Misty Mountain Hop vs Dancing Days

lz af their most relaxed. Which is better ?

Dancing Days.

i loved Misty so much as a kid, cos that keyboard riff is so sick. sounds like a Rhodes, is it a Rhodes?

been listening to "Houses of the Holy" a lot this year, i think i prefer it. that weird main guitar riff that sounds like two riffs intersecting. plus the synth line that comes in mimicking the main riff. nice!

overall i find the vocal melody is more pleasant in DD. MMH has a sing-songy thing to it but after a couple verses it feels like the lyrics are constrained by having such a locked in vocal line. it's a little bit... nervous?.... like a playground chant?... and it kind of just floats there on top of the main riff. it feels like the words are sort of inconsequential, as long as they fit the "walk...ing....in....the...street...the...o-...ther...day" scheme.

DD's main riff on the other hand has this churning internal tension to it and the more one-note vocal line compliments it more imo. the way it slides into the "You know it's alright/I said it's alright" bridge bit is sweet, Plant's droney/cosmic proclamations evolving into slightly melancholy reflection and recognition. DD sounds more like an actual song.

"misty mountain hop" is incredible. i like "dancing days" ok i guess. seems underwritten to me.

Misty Mountain Hop easily.

sounds like a Rhodes, is it a Rhodes?

hohner

hey boy do you wanna score

Misty Mountain Hop by a million miles

Yeah DD has always felt like a decent riff but kind of a boring song to me. I like it more than I did as a teenager, as I've come to hear these songs more as part of a full-album listening experience, enjoying the playing as much as the hooks.... but MMH is such a monster. Great bad-trip song, everything from the riff on down to ''oh ho ho'' is doomy and unsettling. You meet these flower children but it's all gone real sour since '67. ''I didn't notice but it had gotten very dark,'' indeed. IIRC it's used in Almost Famous at a point where the band *appears* to have really made it, arriving in NYC, but actually it's all going to shit and people are treating each other badly and the money is fucking things up - that felt really on-point.

I will admit the ''look at yourself'' and ''book on a shelf'' bits are kinda lame, but the former at least sounded cool when I was 16 so there's that.

DD feels closer to New Wave esp with that arrangement, all trippy synths and treated guitars. makes me think of "Lodger"-era Bowie?

MMH is really awesome, i might change my mind and prefer that one. it is closer to a 60s rave and Robert Plant's voice wasn't shit yet so it rocks extra hard. "Land of 1000 Dances" via Middle Earth and Space Invaders.

"Dancing Days"

"Dance Hall Days"

mmh

Yes, Dancing Days is Zep in Lodger mode. Love it.

i love dancing days but i have to go with mmh here.

'Misty Mountain Hop'

'Dancing Days' doesn't sound anything like New Wave to me.

I wasn't sure I saw the connection either but would be happy to hear about any new wave with similar multitracked guitars and Farfisa organ.

Are people thinking of e.g. the early Cars sound?

such a huge Dancing Days fan, Bonzo is just incredibly clever in between the couplets in the verses but that clav riff on MMH is unstoppable

but I prefer Dancing Days in the end for the vibe

Not close, MMH.

i hate Dancing Days

MMH forever

Dancing Days sounds like a boring record that got stuck & i want to kick the stereo when it plays

what is even wrong w you guys, Dancing Days is a fuckin groove and RP's delivery is the slinkiest

ha i was evenhanded above, but in the spirit of Search vs. Destroy binarism i kind of want to just go ahead and co-sign VG's posts.

pick a side hippy <3

^^^ which way the pressure lies

I love you guys

I love LZ and these songs but especially MMH

I LOVE MUSIC!!

:)

What I like about both of these and why I think of them as a pair is that they have a good dose of LZ chordal weirdness hidden beneath their ostensible melodies. It's what gives MMH its undercurrent of doom and what makes DD so slinky and weird. I'd love to see a dissection of the main MMH riff. I feel like there are at least three melody lines there masquerading as one.

And the guitar tone on DD is so...metallic? Abrasive? I can't think of any other song by anyone that has that sound. It's almost like a horn - brass of some kind.

I remember reading in some book about their mood when they put DD together. They were conscious of the fact that Stairway was something very special, and that they had proved themselves and were kind of on top of the mountain, confident and relaxed.

TO ALL

GET IN LINE

otm

I'm a bit sick of most of the 4th album that isn't "Four Sticks," so "Dancing Days," but the unrepaired tape drag during the intro on modern remasters is unforgivable. I don't understand why they didn't patch in from another source if the master tape is that damaged... If you have never noticed, once heard it can't be unheard.

Kent, yes, it has always bothered me, too!

dancing days by a light-year, there are few things in music i love more than the way that guitar sounds

the droney repetitiveness of the riff bugs me (i do like the sound tho); I get further bugged by the way plant's phrasing of the verses mimics the riff; also the way he sings "you know it's ALright" etc.

it's like an earworm created in a lab designed to burrow into my head & annoy me forever

i can't

Weird. Dancing Days is my favorite Zep groove. It makes sense to me that they made it while at their most confident. Plant's best phrasing outside Kashmir.

i will fight u

it's just kinda boring, imo

(dd)

misty mountain hop you can kinda headbang to & flail about in a happy way & it has a lot of fun parts

HAY BOY DYA WANNA SCOOOHOOORE

he said that his friends would all drop by-y

WOOO HOOO!!!!!

this thread inspired me to make a "best zep" playlist in spotify w at least one song from each album, it is very good

shameful sidebar:
when I saw the temple of the dog reunion last week, they played Achilles Last Stand & i had no idea what it was, I'd never listened to late-period Zep

i thought it was Rush!

ok i was on your side until then

whaaaaat

xp

Yeah Veg, you should dig into those later Zep albums! Play them loud, at night. Some amazing rocking, though generally the songwriting gets less tight, except on the oddball genre experiments and one-offs. On the big heavy numbers they start to excel more at feel and texture than anything else. IOW, see the title of the Presence thread.

it took me awhile to get into the post-Physical Graffiti, they do seem like they become a bit of a different, more metallic beast (I want to say that's due to a production shift towards harsher textures - slapback echo, digital synths, chorus effects etc.) I do prefer the earlier stuff but the later albums all have amazing material on them.

Late Zep is also a function of Robert's voice gone ragged.

They also just get less, idk, song- or singles-oriented? Like okay they didn't really do "singles" ever, but Zep IV's entire tracklist didn't become FM staples for no reason - they are basically all compact, radio-ready verse-chorus-verse things with very legible, killer hooks. Not saying they lost interest in that entirely, but I definitely don't listen to the latter half of their career the same way.

Yeah I will def dig into the later stuff now
Sorry for letting you all down lol :/

hahahaha no worries no presh, it's just that you have rockin' taste and have helped introduce me to some kick-ass 70s music!

:D

i definitely have a lot of weird gaps in my fandoms, like entire catalogs of obvious stuff that i just got lazy about or ignored etc

gives me a good excuse to learn more!

(but mama... that's where the fun is)

MMH, but I Dancing Days is great too. Just MMH is one of those hall of fame, this-is-what-rock-music-means-to-me kind of jams.

I want to know how Bonham learned of the Purdie shuffle

Misty Mountain Hop

I really did not expect so many people to pick "Misty Mountain Hop". It always seemed like a lesser Zep IV track to me.

(Obv a lesser track from one of the greatest albums of all time is still v good!)

2016 was crazy enough w/o finding out that multiple ppl in this world think dancing days is "boring"

i probably just haven't heard it in the right environment, just don't get much of a vibe from it.