In the Mood by Robert Plant

When I was in college I had a good friend on my floor who was the biggest Led Zeppelin fanatic I have ever known. I have earlier written about Led Zeppelin and how I felt that most young men go thru a Zeppelin stage but this was beyond that. He had the strongest stereo on our whole floor and at times the windows shook with Zeppelin songs. At that time Robert Plant was solo and Paul Rodgers was joining forces with Paul Rodgers in a band called The Firm.

In the Mood is a tremendous song. Starting slow, in fact so low that one wonders if the record has started before the back music starts being audible. The song is eminently singable with Plant's repetitive advising us that he is in the mood for a melody.

In particular this song, in contrast to some of the Manic Nirvana era solo work, has aged very well. This is a song that sounds fresh today, is as good as most Zeppelin work, and in a contemporary sense one could easily see this being used as a rif or a backtrack for the many samplers for modern music out there.

In many ways Zeppelin was denigrated when they burst on the scene as borrowers and stealers the blues legends they heavily borrowed from. Songs like this by Plant in the early eighties show that in time they became excellent songmasters themselves.

If you have not heard this for a decade or so Spotify it. It still shines.