Since I missed posting the customary video at the start of the weekend, how about we rev up the work week with this just-released official video for the mighty Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”?
In the immortal words of Rocket Raccoon, “Oh, yeah.”
Truthfully, I’m not the world’s biggest Zep fan — my affection for them is more on a “greatest hits” level, which is a bit of a misnomer since Zeppelin never actually had a charting single, at least not in the U.S., until the 1997 re-release of “Whole Lotta Love” — but some songs are simply timeless classics, and “Rock and Roll” is one of them. It doesn’t sound like a relic from 1972. It simply sounds like itself, like an entire genre encapsulated in three minutes and 42 seconds. And it makes me want to put the top down and drive way too fast, and that’s a feeling I never grow tired of..
Technically, the song in the video above is not the same one teenager rockers have been blasting from their car stereos for 42 years, though. This is an alternate mix — the guitars have been de-emphasized in favor of the drums — from the new Deluxe Edition of Zeppelin’s landmark fourth album (variously known as Zoso or Led Zeppelin IV), featuring remastered content, studio outtakes, and “additional companion audio,” whatever that may be. Either way, it’s good stuff.
And now that my heart is pumping, what should I do with my day?