Led Zeppelin - Presence

Plant was always the weakest link in this band.

Οὖτις OTM, these are both insane positions imo:

The way I see it, Plant and Bonham were the core of LZ, with Page and Jones adding color

Plant was always the weakest link in this band.

Well, let's think about this...

Remove Bonham and you remove the excellent, hard-hitting rhythms.

Remove JPJ and you remove the excellent, often intricate bass work and superb keyboard and/or string arrangements.

Remove Page and you remove the riffs.

Remove Plant and you remove the guy that goes "oOoOoOoOoOo" and shrieks half-inched blues lyrics and stuff about Lord of the Rings over a superbly played backing track.

I mean, I wouldn't want to remove any one element from Zeppelin's music, but if I had to...

Remove Plant and you remove the guy that goes "oOoOoOoOoOo" and shrieks half-inched blues lyrics and stuff about Lord of the Rings over a superbly played backing track.

― Working night & day, I tried to stay awake... (Turrican), M

so replace him with Bryan Ferry then

Ian Gillan.

Shakey OTM. The focus shifts continually, but they all have to be in the frame.

Plant's the guy writing the melodies over the tunes. I don't think any other vocalist of his generation would have made the same melodic choices; put any other hard rock vocalist of the era in Plant's position and the lyrics would remain baby-baby British blues stuff anchored to the tonic. Plant's solo work, whose peaks are lofty indeed, bears this out: he's a great musician with real vision.

Put any other hard rock vocalist in Plant's position and the singing on 'The Song Remains The Same' may have been far more tolerable.

#hotsonfornowhere

The assessment of this album being 'Achilles Last Stand' and 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' plus a lot of sub-par Zeppelin is still OTM.

you're so wrong I don't even know where to start

otm

#hotsonfornowhere

― calstars, Wednesday, November 22, 2017 7:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. the rhythm section is so weird on this song. the way the drums switch to doubletime but the rest of the band keeps the same tempo so funky and disorienting

Very difficult song to play drums on, for sure. Even air drumming the fills on the “oh oh” part is hard as fuck

my favorite Zeppelin album

Yeah, I'll never understand that - not when this band released six stone cold classics in a row prior to this, which was their weakest record up to that point until they followed it up with one worse.

It's another one of those records that suffers from "Gaucho syndrome" - where people actually got it right first time around.

It's easy to understand if you consider every Zep LP (exceot ITTOD) the best one.

And yeah, HOFN is a jam

Presence isn't as good as most of the other Zeppelin albums, no. It's more fragmented. It suffers by comparison. It's still considerably better than "two good songs and nothing" -- that's, like, weirdly "is it a banger or not???" thinking. Zep are considerably more interesting than that imo

my favorite Zeppelin album

― flappy bird, Thursday, November 23, 2017 4:28 PM (two hours ago)

same, by a mile

and this isn't the fault of any of the records, but Presence is also the least culturally saturated Zep LP. I didn't listen to Led Zeppelin until about 2 years ago (right around when I made this poll). but songs like "Heartbreaker," "Kashmir," "Immigrant Song," "Dazed & Confused," "No Quarter," "When the Levee Breaks," "All My Love," "Whole Lotta Love," "Black Dog"... they're inescapable. And I love all their records. But the combination of Presence being completely fresh to me, along with its very straightforward no-frills meat&potatoes rock sound, appeal to me much more than all of their other records, which have much more dramatic narrative and sonic arcs. The epics, the acoustic songs, the drum solos, the riff-dozers. Presence is also one of the greatest examples of a band that's just really fucking tight and together with each other and well oiled and powerful, the kind of power and chemistry that can only come from years of playing & touring, and obviously the talent of the individuals.

thank you Greta Van Fleet for bringing me back to this record

https://i.imgur.com/jaVmPCm.jpg

precience

oh hell yeah

"alexa, what is the strange plastic alien object in the center of the room that this entire family seems creepily infatuated with ?"

yikes i made a typo i meant prescience **

if you're not taking advantage of quarantine to carve/whittle your own Object it's probably never going to happen

fortunately i have insurance that will cover that and don't need to DIY

Want to hear a mashup of Royal Orleans and steely’s Green Earrings

I've often thought that The Object anticipated the mobile phone by several decades.

wow do i not miss turrican

This is an amazing record where every song (except "Royal Orleans") has flashes of tedium about 80% of the way through - not because the band's energy is flagging, but because they're trying to goose the songs past their natural lengths.

Presence is also the least culturally saturated Zep LP.

I was visiting a woman who had all of the Zeppelin CDs except for this. "Oh, you don't have Presence!" "What's that?"

wow do i not miss turrican

I think “Achilles’…” is perfect. No flashes of tedium there.

"Tea For One" is my favorite Zep closer.

I think this album has perhaps the weakest *songs* of any Zeppelin album (not that there aren't also flashes of genius, ie Achilles), but even when the songs aren't thrilling, the machine powering through it all, the band, is still a remarkable thing.

Did Turrican leave ILM? Also, I like Robert Plant a bunch, but I think his is at least a reasonable perspective.

"Nobody's Fault But Mine".

I'd never heard this album until a couple of days ago. I can't say I like it very much - despite the best efforts of JPJ and Bonham. "Achilles Last Stand" is good but it's really a bit too prog metal for my tastes - I find some of it really clunky. The rest of the album just isn't very memorable.

u mad bro
Achilles is like their best song

I'm mad? One person thinks "Royal Orleans" is better!

“tea for one” is dreamy and incredible

"Tea For One" and "Hots on For Nowhere" on two ends of their spectrum are marvelous; the latter is top ten Zep imo.

my favorite Zeppelin album

― flappy bird, Thursday, November 23, 2017 4:28 PM (two hours ago)

same, by a mile

― WilliamC, Thursday, November 23, 2017 7:18 PM (six years ago)

a hundred miles by now