Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

Trower > Beck imo

XPS I had a 'Eureka' moment when I finally heard Live At The Harlem Square Club (where Cooke was a little hoarse while recording), and realizing that was where (figuratively, as the album didn't come until the '80s) Rod got everything.

Trower > Beck imo

ALL DAY EVERY DAY

...except when he made equine grimaces backing Bryan Ferry in 1993-1994.

bridge of sighs is a really good album

A friend bought me a copy of Things We Like recently and both he and I knew nothing about it. I put it on and was like, "this doesn't sound like Cream at all." It's pretty good though.

i would honestly appreciate a thread about conceivably (but probably not) acceptable rangers fans

i won't understand it, but nevertheless

The only reason I know about Jack Bruce being a Rangers fan is because of a (1969?) documentary on him, which is probably on YouTube, which has him wandering around Glasgow and going to a Rangers v. Celtic game.

@ 17:20 Bonham talking about his time on Black Dog....pretty cool, I've never heard him talk at this length before

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1048&v=gYlpaphm4VA&feature=emb_logo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYlpaphm4VA

Nice West Midlands accent.

to me i think... if we're talking about rock music... starting in '69 there starts to be a tremendous amount of bloat. we enter the Drum Solo era, which, yes, Cream were the harbingers of, but there's this sort of stadium-rock tedium to so much of it. there's this, particularly, dead spot in 1971 where american rock produces nothing but posthumous records.

possibly this is a direct outgrowth of the "album era" heralded by sgt. peppers' - certainly there were a lot of great SONGS before then. for me, the kinks, the stones, the who, the pretty things, they did their best work between '65 and '68, and in america you had the byrds, you had half a billion garage bands like the misunderstood and the electric prunes and the music machine.

xp not sure i've ever heard him speak. super interesting

1971 is an insanely good year in rock music

1971 is an insanely good year in rock music

While I respect kate's perspective, I can't ever share it. Even at their most adventurous, bands in 1965-68 were still trying to get songs played on AM radio. By 1969, that was already fading away, and from roughly 1969-74, rock music was at its most creative and experimental. There were high points after that, of course, but that was when the wave really crested, as far as I'm concerned.

In the case of Zeppelin, they were both creative and experimental, and at the same time absolutely codified the indulgent arena rock experience. Further in the band's defense, I don't think any of their records are bloated.

well except maybe the last one

absolutely codified the indulgent arena rock experience

Oh hell yes. I love most of LZ's studio albums, but a 3 1/2 hour concert by them is my idea of hell. Compare Zeppelin bootlegs to that Yes box of live recordings from 1972 (which I own) and it's two entirely different things. Yes were not self-indulgent at all; they rip through those songs, and I'll bet it was crushingly loud.

You have to be pretty indulgent when Yes is more restrained.

well, the indulgence is already baked into the songs — yes didn’t go turning 20-minute suites into 45-minute jams

Did they have solo showcases live?

Hadrian nice find , thanks

1971 is an insanely good year in rock music

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

if we're talking about british bands, totally!

"Did they have solo showcases live?

― Josh in Chicago"

yes

I don't know if I could really choose between 1969 and 1971, if we stick to rock.

I'm not even sure who artists are supposed to be indulging other than themselves. Journalists who write for the music press? They weren't happy with Zep's studio albums either. The audience? Oh wait, they packed stadiums full of paying fans for years on end; doesn't seem like the public was too put off.

They're supposed to be indulging the non-fans, obv.

Well, I suppose a rhetorical question is if anyone was going to the shows *for* the drum/guitar/organ solos.

Just be grateful Robert Plant didn't do vocal solos.

Very much so, yes. No idea what the percentage would be, though.

xp

Yeah, lots of people love those and have bought live albums or collect bootlegs. You can Google people discussing those solos or scroll up in the thread. Doubt people were flocking to see them and skipping half the show bc they hoped for Foreigner-style efficiency and professionalism.xp

Yeah, Yep was never urgent

Goddamn it, ZEP were never urgent. Ruined my own joke with autocorrect

Would totally listen to a bluegrass Yes cover band called Yep.

Sund4r otm

I never got to see either band in their heyday, but I saw Yes on the Union tour and it was some boring, half ass shit. I saw Page/Plant and it was completely badass from start to finish.

Plant was good last summer (and, yeah, his band members took long solos and no one left afaict). I seemed to differ from the crowd, though, in that I liked his own newer material more than most of the versions of Zep songs he played, as he doesn't exactly have the voice he had in his 20s.

Drum solos are so the rest of the band can go take a leak and smoke a joint. Then they come back and do some acoustic thing or long guitar or organ solo so the drummer can go get some.

That's why the loopers are so important. You can just loop up some weird feedback wash and then let the drummer have fun with some bongos and call it space. Or you could just show a cartoon. Union says I get a break 75 minutes in no matter what.

Yeah, lots of people love those and have bought live albums or collect bootlegs. You can Google people discussing those solos or scroll up in the thread. Doubt people were flocking to see them and skipping half the show bc they hoped for Foreigner-style efficiency and professionalism.xp

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r)

well, uh, speaking as someone who has heard many of those bootlegs and in fact wrote a several thousand word long article for my blog on the topic of led zeppelin bootlegs several months ago, on some of those bootlegs you _can_ hear audience members yelling at the band to "get on with it"

i am happy to follow along with the youtube posters who analyze in depth the variations in the "no quarter" solo section show-to-show in 1975, but if i might hazard a suggestion, that does not necessarily mean that your typical led zeppelin audient were attending in the hopes of experiencing the same rarefied pleasures

"PLAY THE MIXOLYDIAN SCALE!"

I wonder how many people even knew what they were in for in, say, 1975. It's not like there were setlists and youtube clips and so on. I imagine things were a lot more mysterious then. Probably/possibly/maybe lead to more excitement at catching a 20 minute solo or whatever.

Singing to an audient
Can you hear the audients roar?

back then you had to drive to Setlist.FM and wait in line to browse the setlists

huh, I was under the impression that in Zep's heyday bands like the Stones were sorta looked down on by Zep fans for "just playing songs"

Now that we've established that improvisation is both deceptive and lazy, I still think "self-indulgence" is a weird thing to criticize an artist for (cf. "pretentiousness", both of which I know were popular among rock critics at least from the 70s to the 90s). I'm not sure how to read it other than as a bizarro quasi-moral judgment on doing something that might challenge listener expectations. Seriously, who are artists supposed to be indulging?

Themselves for sure, if the point was at least partly to give their members time to get stoned/laid.

xxpost Iirc you had runners who left their seats, poked their heads out of the venue and yelled to a buddy in the parking lot who was writing it all down. "Still doing 'No Quarter'!"

I don't know about rivalries between Stones fans and Zep fans, but I do know Zep's long shows reportedly set the new standard that bands like the Stones had to try to adapt to. The band itself reportedly almost never interacted with any of other big acts on the road at the time, since they were always on the move, always touring, which in turn supposedly built up its own resentments, as it made it seem like the Zep juggernaut thought itself better than everyone else.

I'm not really a big fan of long jams live (my mind wanders), but if I go to see a band that's kind of known for it, I'm sure I could buckle down

Themselves for sure, if the point was at least partly to give their members time to get stoned/laid.

You know, they could have given themselves even more time for this if they finished an hour earlier and just played the hits. Bring along an opening band and, presto, you get an hour before the show too.

Trust me, if I could go back and see all those long, indulgent Zeppelin shows, I totally would.

xxxp I don’t know that to be true. They weren’t part of a celebrity scene but there are countless stories of them hanging w assorted Stones and LA people, Kim Fowley et al and Ringo, Keith Moon etc.

Speaking of, the forthcoming Goats Head Soup reissue has a song Page played on.

I'm sure they hung with some of the usual nuts, but as I heard it/read about it they were often at some remove from many of their touring peers.

Heh, I was just reading about the longest Zeppelin shows, and one of them is apparently Seattle 6-19-72, where the band, among other things, played "Dancing Days" twice. That's pretty hilariously indulgent. I'm trying to think of shows I've seen where the act did a song twice. I know Paul Simon did "You Can Call Me Al" twice on one of his tours. I last time I saw Joe Strummer he had the audience vote which of the Clash songs they'd already played that they should do again. I'm trying to think of other examples.

You know, they could have given themselves even more time for (getting stoned/laid) if they finished an hour earlier and just played the hits.

given Page's uh predilections as discussed elsewhere maybe the endless jamming truly was for the best