Photos courtesy of Columbia/Legacy Records

In the U.S., Midnight Oil are probably best known for their single "Beds are Burning." The video helped define late-'80s MTV by showing the group (most notably tall, gangly, bald singer Peter Garrett) dancing amid native tribespeople in the desert, while the lyric forcefully argued that their ancestral lands should be given back to them.

The rockers scored more hits with tracks like "The Dead Heart," "Blue Sky Mine," "Forgotten Years," and "King of the Mountain," and remained dedicated to producing material that dealt with political, socioeconomic, human-rights, and environmental issues, often related to their Australian country of origin and its indigenious peoples. If any band could be said to continue the legacy of the Clash, the Oils would be a quite right candidate.

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Dread Zeppelin's Un-Led-Ed, endorsed by Robert Plant himself.

Led Zeppelin: one of the most famous and influential rock and roll bands of all time. The key word in there is influential. How many rock bands in 2013 do you suppose cite Zeppelin as a major influence on their sound? I'd say just about all of them, either directly or indirectly through their influences' being influenced by Zeppelin themselves.

But just as iconic as Zeppelin's sound is its brand. The band's legacy is all tangled up in its fantastical lyricism, its obscure album art and its mysterious symbols. Even the name is so iconic that it has inspired a legion of imitators, from similarly named tribute bands to active recording entities unto themselves who just like the way a certain pun on the name "Led Zeppelin" sounded.

Here are five of these other Zeppelins you may or may not have heard of before.

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tiffany day via Flickr

In the past year, the hip-hop scene has traded in a great deal of its diamond-encrusted Jesus pieces and record-label logo necklaces for items with a bit more "vintage designer" style.

From coast to coast, we are now seeing entertainers and tastemakers flash their vintage Chanel and antique Versace pieces, while designers such as Cartier, Gucci, Christian Lacroix, Celine, Christian Dior and Anne Klein have graced the necks and arms of the rap elite.

Hip-hop is of course no stranger to fine jewelry, but names such as Jacob the Jeweler and Johnny Dang (an associate of Houston's own Paul Wall) are no longer the most sought-after outfitters. Many hip-hop artists nowadays would rather sport a vintage Givenchy chain or Tiffany & Co bracelet than wear items of a more traditional hip-hop provenance.

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Photo by Chris Weeks

If there were some kind of Ghostbusters-style aura-meter that could measure the feelings certain songs evoke in people, KC & the Sunshine Band's readings would be greener than the fields of Ireland. The Miami-based group dominated the charts in the mid- and late '70s with a string of singles -- "Boogie Shoes," "Get Down Tonight," "I'm Your Boogieman," "Shake Shake Shake (Shake Your Booty)" -- that seemed almost genetically engineered to get people smiling and dancing.

They almost were. Harry Wayne Casey (or "KC") and recording engineer Richard Finch co-founded the Sunshine Band in 1973, and wrote and produced most of the material coming out of TK Studios - not just their own songs, but others like George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby." "The sound of Sunshine," as it was known, made TK Records almost as big a player in the disco world as Neil Bogart's Casablanca, home to the likes of Donna Summer.

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Peppermint Twist: The Mob, the Music, and the Most Famous Dance Club of the '60s
By Joel Selvin & John Johnson, Jr. with Dick Cami
Thomas Dunne Books, 304 pp., $24.99

As far as dance crazes go, the Twist might go down (swiveling, of course) as the best known of all time. In 1961 and 1962, the slightly-naughty-for-its-time dance took over from dance clubs and country clubs to the White House itself.

Chubby Checker's anthem "The Twist" hit the No. 1 spot on the charts on two completely separate times. Joey Dee and the Starliters also took "The Peppermint Twist" to the top, and as the house band at the New York club from which the song took its name, were in a good position to promote it. Fred Flintstone, Jackie Kennedy, Dick Van Dyke, and even the Mercury astronauts were also seen Twistin'.

"The Twist hit like an atomic bomb, and the Peppermint Lounge was ground zero," the authors note. Indeed, it seems just as many socialites and celebrities were dancing as teenagers.

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Thirty years ago today, on November 30, 1982, Michael Jackson released Thriller, the follow-up to 1979's Off the Wall. It's obviously one of the biggest albums ever released on Earth, in terms of sales (possibly close to 100 million by some figures) and cultural influence.

Thriller has also been written about and touted ad nauseam. Everyone is agreement that it's a classic, a high point in musical artistry. It's just so damned catchy, not to mention the music videos, the fashion....

Plenty of people have tinkered with the iconic cover, with Jackson lounging, you know, just talking to ya, asking you what you're thinking. Talking about, you know, stuff.

Here are some of the best Thriller album cover parodies and homages. Any we missed?

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Photo by Marco Torres

The unretired Eagles

Retirements in everyday life are often final, rewarding caps to distinguished careers so that the retirees can pursue lifelong hobbies and ambitions. Alternatively, they move to Florida and join a country club.

In music, however, retirements are often little more than an excuse to sell concert tickets for a "farewell" tour and to hold big press conferences, later to be followed by comeback tours, comeback albums, and more big press conferences. And who are these Brett Favres of the music world?

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Jason the Exploder via Wikipedia

Recently, Black Sabbath confirmed that record magnate and production auteur Rick Rubin would be twiddling the knobs on their new record, set to be released next year. It will be their first with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals since 1978, and a lot of their reputation is riding on this.

Not that it will matter in the grand scheme of things whether they launch a successful comeback or not, but nobody wants to end their legacy on a low note; they've still got Never Say Die hanging out there polluting it, after all.

Rubin is a master of orchestrating these sorts of comebacks, so the Sabs probably made the right choice to go to him. He's had some duds, but he's also managed to create some of the best albums in decades by long-established artists who had lost their way. So what might be in store for Sabbath? If these are any indication, one of their best records yet.

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Photo by Nicole Zeno

Yellowcard

Mainstream emo in the early 2000s was a harsh mistress to keep. For those of us into the true underground form of it, it was an offensive burden to deal with, but at least some good bands were getting some mainstream success.

Others? Well, we'd just have to deal with them. Of course, all that's over now. The whole thing's gone back underground. And what about all those mainstream torchbearers?

As covered in a previous article I wrote, many jumped ship and found more success in happier genres. Others refused to let it die and are today something similar to what hair metal guys were in the era of grunge.

Since the majority of these bands' fans were in high school and pretty much stopped paying attention afterwards, consider this your high-school reunion, where you get to see all the embarrassing things your old friends from those days have been up to. Trust me, they're much worse off these days than you are.

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With all the bands reuniting these days, it's hard to say anything is forever in the world of music. Bands are even getting smart and putting themselves on "indefinite hiatus" rather than actually "breaking up." See, they're just going away for a while. A "break up" would be too much of a commitment.

We can say with certainty that some bands are never, ever coming back though, and sometimes that's not a bad thing. Sometimes, a band should have never existed in the first place and we are thankfully blessed that they will never grace our presence again.

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