based around Page and Robert Plant. I don’t recall if John Paul Jones or John Bonham are even mentioned within the 93 minutes. Granted, Page & Plant had more material on the LZ albums, but Jones wrote some great material such as “No Quarter” and Bonham had to have been influenced by someone. Even though the archive footage and interviews are interesting, it’s a bit like grasping at straws in a tornado to say that this is the music that inspired Led Zeppelin instead of the music that inspired Page & Plant.

There are some old photos and film footage of LZ, but as usual, there are non actual performances of their music on here, nor any music from Elvis. This probably saves the show thousands of dollars so they don’t have to pay for rights and privileges to the copyrighted material.

Down the Tracks: The Music That Inspired Led Zeppelin isn’t what I expected. It’s possibly worth hopping on the train for a jaunt (read as: Rent First) before buying a full-price ticket.

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