portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Saturday, September 30, 2023

"DAZED & CONFUSED" JAKE HOLMES [the ORIGINAL] 1967 | PSYCHEDELIC JUNGLE

The YouTube poster of this ORIGINAL song notes

Dazed and Confused was written by the folk-rock singer Jake Holmes and released as a track in his debut album "The Above Ground Sound" Of Jake Holmes in 1967. That same year Jake Holmes opened for The Yardbirds in a show in New York where Jimmy Page heard the song. The song was rearranged and later became one of Led Zeppelin best-known songs, the debt to Jake Holmes however went largely unacknowledged by the band until 2012. 

The superb and always fascinating psychedelic jungle notes also

"The songs I like : Jake Holmes - Dazed and Confused (1967).

Page heard this song when Holmes was opening for the Yardbirds, and he covered it. Without crediting the original author. Page doesn’t like having to. Without Led Zeppelin, this song would have remained in the shadows, but still… a little mention of the author would have been honest. Page finally reached an out-of-court settlement with Holmes… in 2012! It is for this type of fact (among others, because it is not the most disturbing of the long list of stupid things committed during their great career) that, although I love their music (especially the first album in fact) I have not a lot of esteem for this group, humanly speaking.

Finally: the original version of Jake Holmes is excellent!!!” 

Jimmy what did you think would happen?

Robert? What did Jimmy tell you? He’d written a song whilst with the Yardbirds that you should cover?!

Prolly! I admire Robert immensely and his later career is an inspiration as much as the first two Led Zeppelin albums were groundbreaking and truly astonishing but as for Jimmy? Not so much . . . . . . 

Hell there’s even a magazine named after HOLMES' song!

It is called just desserts and you let the side down with this behaviour . . . . . . . . . 

 It is a cultural artefact

with an emphasis on the FACT! The singing and the descending bass accompaniment are straight lifts never mind the vocals and expression and delivery LET ALONE THE WORDS! written in 1967 and you sorted it out when? 45 years later . . . . . . . . . 

SHAME!

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