ILM GONNA CRAWL — Led Zeppelin poll RESULTS THREAD

http://i53.tinypic.com/dxg2t3.jpg

Excellent title and picture to start this off.

Part One — Most Hated/Least Liked/Tiredest-Of

Counting down the top 10. There were not a lot of ballots that included the hate! Too much luv for the Zep.

Most tired of for me -- no hate really.

10. "The Crunge" — 11 points (3 votes, one #1 vote)

Crazy talk!

Had a feeling this one would get in. For a funk song, it's not very funky.

Been so busy at work, there's not going to be personalized art for each entry. Haven't even thought about Youtubes.

Its the vocals on that the kind of get at me.

It's taken me years to like "The Crunge", though I don't feel any more strongly than that. Obviously the ending line-->"Dancing Days" justifies my like.

Yeah, thought this might make it, but I didn't put it here. I always thought it worked well on the album, find it fun as opposed to some of the other "genre" exercises LZ got into.

That song was one of the reasons I bought Houses Of The Holy...or, more accurately, De La Soul's "Three Is The Magic Number" was. Still, who can hate "The Crunge"?

I mean, "The Crunge" isn't on my faves ballot either, but it seems so weird for it to be that disliked. More worthy candidates imho.

my sentiments exactly.

Not sure why I put quotation marks around genre, sorry about that. Some people don't like funk in general, which is bizarre as well.

I've been listening to Houses of the Holy a lot lately and this made me put The Crunge somewhere near the bottom of my favorites list. I can see why some people would have some problems with this song though.

It's a fun goof -- it was one of the later cuts from my tracks ballot. All in all, I'm glad it didn't make it (my ballot).

tbh it was my #4 hated---the synth part, *kinda* sounds like a horn, is just wrong.

No unlistenable clunkers in the Zep catalogue IMO (I can't say the same about the Beatles, and *definitely* not about the recently-polled Beach Boys), but I had about four I could do without. Evidently none made the top 10 though.

the crunge got such a weird beat

i really like it tho, the dorky keyboard and all

9. "Friends" — 13 points (3 votes, two #1 votes)

ludicrous

ludicrous

― Euler, Tuesday, August 23, 2011 12:35 PM (18 seconds ago)

ahahaha, there's going to be a lot of that this week.

OK, I want whoever voted for "Friends" to come forth.

yeah, 72pt WTF here

I voted for "Friends". I like my folky Zep, just not my super twee Zep. But as someone mentioned, these weren't my most HATED, more like the ones I least want/need to hear now.

Friends also made my favorites list, unlike the Crunge though, I don't really understand the hate for this one

Not me, like that song a lot. Bet it is the lyrics that did it for whomever voted. Which, you know, if yer gonna use lyrics as a barometer for not liking a Led Zeppelin song ...

I voted for "Friends". I like my folky Zep, just not my super twee Zep. But as someone mentioned, these weren't my most HATED, more like the ones I least want/need to hear now.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Tuesday, August 23, 2011 1:39 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

^^^^

How many people submitted a most hated ballot, by the way. Did I miss that tidbit?

yeah, paying attention to Led Zeppelin lyrics is what made me stop listening to them for about 6-7 years. I pretty much completely ignore them now.

xxp

"Friends" isn't twee, it's sinister. It's very easy.

^^^
Exactly, it's dark and foggy, not twee

I usually skip this song but I do like Page's main riff.

I can't think of any "twee" LZ moments. Plant's voice was twee-proof.

Friends just missed my regular ballot

I made a hate ballot as an afterthought; I only remember 2 of the songs I put on it.

Sorry, its hard for me to think of any song with lyrics like, "I'm tellin' you now / the greatest thing you ever can do now / is trade a smile with someone who's blue, now" as "dark" or "sinister".

Yeah, but 'Livin for what you knew' is hauntingly vague.

Tbh I wish I had voted for more songs on III

The closest to twee Zeppelin sounded to me was "That's The Way," and if that's twee, then pour me a big glass of twee.

man this is already crazy as fuckkkkk!

The closest to twee Zeppelin sounded to me was "That's The Way," and if that's twee, then pour me a big glass of twee.

Make that two big glasses.

crunge haters go jump off a confounded bridge IMO

I'll add up the number of hate-ballots and give that number in a little while. I've been putting some lunch together.

Speaking of lunch...

8. "Hot Dog" — 15 points (5 votes, no #1s)

Five #2s for Hot Dog sounds about right

I mentioned this as a throwaway track in the other thread and it kind of is: last song on the first side of the album.

crunge haters go jump off a confounded bridge IMO

― fela cudi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 1:48 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

Princess, you still planning on doing a tracks ballot?

hot dog is kinda cute

Funny how some of the best compliments you can give The Crunge and Friends is how cool it is when the next song comes on.

I'm not a Crunge hater, but I can see why of all the HotH songs packaged in the first box set, that was the only one that got left behind.

Think how great that album would be if Side One ended with "Houses of the Holy". Physical Graffiti's second side would suffer, but that's beside the point.

...and of course Page was considering Marriott as a foil in Zep as well.

The Small Faces also drew at the same well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_pYjcoXG5c

Agree that Humble Pie is a better example, but were they reviled in their day? I can see critics digging the studio stuff, but maybe not Rockin’ The Fillmore.

(It feels like there’s a clear Dylan influence there, though, particularly on Town and Country.)

Ha yeah and the Small Faces didn’t credit Willie Dixon, either.

xp

the constipated 7th : myth or reality

But how is this different from, say, the Rolling Stones (or other Brit Invasion groups) — just louder? That’s what I’ve never understood. It’s not like those groups were super intellectual...

The big 4 Brit invasion bands (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, The Who) were all led by art school kids. And Mick Jagger always approached his fraught relationship with black American music tradition - and with most other traditions the Stones appropriated - with a finely-tuned sense of irony. The other 3 bands all had aspirations to high art; they all made concept albums eventually. There’s definitely a sensibility that unites them and separates them from Zeppelin, and neither they nor their champions in the press were really ready for the change of the guard that Zep represented.

this is a funny revive to read through. i like zep better than basically all their brit classic rock contemporaries combined (excluding the faces who i have an abiding love for) and yet sure, there's a lens through which someone could poke some holes in zep 1 and zep 2 and then somehow write off the ensuing three consecutive masterpieces they recorded, but as a counter one could say this:

imagine starting your first album with a song as good as "good times bad times" jesus christ

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, September 7, 2018 3:13 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

an aspect of this has to be professional jealousy--bonham for sure, and i'd prob argue jpj as well, were the two best rock musicians on earth from the late 60s through the late 70s. for townshend or richards to talk shit is just like....you know deep down that you don't have those guys, and no guitarist wants to admit that they're second-tier to the rhythm section.

Relevant section (by Billy Altman) from The Rolling Stone Record Guide:

https://imgur.com/download/NquLnge/

Agree that Humble Pie is a better example, but were they reviled in their day? I can see critics digging the studio stuff, but maybe not Rockin’ The Fillmore.

it seems to me that the narrative was Humble Pie (along with Zep) were one of those "People's Bands" like Sabbath, Grand Funk, or Deep Purple that most mainstream critics just didn't have time or patience for.

an aspect of this has to be professional jealousy--bonham for sure, and i'd prob argue jpj as well, were the two best rock musicians on earth from the late 60s through the late 70s. for townshend or richards to talk shit is just like....you know deep down that you don't have those guys, and no guitarist wants to admit that they're second-tier to the rhythm section.

Interesting...I don’t know much about their profile in the US, but that definitely makes sense.

xp

xxp And probably a class bias thing happening there too, as the fans of those groups were perceived as proles fond of downers and drinking fortified wine from a jug whereas the critics were more middle class

Pete Townsend also did a few jabs at Steve Marriott in a couple of interviews of the era, stating he was wasting his talent and not trying all that hard.

Considering how big all these bands were, pretty much they all originate back to the same club scene is pretty wild maybe more so in hindsight.

Peter Grant was kind of a Suge Knight of that scene and I could see there being some backroom stuff with him that might have also rubbed some of these other bands wrong.

As for rhythm sections, Pete’s role in the Who was subordinate to Moon’s — he knew it, and played and wrote accordingly. Entwistle and Moon operated in the opposite way to pretty much all rhythm sections then (or now) — I don’t think there was any musical jealousy because the Who weren’t trying to do what Zep was doing, in so many ways. The Who didn’t groove, nor (with Moon) did they try to.

For what it’s worth, Townshend was acutely jealous of Hendrix, and has said so often. If he was jealous of Zep musically (and he was, financially, as he admitted), he likely would’ve said so.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, September 7, 2018 11:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you absolutely know what you're talking about when it comes to this music; way more than i do--i guess my speculation is if there wasn't some grass is greener stuff going on or if townshend just never had any interest in the type of rhythmic stuff zep was doing.

it's almost funnier to me if all these objections were on artistic/intellectual levels. the intellectual aspects of the who and the stones have not done much for me tbh.

sorry if these points has been made upthread by other, better posters but yeah...there was an element of classism for sure, and also the sense that these other bands were very serious, the perception being that they were digging deep and trying to be something other than rock stars. they meant something or whatever, it wasn't just music. the perception with Zeppelin was they were just embracing rock music as its own end and they weren't tackling the issues of the day, whatever day that was. they were regarded as louder and dumber, which is interesting now because i regard them as actually exceptionally intelligent guys and Robert Plant for one continues to this day to be one of the few guys who reached the supernova status he did and who refuses to revisit it, he'd rather do Carry Fire or cover some songs by Low.

also man, i really do like the Beatles and I love the Stones, but these days I've been revisiting them a lot and Led Zeppelin is probably the band that both melts my face off in the best, Ark-opening way and also just makes me feel the best.

i get the sense that plant was vastly underestimated in his time for the type of artist he was. this thread had me watching the 2012 reunion performance tonight and i forgot how much plant crushed it in that set--he could have done credible zep tours whenever he wanted and i hugely respect the fact that he was more interested in other things.

i guess my speculation is if there wasn't some grass is greener stuff going on or if townshend just never had any interest in the type of rhythmic stuff zep was doing.

I'm sure part of it is that Zeppelin, for how different they were from the Who, were also built specifically in the Who's image: genius control freak guitarist/producer/visionary, over the top gorgeous curly blond hair operatic dreamboat vocalist, stoic extremely skilled and amazing bassist, and wild drunken god level hard hitting drummer

A big thing for me is how Zep were a coming together of guys w/ a certain amount of chops/experience forming something completely beyond a “supergroup”...there was a level of finesse to their approach that critics couldn’t get a handle on and couldn’t meaningfully criticise their mechanics/ability as a rock band

(Zep not the last in that respect)

I'm sure part of it is that Zeppelin, for how different they were from the Who, were also built specifically in the Who's image

Indeed. And if Moon and Entwistle had followed through on their threats to leave the Who and form a band with Page in 1966, the band Moon named "Lead Zeppelin" might have included half of the Who.

Plant solo is one of the few if not only '60s vets who hasn't disgraced himself. The only thing that makes me cringe is the Honeydrippers.

man i love zep and robert plant is awesome, but if there's a moment where "rock music" became crystallized from its pan-racial and pansexual roots into music for dumb, pissed-off white boys, zep and sabbath are probably it. i can see why the critics hated it.

I'm not really that convinced that RS's favourite singer-songwriters or NY new wavers had that much more to do with rock's "pan-racial and pansexual roots". I can completely believe that critics didn't respect Zep/Sab's audience, though.

man i love zep and robert plant is awesome, but if there's a moment where "rock music" became crystallized from its pan-racial and pansexual roots into music for dumb, pissed-off white boys, zep and sabbath are probably it. i can see why the critics hated it.

― milkshake duck george bernard shaw (rushomancy

you're missing the queer undertones in so much of this music

"that's the way" could be the theme song for call me by your name (instead of "love my way")

I don't know how I'm gonna tell you
I can't play with you no more
I don't know how I'm gonna do what mama told me
My friend the boy next door
I can't believe what people saying
You're gonna let your hair hang down

and of course

I want to tell you 'bout my good thing
I ain't disclosing no names but
He sure is a good friend and
I ain't gonna tell you where he comes from, no
If I tell you you won't come again, hey

Idk about the queerness of Zep but yeah, the critics hated Queen too.

I was going to post something on the music controp thread about how the critical tendency people like to call 'rockism' was pretty anti-rock.

Fairies wear boots you gotta believe me

TS: moby dick vs rat salad

you're missing the queer undertones in so much of this music

― The Silky Veils of Alfred (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

"whole lotta love" is queerer when tina turner sings it than it is when robert plant sings it

anyway, why should i settle for the "undertones" of robert plant pretending to have a five-hour erection when the contemporaneous work of jagger and bowie are options?

Because you love Zep and Robert Plant is awesome.

if there's a moment where "rock music" became crystallized from its pan-racial and pansexual roots into music for dumb, pissed-off white boys, zep and sabbath are probably it.

disagree. this is a very Gen X way of looking at rock music history.

there's a

whoops

It seems like a shallow basis for a musical critique anyway.

"Why should I listen to this when this exists" I do not get this

Watched the Knebworth '79 show off the DVD set tonight for the first time in a long long while. Daaaamn if Page wasn't in full Dark Guitar Lord mode - linen getup notwithstanding - that night. Amazing playing from him up to "Kashmir" (which didn't seem to require too much thought or effort on his behalf I would imagine). Listened on 'phones for maximum impact.

We Gonna Groove
Yeah Groove
Yeah we gonna groove babe
Lord mama yeah

sippin booze is precedent as the evening starts to glow

"Why should I listen to this when this exists" I do not get this

― brimstead

oh, i'm on board with zep, will be on board with zep until i die, but zep will never be my queer heroes

Well yes, few of the criticisms these writers leveled at Zeppelin weren’t also completely valid criticisms of Cream, etc. But Zeppelin were more like Vikings: they were arrogant

part of the irony is that Cream did long boring blues songs

Watched the Knebworth '79 show off the DVD set tonight for the first time in a long long while. Daaaamn if Page wasn't in full Dark Guitar Lord mode - linen getup notwithstanding - that night. Amazing playing from him up to "Kashmir" (which didn't seem to require too much thought or effort on his behalf I would imagine). Listened on 'phones for maximum impact.

Wow there was a half-written post in there too upthread that the app kept. Oh well.

Guitar-nerd detail from a recent Marc Maron interview with Joe Walsh:

Page thought his Telecaster (the Dragon Tele he painted himself and played with the Yardbirds) sounded too thin for the meaty music he wanted to make with Zep. Les Pauls, with their thick double humbuckers, were hard to find in the UK, so Walsh gave him one of his — the iconic sunburst LP that Page turned into one of the most famous guitars ever.

Another reason why Jimmy abandoned his Dragon Tele:

http://www.feelnumb.com/2011/01/10/jimmy-pages-1958-fender-dragon-telecaster-guitar/

xpost Except of course iirc the Tele was the first call guitar for the first two albums, and obv. he used it occasionally after, and it sounds great, but maybe he was just able to give it some extra oomph in the studio and needed to go Les Paul live?

Yeah, I think it was mainly for live performance. It's funny seeing Page with a Fender Strat at Knebworth; a little window into what New Wave Zep might have been.

first two plant solo albums are as close as we got

Check out the version of TSRtS on LZ DVD. It's an easter egg on one of the menu screens, shot with fan footage from what looks like a theater balcony. Sets the place on fire.

― SongOfSam, Wednesday, 24 August 2011 04:13 (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Where is this pls, is it a hidden thing on the DVD DVD?