Has anyone read
this book on Led Zeppelin? It was written by one of my university professors; it's a fascinating examination of various issues involved with Led Zeppelin's music such as ritual, intertexuality, the body in performance and in musical expression, performance of gender and other subjects. Dr. Fast makes fan ethnography (she conducted a survey while doing research) an important part of the book which is a nice way of making the book more than a proclamation from the so-called "ivory tower" of the intelligentsia. Kindly ignore that very close-minded negative review (academic studies on popular music rareley get much respect from anyone except fellow academics) and feel free to pick this up if you see it (it's rather pricey, but it has my seal of approval
). You can take comfort in the fact that the book is better than
Hammer of the Gods or Richard Cole's book, even though a paper cut across the eyeball would better than those rags.
