Greta Van Fleet

One Liner: Led Zeppelin
Wikipedia Genre:  Hard rock, blues rock
Home: Frankenmuth, Michigan

Poster Position: 6
Day: Friday at 4:45
Weekend One Only.

Thoughts:  This is the band that I'm most deeply and thoroughly bummed about missing by not doing first weekend.  My hope is that they play an after show that I can wrangle [EDIT - NOPE!  FML!], but this band may be the best new thing coming to the weekend.  If you like rock, blues rock, or Led Zeppelin (which would pretty succinctly describe the majority of my musical leanings), then these guys are your new favorite band.

The band is three brothers (vocalist Josh Kiszka, guitarist Jake Kiszka, bassist Sam Kiszka) and some other dude who is not their brother (drummer Danny Wagner).  The weirdest thing about them so far is the damn band name.  I've brought the group up to several different people, and they always think this is a woman singer they haven't heard of yet (which is kind of funny when Sharon Van Etten is a few lines down on the poster).  Their name apparently came from some random person in their home town, who is named Gretna Van Fleet.  They should have named themselves after their hometown instead - Frankenmuth - sounds badass.  

The lady, Gretna, is apparently 87 years old, and knows how to throw some shade on the upstart young boys.  This article shows that they brought her down to a show in Detroit, where she said: "she enjoyed it 'as much as I could. It's not really my kind of music, but people enjoy it and the boys did a good job of presenting it.'"  That is hilarious to me.  These kids made her name immortal, paid for her and her posse to come down to Detroit and see their show and hang out backstage and all that, and she's like "meh, gimme some Dean Martin, yo."  Later in the article, she says she laughed it off when they named the band after her, saying "That won't last long. That's not a name for a band."  I love this brassy old lady.  She gives no shits and I'm renaming my girls after her later today.

Anyway, you came here for the tunes.  Their most listened to is the "Highway Tune," with 26.4 million streams.  Get in there.

Just that little vocal "ahhhhhhh-aaahhh?" in the intro sounds like Plant.  Without those vocals, this band would owe a debt to Zep, but it wouldn't be quite so close.  With the howling vocal, it really sounds like Zeppelin.  Their other most streamed tune also gives you a similar experience.  "Safari Song" has just over 17 million streams and a howl at the start that owes 100% of royalties to the golden god.

Totally serious, if you didn't know what you were listening to, would you think that was a new band of 20 year olds from Frankenturd Michigan, or would you guess that this was an old Zeppelin b-side that had been unearthed?  I don't think, for a minute, that this guitarist is as good as Jimmy Page back in the day, but still, the overall sound is just too close to ignore.

And other spots do this too - the organ solo in "Flower Power" is a kissing cousin to the one in Zep's "Your Time is Gonna Come."  And the vocals use some of the same little asides and tossoffs that Plant uses the "my my!" thing in "Highway Song" being a good example.  And sometimes this pushes outside of the Plant sound and becomes more like the Wolfmother singer's howl.  But whatever, I would go watch the guys play immediately.

I'm giving you their brand new single next, apparently to be the single for the upcoming real album.  This is "When the Curtain Falls," which has 3.4 million streams a month after being released.  Pretty good for a dead genre of music.

Now look, I'm well aware that Robert Plant is on a level all his own.  I'm not trying to perfectly match these two bands up, but you have to admit that the similarities are too damn close to ignore.  And I love it.

Lets go keep rock and roll alive, folks.  Do it.