Wait, which one was King Kong and which was Bambi? I don't understand what you're telling me, here.

allison krauss, sigh! one of the few female vocalists who have brought me to tears with her music ( in a good way). GAAWD, but she looks awesome with long hair and boots! great album, BTW. i wonder if they're doing each other. oops, did i say that out loud? gotta go take a cold shower...

Raising Sand is awesome! Definitely one of the best of the year in any genre, and they gave a great show recently at ACL Fest. T-Bone deserves a lot of the credit for the fine live performance too. They deserve any laurels they receive for this fine genre-bending work of genius.

@FLWOMBAT: Plant = Kong (screamy, huge presence, intimidating, rock n roll); Krauss = Bambi (soft, gentle, soothing, crooning, country).

There's a great interview with T-Bone Burnett in this month's TapeOp magazine that mentions this album.

If any BoingBoingers do any home recording or are just generally interested in the technical side of the recording business, I highly recommend TapeOp Magazine; subscriptions are free. It's a wonderful thing.

She is more of a country/bluegrass fiddler than a blues mama, I am pretty sure. Room for overlap of course.

One of the albums of the year, for sure. And Alison isn't a complete Bambi; her vocals on their live versions of The Battle of Evermore have serious power.

@Xeni (#4): Thanks for clarifying!

The metaphor is a slippery beast. I think of Krauss as an immense musical presence, someone whose influence looms over the resurgent bluegrass of the last two decades, but I got the feeling you didn't mean it that way.

Actually, I'm not at all familiar with Led Zeppelin and can't call to mind any of their songs. After scanning their Wikipedia page just now, that seems like a fairly bizarre hole in my pop-culture knowledge, like remarking on the Beatles or the Stones to an acquaintance and having them just blink at you in confusion.

Hmmn. Time to go listen to some Led Zeppelin, I guess.

If you ever get to catch a replay of CMT's "Crossroads" series on CMT or Palladia (as MTV HiDef is called now) with these two, it is absolutely incredible. T-Bone plays guitar with the band and the setting is incredible. They do a few more Zeppelin/Plant tunes on the show than anywhere else that I have seen/heard.

Oh yeah that album kicks ass. A great thing about Plant is that he seems to completely be past the rock star thing and simply wanted to make as good a record as he possibly could.

T Bone's production and band doesn't hurt either, particularly with Marc Ribot throwing in his occasional GodLick (I saw T Bone Burnette and his band back in NYC in 2006 and they blew the lid off the joint).

BTW...the production is superb, also. Tremendous dynamic range, almost SACD-like on my Krell/Linn/Thiel rig.

I heard her on NPR a few years ago, taking part in that Prairie Home Companion show. The voice of an angel, pure and sweet.

I hope a tour might swing by this way, I would for sure go.

flwombat, u never heard of 'stairway to heaven', 'rock n roll', 'kashmir', ' batttle of evermore', goin to california', 'whole lotta love', 'black dog', 'i got a woman', 'custard pie'? and i've only but scratched the surface of their hits! does the 'fl' in flwombat stand for florida? if so, in tampa we had a station in the mid 1990's that played NOTHING BUT LED ZEPELLIN, 24/7! it only lasted about a month, but, oddly enough, it really happened. but u really claim never to have heard of L.Z.? i'm callin shenanigans! if true, GO GET YA SOME RIGHT EFFIN NOW! rock god studio wizards from 1969-1981.

Robert Plant, still the quintessential rock and roll sex icon, I see.

I got to see Plant and Krauss at ACL, and was delighted to see that T-Bone Burnett was playing with them - though the jumbotron camera seemed to conspicuously avoid him for the bulk of the show.

Great show all around though. Taking nothing away from Allison Krauss, being able to hear Robert Plant sing Battle of Evermore and Black Dog live was a lifelong hope come true.

I hope it's better than the Siouxsie Sioux and Morrissey duet. It was described by Q magazine as "like chocolate covered chicken, both tasty individually, but together....".

ALL HAIL LED ZEPPELIN

WE'RE NOT WORTHY!
WE'RE NOT WORTHY!
WE'RE NOT WORTHY!

If you like this team-up (and I do), might I also suggest catching Josh Ritter and Hilary Hahn's collaborative effort? It affects me the same way.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90185501

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
>from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying:
Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.
Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
>from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
How soft your fields so green,
Can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.
So now youd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day
Despite of all your losing.

"Bnhm's brrd, nly thr mr lft."

Alison started her musical career as a bluegrass fiddler. She was voted best fiddler in the country before she was sixteen. You can see her in the movie High Lonesome which is a documentary mainly about Bill Monroe but really about the birth and life of Bluegrass.
I firmly believe she has the finest voice on earth after seeing the Raising Sand tour.
Also, they did Battle for Evermore and it just smoked.
I guess I'm saying: Bluegrass Mama, not Blues.

hey, stupidjerk, bonham's not dead. just pickled!

zep = totally founded by jimmy page, who in turn discovered robert plant

I have that album! When it first came out, I thought it sounded like a bad idea - awkward at best. But they made it work very well. I particularly liked their cover of John Prine's "Killing the Blues."

Alison Krauss is amazing all on her own, though. Beautiful voice, beautiful lady, tremendous talent.

#22 thank you.
Jimmy page pulled plant and bonzo out of the Band of Joy to complete unfulfilled tour dates for the Yardbirds.

The Tom Waits cover Trampled Rose on the album is great too, but I think I like the Everly Brothers tune, Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) (featured in the video) the best, if I had to choose one.

Btw, Bonham's son does a damn good job at filling his father's shoes. Long live Zeppelin!

Oh, and Minty, I'll see your lyrics and raise you a video. Cheers!

I wasn't worried when I heard about Plant and Krauss teaming up. I have a near-idolatrous faith in T-Bone Burnett.

StupidJerk, being upfront about your basic nature doesn't get you off the hook. You keep making remarks like that and bad things will happen to you.

I can't figure out what StupidJerk was trying to say there. "Bonham's barred, only three more left"? Nonsensical, and seems unlikely to to have been disemvoweled, unless that's a Zep ref I don't catch (hey, my teenage rebellions were Carl Orff and Krzystof Penderecki, I dunno from rock & roll).

I thought from subsequent comments that he was saying 'buried', but that would DV to 'brd' not 'brrd'. 'Berried', maybe? And three more what, berries?

Or maybe it was 'nelly their mare loft'? No, drat, one too many ells in 'nelly'. 'Only there mère lift' is possible, but I can't see why a grammatically crippled remark about the elevator at his mother's would be DV'd.

Oh, wait, I know: 'Bonham's brered, only three more left.' Meaning Bonham has two brothers!

Oh hell. Three more members of Led Zeppelin.

OK, now I get why it was DV'd. What a...name-justifying person.

I still don't get 'brrd', though. Someone want to clue me in? (That's the only part I was serious about.) Obviously I'm too much of a duh-head, as a young friend would say, to work this out on my own.

Oh dear. The clip from the song on that episode sounded like something by 'The Beautiful South' Not a good thing in my book. Ah well, I'll have to check the rest of the album. I have a bad feeling though.