LED ZEPPELIN IV

There was a time when I liked Led Zeppelin, but that time is not now. I have this and a few other Zep albums in my music stockpile, but none get any spins anymore simply because all I need to do is turn on the radio and I might just happen to find them (given the right station).

Remember kids, overplaying any song is bad for your health. That's exactly what ruins the quality of songs like ''Stairway to Heaven''; I'd enjoy the song much more if my local rock radio stations didn't insist on playing it every hour. And don't get me started on ''Rock and Roll''...

As a hard rock album, it's above-average. When prog is tossed into the equation, there can be slight difficulties. Okay, I admit Zep can do the odd time signatures like on ''Black Dog'' and ''Four Sticks''; furthermore, we have two delicate acoustic tracks in ''The Battle of Evermore'' and ''Going to California''.

It's passable at best for me. ''Four Sticks'' is the only reason why I would consider blowing the dust of the ZOSO CD case nowadays. I admit that the acoustic tracks surprised me at first (coming from Led Zeppelin), but they're quite the sleepy things now. It's a ''rock classic'' that is a novelty at best from the perspective of this progster.