I Don't Like Reggae, I Love It: The History of "D'yer Mak'er" by Led Zeppelin

In this  episode of "I Don’t Like Reggae, I Love It"  a special audio series of the Ska Boom podcast about the historical origins and impact of reggae on popular music, I focus on the king of all cod reggae songs -- "D'yer Mak'er" by Led Zeppelin. As a new wave and ska kid who completely ignored hard rock, I was completely caught off guard when I started hearing the song, we Americans mispronounce as DIRE MAKER -- more on that mispronunciation in the episode.  It confused me that the kids at my high school who worshipped Zeppelin loved a song that sounded like straight up reggae to me.  Though I wasn’t inspired enough to buy the Houses of The Holy album at the time, whenever D'yer Mak'er was played on the radio – and it was played a lot – I secretly liked it. Led Zeppelin have been dogged for most of their career as having a reputation for stealing and plagiarizing songs from obscure sources and claiming them as their own.  Did they do the same with D'yer Mak'er?  You decide...If you’ve listened and received some value from this episode, then please help support the podcast for as little as $3 per month on Patreon. Supporters get access to exclusive content like special episodes of this series and advanced promo chapters from my forthcoming book Ska Boom: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History. Just go to patreon.com/skaboompodcast for more information.Please note: The music clips included in this podcast fall under the “Fair Use Doctrine” as defined by Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The law allows for use of music clips for purposes of criticism, comment, and news reporting.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices