Friday, January 25, 2008

Popping the balloon, no. 2

I just realized something: a little way into the Led Zeppelin tune "Hey Hey What Can I Do," the lyric goes like this:

Sunday morning when we go down to church
See the menfolk standin' in line


And I ask you, Robert Plant: "menfolk"?

Really?

Is that the word you wanted there, no foolin'?

2 comments:

DJA said...

Dude, this is like a barely perceptible blip on the Richter Scale of Questionable Led Zeppelin Lyrics.

"Menfolk" is just Plant trying to be old-timey and black. That makes sense.

But I still can't grok how he figured that what "Ramble On" really needed in the third verse was an incredibly awkward Lord of the Rings reference.

And that's not even mentioning infamous lines like "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now" etc.

Andrew Durkin said...

Yeah!

You'll get no argument from me about the superabundance of QLZLs.

I tend to get annoyed at the trope of "grown up reads rock and roll lyrics aloud to prove how silly said lyrics are" -- but in the case of Zeppelin I think such a thing is sort of a civic duty.

I guess I was just sideswiped by the minstrelsy overtones of this particular line, which had escaped me until I actually had to learn the tune (for purposes too ridiculous to go into here).

On a related topic, I'm actually mildly digging what I've heard of the Robert Plant / Alison Krauss album. In spite of the idiotic video.