TL;DR: Gimme the Zeppelin playlist

If you're an Amazon Music Prime subscriber, but not Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music Unlimited, let me introduce you to Zeppelin Remasters - (Free) Prime Covers, the best Zeppelin fix Prime members can stream for free.

Update: Whoops. Zeppelin hit Amazon Prime Music just a few weeks after I wrote this. You're welcome. You know I forced their hand. ;^)

Finding Zeppelin on Amazon Music Prime

If you've got Amazon Music Prime, you'll know you've got a pretty nice deal. You can stream an impressive selection of songs without paying more than you already pay for Amazon shipping, and the app works well, seamlessly combining the Prime streaming selection with albums you've AutoRipped and mp3s you've purchased from Amazon.

But there are downsides. Kind of like when Metallica and Tool weren't on any streaming platform and you had to load ripped mp3s for those bands to your phone "the old way", the Music Prime selection is lacking in certain specific ways.

And the worst hole in the Music Prime donut? There's no Led Zeppelin on Amazon Music Prime. (Well, almost none. There's one exception that proves the rule. But more on that later.)

Why is there no Zeppelin on Prime? Dunno. Amazon Music is pretty low on the artist payouts, but I can't find anywhere suggesting Prime streaming royalties are different than Amazon Unlimited's, so you'd almost think you'd rather have all of the Prime streams than only the Unlimited's, at least for older music that's harder to "discover". Maybe the band's hoping you subscribe to a service that pays higher royalties like Apple, Spotify, Tidal, or, surprisingly (in that I see this name at all and that they pay like they do), the top royalty rate payer, Napster.

Or maybe they wish you'd just buy the albums, since you could just buy the mp3s for Zeppelin on Amazon and, poof, problem solved. You're able to stream 'em anywhere you have the Amazon Music app. Larkin Poe went off of Amazon Music Prime, and now I've shelled out for three of theirs. But that's more of a reason to, as Larkin Poe did, put songs on and take them back off -- the first hit is free, but then you have to pay to satisfy your fix. Wash, rinse, repeat. Kinda like Disney's vault, in a sense. Not having a back catalog on Prime leaves money on the table.

Maybe Amazon doesn't want to have Zeppelin on Prime so they don't have to pay all those royalties? I mean, Prime Music doesn't make money directly. It only pays out. Hrm. :thinking: Still, you think they'd revolve like the Stones or Beatles do. (And the Stones, at least, do. I'm always chasing what albums are active on Prime. I usually only listen to them on my phone now, where I own tracks.)

Regardless, I'd already paid for my Led Zeppelin songs a looooong time ago and I'm morally opposed to paying again for some reason. 

What should I do if I want to listen to a little Zeppelin? More importantly, what should you do if you need a Zeppelin hit?

Can we make a good Zeppelin Covers playlist?

Let's cut to the chase: I think we can create a good Zeppelin covers playlist. Because I did.

There are actually a fair number of Zeppelin covers on Amazon Music Prime. Some of them are good enough that you might enjoy listening to them.

I decided to recreate my first exposure to Led Zeppelin, a three-disc collection Columbia House slammed me with in the early 90s, the Led Zeppelin Remasters.

I was mad when I got them ("You're charging me for three CDs I didn't order, and only two have music?!") and cancelled my membership in Columbia House, as, if I counted the Remasters as two discs, I was finally through my required purchases.

If this slamming doesn't ring any bells, let's reminisce with that Slate article author...

But the most devious part of this hustle—the reason Columbia House and BMG deigned to call themselves “clubs”—is that each month they’d send you a CD you hadn’t asked for, unless you mailed them back a card within 10 days saying you didn’t want the CD, which, let’s face it, requires some foresight and organization that is well outside the wheelhouse of an average middle schooler.

(Or high schooler. Or older. But it actually wasn't that bad. You could even send the CDs back after they sent them to you. I'd done it at least twice by the time the Remasters showed up. But the multi-disc slam seemed patently unfair. Straw, meet camel's back.)

But then, years later, I finally listened to the Zeppelin CDs. Hello!

Playlist rules/priorities:

Grade A: Actual Led Zeppelin Tracks (1 track 1 track again)

I don't know how, but one real Led Zeppelin track snuck into the Amazon Music Prime free streaming tier. I'm pretty sure it's a mistake. If you look at the album in the Amazon store, it's the only track that's Prime eligible, and it's also the most popular track from the album too, as you might expect.

I'm not going to rat it out in case it is a mistake, but of course songs by Led Zeppelin make a playlist with "the most Zeppelin-like songs on Prime".

1. Led Zeppelin. One song. Maybe you've heard of them.

Update: Painfully, Amazon got wise. D'yer Maker is gone.

Another update: It's free again. As are lots more Zeppelin tracks.

Grade B: Covers by bands that include Jimmy Page (4)

This is limited to two options, but they're pretty good options:

1. The Yardbirds (1)
   • Here we have the original an earlier version of Dazed and Confused (no, really!) by Page's earlier band, a band that also includes, get this, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck.
2. Jimmy Page & the Black Crowes (3)
   • These covers are wonderful. Page's back went out during the tour, cutting it short, but the tracks in the collection they released are hard jams. If I was bold, I'd say the Crowes + Page are better than Zeppelin on a few tracks, but I'm letting my Crowes bias get the best of me.

Grade C: Decent covers by bands without Jimmy Page (8)

This was tough. There are some bands you've heard of, like Heart, Gov't Mule, and Phish, that cover a few tracks, but... even though some are pretty good, they really don't feel like Zeppelin. There are also some interesting, even good, reinterpretations of Zeppelin that I would've liked to have included, like tracks from SOAK and Shel, that I enjoyed and tried in the list, but ultimately took out if only to keep those looking for a conventional Zep fix from leaving too soon.

Some of these kinda stink, but think of it less as a Zeppelin cover than some almost-made-it-also-rans using each track as a sort of audition for some real work and they're over-doing it like mad on these quick gigs a friend of a friend of a friend got for them.

 For instance:

In a career that spans nearly 40 years and includes over 60 album credits, Joe Lynn Turner remains one of rock and roll's most distinctive, soulful and expressive vocalists. 

Really? But sure enough, if you listen closely to his track, you can tell that's exactly what he's trying to prove -- at some expense for the track as a whole. But also each guitarist and drummer and... Every one is playing not as a team but for themselves. Each track is another bizarre rendition of "Who Isn't Who in LA" at the fringes of rock and roll -- and they're not all half bad.

1. Joe Lynn Turner
2. Smokestack
   • There's a pretty neat blues history on Since I've Been Lovin' You
3. Voidoid
   • Immigrant Song from the Thor soundtrack (Vahalla, after all). A number of covers of this one.
4. Dweezil Zappa
5. Glenn Hughes
6. Great White (2)
7. The Lovemongers (Heart's side gig)
8. Phil Lewis
   

Grade D: Zeppelin Cover Bands (9 now 8 now 9 again)

By the time I was done, some names kept coming back up. Over and over again. Search for a song name, boom, "Hello, usual suspects!"

These bands are definitely trying to sound like Zeppelin, but often just plain miss the mark. I know they want to sound like Zeppelin, but it's like that scene from The Social Network: "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook." Some of the covers are, unfortunately, Winklevossed. There's a reason cover bands often get a bad rap. That said, the tracks I've included seem pretty good to me.

That's not to say every inclusion is 100% merit-based. I did try to mix things up. If LA Thunder was already in the list, I made sure they didn't go back-to-back if I could help it. And that's why Letz Zep is there for Trampled Under Foot, which is actually a pretty annoying cover. Unf. it's the least annoying of Letz Zep's works. Nothing else they've got on Amazon was close to palatable. /shrug

Though Led ZepAgain snuck in four tracks, which, honestly, surprised me when I started counting. Clever bastards. But it turns out even Jimmy Page reportedly likes Led ZepAgain. 

But as LA Weekly says, "the vast majority of the acts are not very good — a reality tribute artists and promoters readily admit to"...

1. Zepparella (1)
2. Lez Zeppelin (1)
   • The above two are both all-female cover bands!
3. Led ZepAgain (4 now 5 now 4 again)
4. Letz Zep (1)
5. LA Thunder (2)

Grade E: Any port in a storm (3)

And then there were a few songs where I couldn't find anything in Grades A through D. I took anything I could find.

And for one track, In the Evening, I couldn't find a single cover on Prime.* In its place, I put in a few songs at the end that weren't on Remasters (Lita Ford doing The Lemon Song and Page & the Crowes covering What Is and What Should Never Be). Okay, I also cheated and recently moved What Is to the first spot, breaking the whole Remasters theme because, well, the first few songs weren't high quality enough for you to stick around. With Jimmy and the Crowes first, I think you'll be more likely to find the patience to stick it out.

* Okay, now that Zeppelin's on Amazon Prime Music, I stole the real In the Evening and put it on the list too.

I also snuck in one track I really wanted to include in the main list but didn't because it wasn't quite Zeppelin enough: Dolly Parton's incredibly interesting Stairway to Heaven.

But for the Grade E sources, it's one track a piece.

1. The Backing Tracks
   • This "band's" tracks are meant to help you learn to play drums, but this one is also a good pretty instrumental version of Achilles' Last Stand.
2. Cool & Classy
   • Whatever that is. Good instrumental of The Rain Song. Works, I think.
3. Chords of Chaos
   • Whatever that is, but their Black Dog was just good enough to include them in the mix instead of yet another Grade D selection. Keep it mixed up, man.
   • I mean, come on. The name of the album is Les meilleures chansons de Rock des temps, which my high school French tells me mean "The best rock songs OF THE TIMES" or something. Now I wonder if whoever named it speaks French.

And there you go. Led Zeppelin on Amazon Music Prime. It's a good collection. Remembering beggars can't be chosers, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Enjoy.

If you've got a comment about what I should've included, you can comment on the single-post, permalinked version of this post.

Labels: amazon, music, Other Stuff