So Little Time, So Much To Know…

…thus quoth the Nowhere Man in “Yellow Submarine”, and he was goddamn right. The day-off is nearing the end, and there’s not so much has been done, save for some home-maintance thing, a language lesson and another review. This time it was the LA’s VOX TEMPUS‘s second album, a bit boring but easy-on-the-ear prog-hard rock programme with the great Gregg Bissonette on drums. It becomes quite a generic thing, and there’s nothing strange as bands like this opt of IKEA-like modus operandi building from the ready-made blocks rather than essentials. That’s why, say, YES, GENESIS and JETHRO TULL were all original whereas – let’s take a nice, melodic example – IQ or PENDRAGON, as likeable as they are, feel like second-rate ensembles. Thankfully, they don’t fall for parody.

Who do are LED ZEPPELIN – but here parody is all moral. The band that originally broke up because they couldn’t imagine themselves being ZEP with one of them absent, now are going to tour without their iconic singer. Robert Plant prefers moving forward to going backwards unlike Jimmy Page who, since 1980, has done nothing original – be it in the company of Paul Rodgers, in THE FIRM, or David Coverdale. Curiously, out of respect to ZEP’s bass / keyboards player, John Paul Jones, the two worked 15 years ago as Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, not LED ZEPPELIN, while now, again with only two founding members on-boards, it’s going to be ZEP. Is it the presence of John Bonham’s son, Jason, that gives credibility to the endeavor? Looks like it does – in their eyes, not the fans’ ears. The tour might be successful, yet the thrill is all gone.

But they’re not young, their time is running out, and there’s so little time, you know.

DME