POLL LOTTA LOVE - ILM Artist Poll #6 - Led Zeppelin

lol i hope there's an 8-bit version for every track that makes the countdown.

More than i thought there were!

Damn, I just got to that 25 or 6 to 4 measure. Someone bump theirs up a spot or two for me.

I want to play this level so badly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF5MnAvJFNA

wait, why do people like these video game music versions of Led Zeppelin?

for the drum sound

To achieve that drum sound, Mario simply dangled a single microphone down a ladder.

Just submitted my ballot. All the cool subtle groove rockers from Houses, PG, and Presence didn't quite make the cut.

My ballot looks like the ballot of a guy who liked rock radio in the day and appreciates Led Zep as Yardbirds offshoot and source of Robert Plant solo career.

but I think LZ are as good as any band ever, I'm just inclined towards the more complete traditional song melody-wise aspect , either folk or pop, of their songwriting.

Earlier today I was trying to express to the wife how Led Zeppelin could have been the greatest band ever if their songs had been about more, but that would have ruined part of what made them Led Zeppelin.

Here's how I plan to ruin wmc's poll results when they start.

I didn't look carefully at the 8-bit joke...I thought that was a real idea brewing for the results rollout. sorry!

There was a time when I almost bought into the idea of Robert Plant as somehow the band's weak link, but I can't imagine the band without his wails/hair/ridiculous lyrics. Like, in any other hands singing about Hobbits would come off as, I dunno, Yes or Genesis or Gentle Giant territory, but Plant somehow pulls it off without all the proggy portent. Something like "Ramble On" just revels in it, or compare the viking-rock of "Immigrant Song" to something like Iron Maiden's totally po-faced "Quest for Fire." There's an off-hand innocence and joy to Plant's lyrics; if he's ever meant to be "heavy," I don't think I've ever noticed.

He's still the least interesting element, but that's like me saying an A- is a bad grade.

Probably in a minority of one here, but for me Page is the weak link.

yeah that kind of thing is common w/ Daltrey and the Who too -- i guess when every instrumentalist is that essential and the guitarist is the main auteur behind it all, there's a temptation to downplay the frontman as window dressing, but it'd be totally naive (and maybe even rockist?) in both cases. stupid question, though, did Plant write all the lyrics or did Page or the others ever contribute? xpost

A lot of the early ones are Page's iirc - Dazed & Confused definitely is (and a pretty horrible lyric too)

I don't doubt they helped. Page did write "Tangerine" by himself.

I thought Plant's name couldn't appear on the earliest recordings because of record label nonsensel.

I hadn't heard that - I thought they were mostly Page's because the first record came out so quickly.

Probably in a minority of one here, but for me Page is the weak link.

wow wow wow, no

in some ways musicianship-wise Page can be the weakest link but that's still challop city

I dunno why exactly - I think partly the silly black magic dead ends (where's that 'zoso' upthread taken from btw?), partly for solos dissolving to noodling, and partly because of the feeling that he still lives for Zeppelin whereas Plant got a regular fun life instead.

Wait, hold on, in what ways can musicianship-wise Page be the weakest link? Because his playing (live) is sometimes called sloppy or erratic? Even with the qualification, that's a whole heaping helping of WTF right there

oooh, I just realized the Diamanda Galás/JPJ album (The Sporting Life) is on Spotify.

i just meant the sloppiness, yeah, compared to JPJ having the versatile 'secret weapon' rep and Bonham being arguably the greatest rock drummer of all time

Just found this on Wiki:

On their first album Plant received no credit for his contributions to the songwriting, a result of his previous association with CBS Records.[36]

Led Zeppelin are like the Beatles, I'd say--trying to figure who was the weak link, or who made them great, is a dead end. They're Led Zeppelin. You can't replace any of them, and when Bonham died, they were smart enough to realize that. (Cf. the Rolling Stones and the Who.)

Oh boy. Re: the black magic stuff, that poses an interesting question: even if it's silly on its own, can something that is so associated with the group and their identity (and the music itself) during their own time be completely stripped away by later generations? I guess that's so, but if you listened to them at all closer to the time they existed, that was a HUGE part of their profile. Not just the backward masking rumors, but the general feeling that the music was "evil". Maybe it longer carries that association in the wake of all the imitators, but I get the feeling now that LZ are just considered "heavy".

and how would one know they liked goblins, troll, and such from listening to their albums? I have a hard enough time making out what Plant's singing.

*trolls

I don't think "Stairway to Heaven" could place anywhere in, say, the top 20 that could possibly surprise me. It could be #1, it could be #20, I wouldn't be the least bit shocked either way.

Unless I myself can't separate out the hype at the time from the music, the music itself sounds outrageously sinister, menacing, and "evil". Dazed and Confused is not just heavy, especially the overt Paganini references with the bowing section (which made the RS mafia howl in derision), it is malevolent and still sounds it. I like them alot for this nastiness

Yeah, Zeppelin are heavy on many levels, which is part of what makes them still work for me all these years later. I think clemenza's statement holds true as well, I can't really peg anyone as the weak link in the band. Even less so than for most bands actually, as even in most bands I really love or respect, usually someone's need to "express" themselves or assert their influence tends to ruin at least a percentage of the band's output, whereas for me with Zeppelin I think they all generally serve the individual songs quite amazingly.

For all the literally countless times I've heard "Stairway," maybe six months ago or so was the first time I ever noticed the electric piano.

Never thought the evil/devil stuff had anything to do with Zeppelin, let alone with Sabbath as a contemporary frame of reference.

The black magic thing was a great aura and dead interesting for me first getting into them ... it's more that he's still pissing about with it five years later in the film, ten years later on In The Evening, in between with kids ODing in Crowley's old house, etc. while Plant's having kids and moving on. I like a bit of narrative, you know?

Yeah, I don't know, he definitely feels no need to move on, but in terms of getting kids to OD in his house, Walter Becker's got nothing on him (sorry Walt)

i get the feeling "Stairway" isn't super well regarded here, i feel like it placing surprisingly low is more likely than #1

Or rather, he's got nothing on Walter Becker (I always screw up that usage!)

Plant's musicality, particularly his unusual harmonic sensibility - his ideas about how to fit a melody over Page's chord progressions - is vastly, vastly underappreciated

Only because Stairway is the most overplayed song of all time, it could never be number #1 around here. Objectively, it probably should be number #1 in terms of one stop shopping folk/metal synthesis (it was in my bottom five IIRC!)

Plant's musicality, particularly his unusual harmonic sensibility - his ideas about how to fit a melody over Page's chord progressions - is vastly, vastly underappreciated
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned),

Agreed. See: Jimmy Page's dominance of all apsects of LZ

Plant's musicality, particularly his unusual harmonic sensibility - his ideas about how to fit a melody over Page's chord progressions - is vastly, vastly underappreciated

This took years for me to hear.

Plant, maybe more than anyone in the band, just got better and better. As a solo artist that is born out pretty well (sorry Bonham), but he was way more of a technician than most would give him credit for. Some interesting quotes from Albini somewhere about what a revelation it was for him working with Plant on that Page/Plant record in the 90s.

Also Alfred, your thoughts on "In the Evening" totally made me rethink that song. I didn't like it much as a 12-15 year old, but that album, and that song, are now real highlights for me. Especially the dialogue between JPJ and Page's guitars.

"Kashmir" is a perfect example of Plant's prowess. The guitar's just more or less a DADGAG drone, the bass not really a player in this song, Bonham keeping it straightforward, more or less. Plant's moaning melody carries much of the whole thing.

yeah i was gonna say, Plant's easily had the most creatively fruitful and ambitious musical life post-Zep, especially compared to Page seemingly happy just to play the old riffs with whatever B-listers are up for it

Whoops, DADGAD. Sorry Davey.

Plant's musicality, particularly his unusual harmonic sensibility - his ideas about how to fit a melody over Page's chord progressions - is vastly, vastly underappreciated

--------

This took years for me to hear.

― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, August 21, 2011 9:54 AM

me too.

Just before I sat down to do my ballot, I had the idea to reserve four spots, one for each of the four players' individual highest high points. The songs I picked for Jones and Bonham were ones that would have made my ballot anyway, but the Page & Plant picks were tracks that probably wouldn't have. (Not telling what they are until Friday afternoon.)

xp DADGAG means you broke a string
Sure is fun to say, though

Pretty awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2QX7GZJRpE&feature=relmfu

I think that's the one on the DVD, the Garden show. I love when they do '50s stuff like the bit at the end. The version of they did of Eddie Cochran's "Something Else" on the early tours is so amazing, they sound like the Sex Pistols, no joke

so i may have just impulse-bought the complete everything box set to help in completing this poll.

Just forward your receipt to WmC, he'll cover it.