gotta agree with those who are dumbfounded by the trashing of older bands like led zeppelin, rush, the who, the beatles, the doors, pink floyd, etc. what about hendrix? does he suck too? i'm sure CCR and the stones blow goat balls, right? black sabbath? complete trash.
admittedly, i grew up with all of these bands from the age of 8 to high school. and guess what? i now have over 4000 lps/cds/tapes, and i still think that all of these bands have their worth. you gotta dig a little deeper than that annoying single that's played on classic rock radio ad infinitum.
and there's nothing more cliched than trashing zeppelin for ripping off old blues artists and trashing rush for being pretentious crap for sci-fi nerds and 13-year-old boys. while zeppelin was obviously influenced by old blues, both delta and electric, they were also influenced by tons of folk, especially fairport convention, the incredible string band, and pentangle. you can't listen to "the battle of evermore" or "going to california" and tell me that they're ripping off the blues. and songs like "no quarter" and "achilles last stand" just transcend any sort of cliched hard rock.
yeah, i know, this might be too much for some people to think about. i won't even start to get into how brilliant pink floyd was from 1967-1977.