Metaphysical Relationships to Bands

I've always thought this about The Black Keys: every song they write, even if it's not one I particularly like, gives me the feeling that it is executed perfectly- that is, given that they picked this particular song to write, they could not have done it better. They might have picked a better song to do, but this one is done perfectly.

Now, The Black Keys are not my favorite band- they fluctuate around the area from 2-5 on that list- but this is a completely unshakeable feeling that I have about them. For an example, the song "You're the One" (on Rubber Factory): I don't like this song. In fact, this is about the closest I come to actually disliking a Keys song. But I don't think there's anything they could have done to make it better without making it a different song.

My favorite band, though, is Led Zeppelin- something I bring up a lot, you may have noticed. My perception of them is very different. They represent, to me, a sort of Platonic method of music. It has always seemed to me that Zeppelin's music is completely organic (even when they use a Theremin), in the way that a tidal wave is "organic" (I guess "natural" would be more appropriate, since water is not an organism). Their music seems to just spontaneously come into being, as though the ideal form is reaching into the world to create an actual form. So, in a sense, even though both bands are blues-based riff-rock bands with awesome drummers, Zeppelin and The Black Keys represent a near complete conflict: the Keys manufacture an ideal, but Zeppelin merely emerges from or arises out of the preexisting ideal.

Put another way, I have the strange perception that Zeppelin's music must exist in some way or other, and that it would inevitably come into being (this is, of course, hyperbolic and over-analytic). The Keys, however, seem to be a completely superfluous, but totally awesome, development.

In a similar vein, Zeppelin seems to me to be cohesion- something that naturally comes together and sticks, like water, inevitably and without guile or choice- whereas the Keys are adhesion- a manufactured situation with parts being placed together with purpose and aforethought.

As a final summary: Zeppelin and the Keys have a remarkably similar sound (blues-based thump with unusual vocals and extensive riffing). Zeppelin, though, seems to have been almost an accident, even as far as their selection of personnel (look up the hiring of John Bonham), but an accident that had to happen eventually- i.e., I have the incredibly weird feeling that "When the Levee Breaks" would have been written and recorded at some point, or at least something remarkably close to it, whether or not Zeppelin as it was ever existed. The Keys, though, seem like a remarkably successful business model or science experiment. They seem manufactured, in the best possible sense. Despite their superficial roughness and crudity, they are in some ways more polished than the (comparably) smoother Zeppelin. But that ultimately is not enough to push them to the top of my personal list.

And no, I do not do drugs.