Led Zep, WTF?

out thru' the backdoor, only joking one of the later recordings but v good non the less i own a lot of zep stuff vinyl/cd what a band. i like the stuff robert and jimmy have done as well played walking into clarksdale today excellent album . zep 4 is a favourite so is houses of the holy i also like the 4 cd boxed set remasters in fact i like them all. the doors for £2.00 let me see go back and get the windows who know's keep that up and you could get a full house for £20.00 it's a great album so is the soft parade. enjoy the music.

Garyi and Alex. I thought you were joking about having not heard LZ. It was an excellent band that made a lot of great songs. Best heard loud, really loud!! If you have a sistem that also digs deep, it's a joy to listen to them. They also made many mellower tunes. Their reputation as a live act is almost second to none. For me it's not easy to pick a favourite album. The "remasters" box set is excellent but considering that they did not make that many albums it's maybe better to get them all. Maybe Physical Graffiti is their peak. It's also fair to say that many people can't stand them, calling them stiff dinousaurs, pretentious and so on.

Normally I wouldn't enter a thread like this, because what I have to say is quite irrelevant. However, since Led Zep threads are about to take over the entire Music Room, I'll contribute.

The only time in my life I have actually returned a record to the store is Lep Zeppelin. It was the one with Whole Lotta Love on it, and it was just out. I was maybe fifteen years old, the ideal age, and I bought the record, because a couple tunes seemed catchy. I played the record twice and thought it was so unbearable repetitive and testosterone-driven I didn't even want it in the house silently. (Money may have been an issue, too.) I don't mind testosterone as long as it is my own, and I'm sure my mother agreed.

Recently I read a fairly long review about the new Led Zeppelin releases. It was a serious article, and I thought let's read, having always been puzzled about the reputation of a band I thought so b-o-r-i-n-g at the time (when I did enjoy things like Jimi Hendrix, the Cream, you name it). The writer, who started saying he was a true Led Zeppeling fan, ever trying to achieve an interview with the guitar player, started enumerating why Led Zeppeling was such a weird band to love. Few things irritated him more than the singer's voice (though actually in some cases he was really good), and the guitarist (sorry I forget both names) was probably the worst soloist of his generation - and that's when I thought OK I will kindly cease reading the rest of this piece, as I'm sure the final conclusion will be it was the testosterone that did it.

Sorry guys, I wouldn't have made this useless, negative contribution if I had a choice. Pretty soon the entire music room will consist of Led Zep threads.

Herman

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Originally posted by herm:
Sorry guys, I wouldn't have made this useless, negative contribution if I had a choice. Pretty soon the entire music room will consist of Led Zep threads.

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Herman, I am quite surprised at your negative attitude toward Zeppelin. They were a great rock band that continue to serve an important social function: providing background noise while pimply-faced teeny-boppers and college kids get plastered and engage in other not-so-bright activities. Lord knows I went through my Zeppelin phase. I still have the LPs, CDs, a video of that truly bad The Song Remains the Same, and a tapestry with their Swan Song logo on it to prove it.

Let us join in praying they do not reunite, though.

Well, I am guessing I made a mistake on this album, I got to track two and thought it was total shite.

I am thinking I need to go back earlier? Whats that one with the geezer carrying hay on the front, is that Zep? I normally see them around for a quid.

I think people are better off with Ten Years After.

'P.S. Ten Years After are total, utter wank of the first degree.'

You horrid man, I like them!

Must say that this year I have mostly been into electronica anyhoo.

In Through The Out Door sounded like Zep trying to be like early Toto or vice versa. The suggestion sounds gruesome, i know....but it seems to sound that way.

My personal LedZep faves are 3,2 and 1.... and in that order.

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Originally posted by jekyll:
I expect you're right and everyone else is wrong.

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All I was trying to suggest, in my inimitable fun and understated way, is that it's also possible to put all the Led Zep stuff in one or two threads, rather than stuff the entire Music Room with mini threads on Led Zeppelin. Never mind, though.

BTW I wasn't taking this attitude at all, like "I'm right and everybody else is wrong" - but frankly I'm not entirely sure it works the other way around either. If ten people say LZ is great and I say I prefer Chopin - please tell me happens? I say nothing happens.

Herman

Hi Herm. I'm a fan of LZ. I also like some other hard rockbands, old Motorhead especially, loving the power this band could achieve considering that they were only three in the band. But I also like a lot of classical music. I believe there is great music to be found in many different genres. Sure, I consider classical music to be more "longlasting" in that there is more substance in it many times and also in that with many works you don't get bored listening to them frequently. But there is also a lot of great music in other genres that is worth listening to.

Everyone talks all the time about Zep's heavy, rocky stuff (which I do like occasionally) but hardly ever about their less heavy and their acoustic numbers (Tangerine, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp etc)

Disk 2 of the 4-disc Remasters boxset is where most of this stuff lives and it's where I think Jimmy Page's guitar playing really shines. Don't consign Zep to the heavy rock camp until you listen to some of these tracks.

- Andrew

"why not take your own advice and put all that classical dross into a single thread?"

Well, Alan, I do. But perhaps you don't notice. For instance there's a Chopin thread on the first page, which isn't enormously big (classical threads usually aren't), however, it has gone through two or three changes of direction. If Chopin were Led Zep, I guess, that would have meant three different mini-threads, due to LZ fans' apparent diffculty to put one and one together.

Or perhaps you're meaning to say: all classical music is the same bull, it's something with strings and tuxedoes, and it could go in one thread? That is such a clever remark. It's like saying history is them couple of years before I was born.

Perhaps it's a very threatening thing, those classical posters. There's so many of 'em. BTW the mushrooming LZ threads seems to be over, so what are we talking about?

Herman

I thought so. But I thought let's make post 2000 here anyway - making me a major Led Zep contributor.

Herman

Woody, you are absolutely right. LZ was a lot more than raw power. They made a lot of great acoustic and slower tunes also.

Well, I've always liked Led Zep but I think they get better with time. They had more ambition and ideas in one song than most bands have in an entire career; their timbral palete was vast; their sense of timing and dynamics unrivalled; and for sheer skyscraper-flattening overwhelming power they have never been equalled (and nor, I suspect, will they ever be). In Bonzo and the hugely underrated John Paul jones they had one of the finest rhythm sections of all time; In Robert plant they had the original (and best) template for every rock hollerer since; and in Page they had a fatastic guitar player, visionary and producer.

Their music is about much more than spotty teenage fantasies (I presume Todd must have gone deaf from listening to too much overegged symphonic mush), BTW.

Garyi, ITTOD is a poor album (In The evening excepted). To start off with, you're better off with Physical Grafitti, the box set, the new live triple How the west was Won or LZ 4, but all their albms apart from Coda and ITTOD are essential.

Another good place to start is the DVD, which is a great feat of rock archaelogy in itself, but also presents the band n a very good light...

Kevin

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Originally posted by Kevin-W:
I presume Todd must have gone deaf from listening to too much overegged symphonic mush

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Nah, it's just that I pretty much find Zeppelin to be pretentious tripe nowadays. Interestingly, I was demoing my sistem for one of my college-aged brothers in law recently, and I spun some of III and some of The Song Remains the Same (the album) and was taken aback first by how bad it sounded, and second, by how truly bad some of the music and lyrics are. The lyrics especially. III is their best album, yet, let's face it, Out on the Tiles, Gallows Pole, Hats off to Roy Harper: they are all pretty bad, really.

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Originally posted by Kevin-W:
Their music is about much more than spotty teenage fantasies

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Possibly. But that's not what I wrote. The music and lyrics are all pretty much aimed at, or written at, a teenage level. Please do tell: what are the profound, intelligent Zeppelin songs? In My Time of Dying? Achilles Last Stand? Perhaps that Lord of the Rings inspired Ramble On? The Lemon Song? Come on. Zeppelin's music is teeny-bopper tripe. If I want intelligent, ahem, lyrics, I prefer da Ponte or Hofmannsthal these days.

Todd, you listen to the lyrics? Me, I listen to the riffs

Lyrics? Hm.... Well, they are not exactly deep. But who cares? Rock'n roll

Herm,
Maybe you should listen to the soundtrack from the film "Death Wish 2" then you'd hear what Chopin would sound like played by Led Zeppelin (well, Jimmy Page anyway). There's an outstanding version of the 4th Prelude in Em.

And as for the best LZ album, it has to the the soundtrack to the film "The Song Remains The Same". I still think it's musically better than HTWWW, but I guess that's the benefit of overdubs (compare the film with the released soundtrack).

Regards, CB

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In My Time of Dying? Achilles Last Stand? Perhaps that Lord of the Rings inspired Ramble On? The Lemon Song?

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If yon teenies start there and end up with original 30's Blues singers then that's a good thing.

I don't know who wrote 'In my time of dying' but it wasn't Plant/Page, 'The lemon song' is Robert Johnson.

FWIW I find that LZ sounds pretty good too, especially the remastered but otherwise nothing special CDs.

Paul

When I was fourteen in rural Somerset it was permissible to like either Led Zep or Queen (but not both). I'm glad to say I made the right choice even then. They did indeed inspire me to start getting old blues LPs from the record library. I don't think anyone paid much attention to the lyrics. Physical Grafitti still sounds pretty riff-tastic - and not all that far from, say, Shostakovich 7!

duncan

Email: djcritchley at hotmail.com

Quote: Possibly. But that's not what I wrote. The music and lyrics are all pretty much aimed at, or written at, a teenage level. Please do tell: what are the profound, intelligent Zeppelin songs? In My Time of Dying? Achilles Last Stand? Perhaps that Lord of the Rings inspired Ramble On? The Lemon Song? Come on. Zeppelin's music is teeny-bopper tripe. If I want intelligent, ahem, lyrics, I prefer da Ponte or Hofmannsthal these days.

Todd, I think you may be missing the point somewhat. Led Zep's music is not "about" anything, except perhaps itself. The voice is another part of the tonal palette really.

Granted, their music has a kind of celestial passion (which, in the hands of less skilled practitioners, would be mere bombast) which is highly appealing to pimply boys. Which is of course how I got into them in the first place.

Kevin

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Originally posted by Kevin-W:
Todd, I think you may be missing the point somewhat. Led Zep's music is not "about" anything, except perhaps itself. The voice is another part of the tonal palette really.

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Well, we agree that the music is not about anything. However, Zeppelin, like all rock bands, perform(ed) songs, and songs are comprised of both music and lyrics. If one of those elements is weak, the song is weak. (And some of their stuff is bombastic: Kashmir anyone?) I will admit that their best songs are pretty good diversions and better than much rock music - most of III, most of disc two of Physical Graffiti, a couple tunes from Presence all fit the bill. But most of it is tripe.

I did my Zeppelin phase, with thousands of hours of music heard, and hundreds (or thousands) of beers consumed. I just need something more substantive nowadays.

May I whisper, softly, that I think it's a bad idea to compare the merits of rock and classical?

I don't think there's anything to be gained by it - and when I posted my Led Zep post here, on the first page I explicitly mentioned I liked Hendrix and Cream at the time.

Herman

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Originally posted by herm:
May I whisper, softly, that I think it's a bad idea to compare the merits of rock and classical?

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No, you may not, Herman.

I'm not really comparing rock and classical, I'm just pointing out that most Zep is tripe. Sticking with just rock, I vastly prefer The Beatles, well Rubber Soul and later Beatles, anyway. Zappa, too, wrote some fine rock music, as did a number of other rock musicians.

quote:

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Originally posted by herm:
May I whisper, softly, that I think it's a bad idea to compare the merits of rock and classical?

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Yes, sure Herm, you may but since we are talking rock music here there is no need for whispering, instead please SHOUT!

I agree with you that it's a bad idea comparing different kinds of music. Today I have listened to The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Darklands" and two of Bach's Brandenburg concerts. I enjoyed both the rock and the classical album.

[This message was edited by bjorne on TUESDAY 17 June 2003 at 17:28.]