There’s a roundabout near my house where there’s always a cardboard sign advertising a gig that looks very exciting when you’re still 50 yards away in the car. Pearl Scam, Alice in Chains UK, The Absolute Stone Roses, The Guns ‘N Roses Experience and Fell Out Boy are all coming up.
There’s also Coda – A Tribute to Led Zeppelin, who bill themselves as “an incredible recreation of Led Zeppelin in their prime, featuring amazing replica costumes and instruments that will take you back in time to the early Seventies.”
There’s clearly a healthy market for this kind of thing, especially now that streaming and YouTube have made it just as easy to find old music as the new stuff. The proportion of music consumption that is “catalogue” – ie over 18 months old – is growing every year. Only around a quarter of music being listened to now comprises current releases. But the music business has, to date, depended on a constant churn of exciting new things, so what can it do?
Here come Michigan-formed Greta Van Fleet, a young band who will also take you back in time to the early Seventies, from singer Josh Kiszka’s retro jumpsuits to his twin brother Jake’s muscular guitar solos. While Coda are bringing the sound of Led Zeppelin to Level III in Swindon and the Stag in Sevenoaks, Greta Van Fleet have won a Grammy, sent their previous two albums into the US top 10 and will bring the sound of Led Zeppelin to Madison Square Garden and Wembley Arena this autumn.
The difference is that they write original songs, many of which summon up all the pomp and posturing of the days when classic rock was just known as rock. Runway Blues, which rockets along for just over a minute before running away again, is a riot. Thanks to Josh Kiszka, the macho boorishness of a lot of the old bands is not so visible. There’s a theatricality to his straining voice on the best chorus here, Waited All Your Life, that comes closer to the knowing silliness of another backwards-looking jumpsuit enthusiast, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness.
However, even Hawkins wasn’t complimentary when he compared the bands on his YouTube channel in 2021: “When The Darkness came out we had TWO influences – AC/DC and Queen,” he bragged. As we established, there’s clearly a market for it, but it’s hard to see the point when it’s so one-dimensional.
Lava/Republic Records
