Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

Maybe so, but how about Physical Graffiti vs. London Calling?

guys how about robert plant's voice on black dog now sounds like someone trying to start an engine in cold weather?

that black dog clip seriously sounds like the vocal equivalent to those youtube "(x) shreds" videos.

Jsnot-that's a much fairer comparison, granted.

I hating picking on the Clash, but I just really reject the tired old saw about "punk coming along to kill the dinosaurs like Yes, the Who, Sabbath,Zep" or whoever you want to put in there, when I would much rather, today, listen to those bands over any of the so-called dinosaur killers. It's just lazy criticism. And to have this pinhead put it in his review of the Zep show, which I would have killed to have been at, is a joke.

I just really reject the tired old saw
Meet the new saw
Same as the old saw

It's just lazy criticism.

That. Cannot. Be. Stressed. Enough.

zep and the clash are both pretty much unimpeachable, and none of either of their albums would sound original or forward-thinking if they were released today.

Presence vs Colour By Numbers.

thats such a weird thing to say, anyway--how on earth would a heavy, bluesy hard-rock/proto-metal album released in 2007 seem "fresh"??

guys how about robert plant's voice on black dog now sounds like someone trying to start an engine in cold weather?

The intro sounds more like a cold engine to me.

The BBC review isn't bad. It's not a slobber -- which is par for the course for a lot of them today, I suspect.

C'mon now, this is funny. Pagey'd have to be a pretty dour guy not to laugh.

Jimmy Page's double-necked axe being wheeled out for guitar shop favourite Stairway To Heaven.

And this is a nice thing to say:

And Page - Mephistophelean with his black frock coat and explosion of white hair - is an equally commanding presence, an incongruous gardening accident which forced the show to be rescheduled notwithstanding.

>>how on earth would a heavy, bluesy hard-rock/proto-metal album >>released in 2007 seem "fresh"??

By doing an A/B listening test with just about any stoner rock CD released in the last four years. (There'd be a couple exceptions not worth mentioning for the sake of discussion.) Hey, A/B Zeppelin with the last great white hope -- Wolfmother in 2006. Don't shoot the messenger. At one point every newspaper rockcritic seemed to be into comparing 'em with Zep.

>>how on earth would a heavy, bluesy hard-rock/proto-metal album >>released in 2007 seem "fresh"??

Listen to the fucking music, man. If you think PG is just a heavy, bluesy hard rock/ proto-metal album, I feel bad for you. Then again, you didn't have P-Funk on your Jersey music poll, so I guess I don't care if you think it's weird.

Wolfmother are fine by me; their album was both fierce and funny.

he didn't say it was JUST that, he said it IS that, and it is undeniably at least that

that said, i don't think anybody would confuse physical graffiti for something by a current stoner rock band

this train of thought is weird though, it's like when that jane austen fan submitted austen novels practically verbatim to major publishers, was of course rejected by all of them and then was like "today's editors are philistines!"

newsflash: art exists in context

presence is definitely better than anything the clash ever released.

any male vocalist who sings like his nuts are in a vice gets compared to Plant

Good times.

Bad times.

hahaha

I just really reject the tired old saw about "punk coming along to kill the dinosaurs like Yes, the Who, Sabbath,Zep" or whoever you want to put in there

I do too, but only because the Who cannot be killed.

But those other bands? Feh.

im not really sure you "love music."

i love zeppelin so much. we listened to song remains the same this last weekend and goddamn i forgot how nuts they were, there were parts of dazed and confused where you thought bonham and jones thought they were in james brown's band....page is also such a weird guitar player compared to all the other "guitar heros", he plays way more fucked up,sloppy, strange stuff than hendrix...

but yeah anyway they are sweet. glad to see presence get some love in the live set.

and zep had so much more variety and range than stoner rock bands...i mean it's not like QOTSA or wolfmother or whoever is going to have "in the light" or "down by the seaside" on their record.

Thanks Matt, that's a major part of the point I was trying to make, no matter how inartfully. I think those kinds of songs would sound good even released today. Plus, with Page's production I find something new in these songs each time I listen to them.

also that BBC thing is kind of full of shit, it's not my understanding that zep was the "key inspiration" for spinal tap, i thought it was those troggs studio outtakes ("sprinkle some fookin' feeery dooost onnit!" that started the whole thing.

and spinal tap was def. more metal as metal. i'd put it at bands like rainbow and deep purple morese than zep. although maybe when nigel plays the guitar w/the violin that's def. dazed and confused...but you can't really avoid zep.

i know that stonehenge was a direct rip on sabbath, when they toured w/a stonehenge set and had to end up leaving it out in the parking lot cuz they got downgraded to smaller venues and it wouldn't fit.

(bill those songs still sound awesome, and i can't believe i actually compared zep to fuckin' WOLFMOTHER of all things, jeez talk about a-squad vs. c-squad)

Probably right, I think the Spinal Tap guys were poking fun in admiration though, Gillan and Iommi would be the first to tell you the Stonehenge thing was ridiculous. And Harry Shearer spent time with the band Saxon to prep for his role, they must not have had too much trouble with it. When he gets stuck in that pod on stage it's fucking hilarious.

xpost

>>that said, i don't think anybody would confuse physical graffiti for >>something by a current stoner rock band

Most people simply don't listen to stoner rock bands. If you're in the genre and you can sell and/or giveaway 5,000 copies, you've gone platinum.

Interestingly, two all girl bands released Zep copy records this year. Lez Zeppelin, who even got Eddie Kramer to produce them, and Zepparella.
I have to laugh when I see the Lez Zep CDs right next to the new Led Zeppelin stuff at BestBuy.

And who can forget Dread Zeppelin?

I think Plant still has an amazing voice, but they should have just knocked Black Dog down a step for him, it was ridiculous. It reminds me of the Black Crowes tour for the Southern Harmony & Musical Companion when Robinson's voice was ALREADY shot out. Robinson still tried to hit the notes and mainly came up short - Plant's older and wiser so tries to kind of get around it but it doesn't seem like he thought about it that much.

Why do Page & Plant both look like they're kissing someone?

They're kissing "My Sweet Satan"

-- Alex in NYC, Tuesday, December 11, 2007 3:30 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

lol!

Spinal Tap is clearly an amalgam - there's direct references/parodies of at least a dozen specific bands (many already mentioned - but also David St. Hubbins clearly modelled on Sweet lead singer, and giant skeleton skull = Maiden/Eddy)

is it just me who thinks led zep's music is too perfectly produced and lacks bass?

wouldn't a perfectly produced album have adequate bass?

man. I'm rilly having a hard time finding "For Your Life" on YT. I wanna hear that BAD. WEA be wastin' no time…

Matt H: are you at all like me and wish that the band played only deep cuts, like "Four Sticks," "Walter's Walk," the two funk toonz on Presence, "South Bend Suarez" and the almighty "Carouselambra"?

"wouldn't a perfectly produced album have adequate bass?"

too pristinely produced then.

mr. x -- i guess i think those records sound great, not anteceptic but just great rock records, so yep the bass is fine for me.

veronica -- YES! but even doing a couple off presence is pretty bold in a way, so that's cool

"Stairway to Heaven"

the crowd went into ecstasy while the first notes were being played.

It's because they thought they were playing a cover of "Taurus" by Spirit.

-- Sara Sara Sara, Tuesday, December 11, 2007 2:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

woah I'd never heard that before, def. is the into riff to stairway, crazy...but i think it stands to Jay-Z's "You made it a hot line/ I made it a hot song" defense.

i mean it's not like QOTSA or wolfmother or whoever is going to have "in the light" or "down by the seaside" on their record.

god bless zep but i hope no one else has 'down by the seaside' on their record

I think Plant still has an amazing voice, but they should have just knocked Black Dog down a step for him, it was ridiculous.

they did. it's a full step below the original. maybe another step? two steps? that'd certainly sludge it up, and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

"they are one of the very few bands that could make absofuckinglutely ANYTHING rock: calypso, english pussy folk, black magic, disco, cavestomp, whatever."

where kin i git summa that english pussy folk???????

Plant was doing "Black Dog" on his 2005 tour, and I think they played it slightly lower then too. and yeah, absolutely nothing wrong with that.

hahaha man .. this gig is all over YouTube now (although yeah, where the heck is "For Your Life"??) .. it is like a game of cat and mouse with Warners

dude I just watched the "Stairway" clip and got chills. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be at the gig.

worth saying again: some really strange zep hating up there.

no doubt. zeppelin is beyond classic and dud

who's surprised tho...

zep rules

zeppelin is beyond classic and dud

hay i fixed that for you, okay ^

funny funny. seriously, they're about the only band i can't relate to people not being into. i get why people don't like yes, i get why people don't like the velvet underground and de la soul and televison and joy division and the dead and whoever. zeppelin though? it's just so obvious they fucking rule

If you ask me they were the archetypal American teen boy fantasy band -- music for young lads to cruise around in battered pickup trucks smoking weed drinking beer and checking out the chicks. Or at least the soundtrack to which they *fantasize* about doing things like that...

All the while feeling vaguely smug and intellectual because of the Crowley and Tolkien references. Bleargh.

Fred's not totally wrong though -- the Zep had their occaisional moment, but they're still overrated beyond belief. Early Black Sabbath could have them for breakfast!

-- Nicole, Tuesday, September 26, 2000 7:00 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Link

I'm not into them.

For every colossal riff to enjoy for a few minutes there's always a hours of dull indulgent sludge - and, though the recent gig showed some restraint, it still looks like the chaff was there in spades with the wheat still few and far between.

Apart from the megaton riffage though, what have you got? The songs themselves are pretty poor constructions, usually somebody else's uncredited construction, the lyric suck.

Their attempts at ska were even more embarrassing than The beatles, and doing a Rosie and the originals 'tribute' is never a good idea.

I wonder how all those critics reclaiming them would have felt if they'd had to sit through moby dick and then have it followed by a structureless 25 minute dazed and confused. It's notable that none of the critics seemed to have been aware of the band in the 70s or make comparisons with 70s rock - to claim that somehow punk failed because one or two of these dinosaurs are still around misses the point that its only one or two and they've shaped up a fair bit.

Nicole OTM.

In my high school, LZ were seen as "alternative".

oh, it's just I have no enthusiasm for Zep. If I had a CD of theirs, it'd just never get played in preference to *anything* else. And it's not even because of ubiquity, I'd say I know about three of their songs anything like "well". I did hear "Kashmir" and thought it fine. "Whole lotta" is OK, "STairway" I can live without, "Rock & roll" is funny, and umm, oh that jamaica one, come ON now!

Anyroad, from up there:

And this is a nice thing to say:

And Page - Mephistophelean with his black frock coat and explosion of white hair - is an equally commanding presence, an incongruous gardening accident which forced the show to be rescheduled notwithstanding.

No it's not, its awful. Try saying it! It's clunky and you have to read it three times to work out where the inflections are! (nothing to do with the content stated there)