i don't get it, i just don't. these songs are all so dumb :P if it's not some random retrofitted blues pastiche, it's an endless, absurdly indulgent extended slow-jam. the only songs here which i digg++ are the ones that actually have sweet, tight little guitar riffs that go and do their bad little thing regardless of the vocals (out on the tiles is actually super duper cool, and immigrant song -- the only song here i know -- is for this reason kinda rockin). but why is there so much slow, aimless grooving going on here?
i fundamentally do not Get this band. granted, i do not Get 1970. i can't imagine any of us truly grok it. but the only way i can imagine having interacted with this music, were i a living and breathing adult in 1970, is by plopping the needle down, then going and doing something else, pausing intermittently to inject marijuano into my penis and sniff expired milk, as i'm led to believe was the custom at the time. but how could you sit there and actively listen to endless dreck like 'since i've been loving you' all the way through. was this just make-out music? disD, what is GODLIKE about this music.
i MUCH preferred IV over this album; it is so much more memorable; at least it gives you something to chew on. i suppose that this may be an "elusive" album. a slippery little eel, one which does not present as intelligible upon first encounter. well, i'll give it another go-through with an open mind, but both of your words about this band are ringing through my head now, and it's all so confusing.
btw D asked and i answered that i deliberately programmed this zep close to the first -- both because i felt it important to keep all that was said fresh in mind, and also because i felt silly that i had neglected an earlier album. i'm glad we're doing this now though, because i feel like i have some context here, even if -- in IV -- it is future context. future context is still context, in a matrixy kind of way.
back when i was a young'un and a classic rock radio fiend, i always viewed this album as a 'hiccup' in their career. except for possibly the opener, the hits on here arent that epic. half the album is acoustic. and the cover is just odd. its almost cartoony in a way, too, what with the mouth and teeth on the "Z," - although looking at it now, they may have intended all the negative space around the little doodles to represent the negative musical space in all the acoustic numbers. bahahahah, who the hell am i kidding, they're not that smart. anyway, i always just viewed this as some kind of musical blip between the comfortable and blues-heavy zep II [whose every song i had already heard on the radio before acquiring on cassette] and the all-the-songs-are-epic zep IV. and listening to it now years later, i still do not see zepIII's appeal.
a quick look at wp shows that zepII went 12x platinum in the US, zepIII went 6x platinum, and zepIV went 23x platinum. and i think that sums up well the comparative quality of these records. i mean, even zepI sold more in the US, at 8x platinum! it was up, up, down, waaay up. i know this is not a scientific way to assess these albums, but i think it makes a strong point. also as a side-note - i knew this kid who was my age and occasionally went to the same religious house of worship as myself. we also went to high school together. i remember him bragging to me how he owned zepII on record, cassette, AND cd. he ended up dropping out of college, dropping out of auto-mechanic school, and anytime i see him now he just gets more and more odd. he shares the same name as one of my brothers, and anyone who knew both of them would refer to my brother as the normal one of their namesake, despite my brother's penchant for mutton chops and oversized late 80s 'computer programmer by day, child molestor by night' glasses.
i honestly think the writers of the pitchfork top 100 of the 70s list were biased and pro-zep. there are 4 zep albums in total on this list. and i have no idea why this one is so high up there, but if you are predisposed to thinking that zep are gods, then you're going to find and amplify the positive in even their mediocre output. this is the best i can do to explain their godliness with this album. lol its a circular argument, much like most involving gods.
'immigrant song' is probably one of the most powerful album openers i have ever heard. its not like it starts with a powerful riff, like 'black dog.' it just opens with power and gets directly to the point. hell, its just a rhythmically interesting octave, but they make it work really well. i forgot how much i still like this song. plant's typical shrieking vocals actually fit in well with this song, and i have no idea why. heh, dig his tarzan wail in the intro.
lets face it, these guys can groove. their drummer and bass player work very well together. you want context? lets go to the stereotype. imagine you're a middle or lower class teen in the early 70s, smoking multiple joints a week (if not per day). you're not doin that well in school and you dont care all that much. you turn on the radio and somewhere between credence clearwater revival and the mamas and the pappas, you hear 'immigrant song,' this really really heavey led zep tune. the shrieking vocals and pounding drums grab your attention. they sound like Cream - but they're actually heavier! the drums are less jazzy and jimmy page probably overdubbed twice as many guitars as clapton did, getting a huge sound. all the other stuff on the radio was whimpy compared to this stuff. its way heavier and more macho, and lyrically very simple and dumbed down, but presented with [contrived] authority. man, sarge, i wish i could explain the context better. i've been around these kinds of dudes who grew up in this era, dudes who claim the pot was waaay stronger then, dudes who view the 70s through some kind of sepia toned dumbed-down over-simplifed and over-dramatized sentimental lens, dudes who didnt do crap with their lives but seemed moderately content anyway until they're forced to be honest with themselves, dudes who - CARL! Carl from aquateen! imagine him as a teenager rocking out to this, his fist pumping in the air, shreiking along to robert plant's "aaaaahhhhs" in the beginning of 'imigrant song'. "dis is AWESOME! dis ROCKS!" i know the character of Carl was a teen in the early 80s, but zep was probably even bigger then, their influence having seeped in deeper.
the beginning of 'tangerine' is epically beautiful, but then the chorus just sounds almost poppy and ruins the song. 'gallows pole' is also a decent track, but its credited as 'traditional' and not to any bandmember. not that that matters though.
the rest of the album just doesnt stand out for me.
I think one of the things that made led zeppelin great (if not in your opinion, then at least in terms of public opinion) was the way they seamlessly transitioned from the innate ass-kickery of “immigrant song” to the light, folksy grooves (and what foreboding arrangements!!!) of “friends” to the straight-up blues of “hats off to (roy) harper.” I don’t think that any band before them encompassed such a broad range of rock sounds and I don’t think any band since has managed to come close…with one exception.
when disdainty equates radiohead to led zeppelin, I think he’s a little off the mark. radiohead has always been aligned in my mind with the moody, experimental and (mostly) humorless pink floyd. for led zeppelin, see: stone temple pilots. hated by critics, loved by fans, stp deftly shifts from heavy grinds to introspective ballads to folksy jams. it’s no surprise to me, then, that disdainty never really dug stp. sgt. phanto, think about stp as being directly influenced by zeppelin and maybe you’ll find a couple of inroads to zeppelin’s music that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
granted, I’m sure you won’t ever really dig zeppelin. after all, it’s blues and I’m pretty sure I recall you discussing at length how much blues bores you. but I LOVE it!!! and I’d ask you whether you can name many other pop or rock acts who play around with pulse – as I believe you referred to it earlier – like led zeppelin does. “friends,” “out on the tiles,” “gallows pole” … songs like these are all phrased to keep your ear just a little off-balance. choruses, back-beats, chord changes all hit exactly where they need to, but never exactly where you’d expect them to. and it’s so easy not to notice unless you’re really paying attention. idk. maybe to y’all’s advanced ears, it’s pretty standard stuff, but again I’d ask who else does stuff like this in pop/rock?
and I’m not trying to restart the argument or anything, but I think it just speaks to very different approaches to music that disdainty hears zep as humorless. when I hear zep – particularly III over IV – I hear a lot of humorous touches. ). the intro to “celebration day” is pure hootenanny. can you imagine radiohead or pink floyd getting off on a riff like that? or whimsical the banjo and electric guitar on the macabre “gallows pole”. did you listen to the story there? sure, not written by zep, but great delivery, great choice. and what about those lyrics to “hats off to (roy) harper”?
gave my baby/a 20 dollar bill/well if that don’t get that woman out/I’m sure my shotgun will
if the last few albums have proven anything, tho, it’s that dainty and I could listen to silence and have an argument over what we heard! I can definitely see how the cryptic symbols of IV, the tolkein references in the lyrics, and the sheer self-absorption of tunes like “tangerine” could lead one to think “humorless.” but I hear a lot more going on here, and I really love what I hear :)
I think dainty's last post hit zeppelin on the head. imagine it’s 19fucking70 and you’ve been listening to the beatles and maybe the who and shit, and then you hear the banshee wail and the freight-train chugging guitar lick of “immigrant song.” that tune could come out today and people would STILL be like “oh shit! rock just changed!” guitarists everywhere would lick their lips and think “mmm…delicious guitar chops.”
and that's zeppelin. that's their sound, their inimitable essence.
of course, once you delve deeper into the albums, you find these blues tunes and pot-ready hippie trips. the albums start off as macho music you can rock out to, then transitions into music you can get stoned to and get laid to (see: fast times at ridgemont high).
maybe because of dainty's extensive breadth of musical knowledge it just comes off as "plain blues" or whatnot. however, i think that for 99% of pop music fans, hearing these blues tunes and blues-influenced tunes with crazy string arrangements is really pretty mind-blowing.
schnitzel - very good call comparing radiohead to pink floyd. i've never noticed that, and that little tidbit will be great brain food for me to chew on when i'm not focused on various female sex organs [like brains. sexual arousal starts in the brain, ya know]. and i can totally see that, especially 'dark side' and onwards. i believe there are a few pink floyd albums on this list, i'd love to discuss this further when we review those, but i still feel that radiohead is most like zep.
as i said before, my feelings on zep are really confusing - but i certainly dont view them always as 'plain blues.' and i certainly dont dislike the blues! at times, yes, i think zep could be unoriginal, and lapse into a comfort zone when playing the blues. i've listened to a lot of blues artists, and the more you get into it, the more you notice subtle differences. its no dif with zep, they were amazing musicians and at times bring a lot of originality to their blues tracks. on zepIII, i dont think they bring that much. way more on zepII [although not lyrically!]. and my main gripes are with plant's voice and the general aura of godliness surrounding the band.
i do have to say, that going from one style of music straight to a different style is a major aspect of "prog." so is strange time signatures and pulses. many times it even sounds like its thrown in just for the sake of being thrown in - like a 9/8 riff just for the hell of it, to throw the listener off or whatnot. prog bands like yes, early genesis, king crimson [who are kind of also not prog...oy, long story. i just put KC in a classification of their own when discussing this], etc incorporated this stuff a lot more than zep. granted, they didnt receive nearly as much commercial success or fame. as it turns out, there isnt much balls-out prog on this pitchfork list, but there are a couple king crimson albums. we can discuss prog further when we reach those. but even the white album, almost every song has elements of a different style of music.
also its strange that you mention the who in the context you did - as a group that sounds lighter than zep. because when i was going through the the rest of the bands on the list of the 70s and 80s, the only bands that struck me as being most like led zeppelin were GnR and the who!
i just cant even fathom how this is #27, when two of my favorite albums in the 70s released by popular bands arent even mentioned [pink floyd's 'animals' and the door's 'la woman.' 4 pink floyd albums on this list and they skip right over 'animals.' sheesh.]
"if the last few albums have proven anything, tho, it’s that dainty and I could listen to silence and have an argument over what we heard!"
LOL! if only john cage's 4'33" was 'recorded' in the 70s and put on this list! sarge, maybe you could just choose the next album to be a blank posting and see what happens. [smiley face]
v special considerations will be afforded he who can most correctly explain why sarge strongly dislikes albums (such as this one) whose songs span a range of styles and genres. note: there is more than one correct atnswer, but only one Best answer.
so, it must unfortunately be said that the opening octaves of immigrant song, to me, conjures the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVdnqEyToqg
my sharona is one of the greatest songs of all time!!! it's so dirty and rocking and yet too ridiculous to be anything other than harmless, PG fun. love those tight rhythms.
tho for the life of me, i can't hear how on earth you equate these two songs. i guess it's the same octaves played on the guitar parts, but totally, totally different sounds.
yeah, it's definitely strange and fun to hear your conflicted musings on this band. at times i read your posts and it seems like zep is your arch nemesis. then i read another post and you seem in awe. at the moment, i can't think of a band that strikes a similar chord in me.
i agree, tho, that #27 is waaay too high for III. however, it seems to me that I, II, III and IV were necessary choices for a top 100 of the 70's list. not having them on the list would be like leaving Pearl Jam's Ten and versus off of a top 100 of the 90's list.
what's that you say? pitchfork left Ten and versus off of their top 100 of the 90's list in favor of EVERY YO LA TENGA ALBUM? idiots.
great call on GnR's sound. they probably do sound more like Zeppelin than any other band, but i think they were never quite versatile enough as musicians to approach what zep did. maybe if they hadn't imploded...
as for the who, i don't hear it. i guess ideologically, they're similar. but sonically, i think the two bands are very distinct. bonham and moon are THE two drummers of rock. period. but i hear the who as punk rock, occasionally fucking around with folk and progressive sounds. in fact, i meant to mention this in the television thread, but i felt like television must have been heavily influenced by the who given the way their two guitarists were always trading off rhythm and lead parts to create very interesting, non-traditional rhythm and lead non-distinctions.
page, though, just orgasms all over his guitar parts. completely indulgent and maximalist in opposition to townshend's minimalism.
you pretty much dislike any album that plays around with any genre other than "j-pop featuring a hot lead singer with innocent, screechy, atonal vocal delivery." it's only natural, then, that III's combination of sex-and-ego-driven blues, folk and rock would turn you off.
pigeonholing me as a devotee solely of jpop is outdated, inaccurate and unfair, and you know that. cheap shot.
bear in mind that, as much as i try these days to approach songs from without, when it comes to music -- any music -- i come at it from within. music necessarily is my first epistemology, it is the very first way i encounter anything that has notes in it. not "is this awesome", or "these guys rock", or "what are they trying to say". it's just the notes.
notewise, try to put yourself in my position. immigrant song is like 75% just a riff. it's one note played in 2 octaves in a regular, non-changing rhythmic pattern. before it "rocks" or "is awesome", it's just notes. that's my first experience with it. for me, there couldn't possibly be anything MORE BORING than a simple, predictable pattern of one note repeated constantly.
i'll say it again. before immigrant song is ANYTHING ELSE, it is just a pattern of 1 note played between two octaves, in a NON-CHANGING PATTERN. so you can't say "but it rocks" or "but it's awesome" yet. YET. now if you're me, and that's the first impression you're hit with -- which i have NO CHOICE about -- then this is an uphill battle.
it is incumbent upon me then to try and FORGET about that first impression, since in this kind of music it's not relevant. musical diversity isn't the cornerstone of rock.
then i need to find other ways of encountering this material. that can come in many forms, and in every album we've listened to thus far, it's come in a different form. in each album, i found the best ways to listen, and i'm happy to have been rewarded. you'll remember that i didn't find television at ALL noteworthy until i put myself in the context of a bandmember. E2-E4 was mind-numbing until i put it in the background and let my head bob to it. and buzzcocks was easy, because there was a lot of fine-tuned attention to structure and detail.
led zeppelin III just DOES NOT TRY. not to these ears. it's lazy, indulgent jams that sound absolutely generic to me. as Schnit said, yeah i come to the party predisposed against blues because blues is fundamentally uninteresting musically.
BLUES ... IS FUNDAMENTALLY ... UNINTERESTING ... MUSICALLY.
by its very defenition it is derivative and unoriginal. so it has to have some pretty CONSIDERABLE additional levels in order to make it even remotely worth listening to. but in this album, i am not finding it. it's blues. with an annoying singer.
this is why the faster songs appeal to me. i'm not a roboheathen, immigrant song is really awesome. the monotony and simplicity of the riff very, very quickly fades away because the groove is so fucking good that i can turn my brain off and listen to the song properly. but lingering, indulgent, endless jam songs give me a lot of time and opportunity to think. and led zeppelin does NOT want me thinking :P
LOL, very clearly put, sarge. my_sharimmigrant is a hot track!
schnitz, i want to make some points on your previous posting:
zepI and zepII were released at the tail end of the 60s. hence, they dont make this list. the other two on the list are actually 'houses of the holy' and i think 'physical graffiti,' the two that came after zepIV.
i'm going to wait until 'whos next' shows up until i further compare the who and zep. i'd love to hear what the sarge says about similarities, before i parlay my propaganda.
man, i havent looked at the 90s list in ages, but i really like yo la tengo, hehe.
well, if disdainty is right and zep is basically more of a religion than a band, i guess that pretty much explains it. they definitely don't want you thinking, just trying to keep you distracted with their jesus posturing ;)
also, i go on record as publicly stating that "immigrant song" and "my sharona" sound absolutely nothing alike. they may both rely on a riff built on the same two notes, but the pacing, the feel, the rhythms are very different. would make a nice mash-up, tho. i kno how you love mash-ups...
schnit mentioned the way that zep plays around with the barlines, those strange pulses that keep the ear from getting bored.
it's called hemiola and it dates back at least 400 years, and almost certainly as much as 500.
considering yourself mildly unbound by the barline may be uncommon in many pop or rock acts, but i don't see this as anything to write to the president about. how are we judging this music, on its own merit, or against all other music out there? because i can guarantee, the latter would not work out any better for led zeppelin.
from the link, an excerpt from Killing Yourself to Live:
"Led Zeppelin sounds like who they are, but they also sound like who they are not. They sound like an English blues band. They sound like a warm-blooded brachiosaur. They sound like Hannibal's assault across the Alps. They sound sexy and sexist and sexless. They sound dark but stoned; they sound smart but dumb; they seem older than you, but just barely. Led Zeppelin sounds like the way a cool guy acts. Or - more specifically - Led Zeppelin sounds like a certain kind of cool guy; they sound like the kind of cool guy every man vaguely thinks he has the potential to be, if just a few things about the world were somehow different. And the experience this creates is unique to Led Zeppelin because its manifestation is entirely sonic: There is a point in your life when you hear songs like 'The Ocean' and 'Out on the Tiles' and 'Kashmir', and you suddenly find yourself feeling like these songs are actively making you into the person you want to be."
we should judge these bands both on their own merit and in comparison to other music. so compared to chopin, yeah, page prolly isn't such a great composer. composed to everybody else working in pop/rock for the past 50 years, he's definitely above average, and many would put zep as a band in the elite category.
here's the deal-y-o: if you ever want to find some merit with zeppelin, it's about getting your hands on a guitar and playing these licks yourself. that's why the wayne's world "no stairway" bit is so funny. every kid in the world learns guitar by playing led zeppelin. "over the hills and far away" was one of my first songs. the riffs just feel great to play. i imagine even disdainty has a beloved zep riff he learned as a guitar zygote...
"It is perfect because, like most anything that is perfect, it is true."
to the contrary, my experiences in life have shown me that perfect things are never true. or maybe i should change that to "my experiences with women..."
and i def have to thank you both...i never knew that this "cult of zep" was a thing that existed and was largely recognized. sure, i've seen it. but i've seen the cult of metallica and megadeth and skynnard and grateful dead, too. i never thought that it was a thing, particularly a thing worth analyzing. zeppelin was just a band that some of your older brothers' friends (or alternately, your friends' older brothers) would probably punch you in the arm if you didn't know, so you listened to a few albums enough to figure out that "immigrant song is awesome" and "when the levee breaks kicks ass." zep is how you got into classic rock if you got into classic rock, but they were never a thing...they were just a thing.
pitchfork's top 100 of the 70's + top 100 of the 80's, considered, scrutinized, explored, assailed, defended, appreciated and deprecated, fussed over, held up high, kicked to the curb and held back up again. education by fire and a middle finger to disdain. tea, anyone?
Gallows Pole is one of my favorite songs of all time.
ReplyDeletei don't get it, i just don't. these songs are all so dumb :P if it's not some random retrofitted blues pastiche, it's an endless, absurdly indulgent extended slow-jam. the only songs here which i digg++ are the ones that actually have sweet, tight little guitar riffs that go and do their bad little thing regardless of the vocals (out on the tiles is actually super duper cool, and immigrant song -- the only song here i know -- is for this reason kinda rockin). but why is there so much slow, aimless grooving going on here?
ReplyDeletei fundamentally do not Get this band. granted, i do not Get 1970. i can't imagine any of us truly grok it. but the only way i can imagine having interacted with this music, were i a living and breathing adult in 1970, is by plopping the needle down, then going and doing something else, pausing intermittently to inject marijuano into my penis and sniff expired milk, as i'm led to believe was the custom at the time. but how could you sit there and actively listen to endless dreck like 'since i've been loving you' all the way through. was this just make-out music? disD, what is GODLIKE about this music.
i MUCH preferred IV over this album; it is so much more memorable; at least it gives you something to chew on. i suppose that this may be an "elusive" album. a slippery little eel, one which does not present as intelligible upon first encounter. well, i'll give it another go-through with an open mind, but both of your words about this band are ringing through my head now, and it's all so confusing.
btw D asked and i answered that i deliberately programmed this zep close to the first -- both because i felt it important to keep all that was said fresh in mind, and also because i felt silly that i had neglected an earlier album. i'm glad we're doing this now though, because i feel like i have some context here, even if -- in IV -- it is future context. future context is still context, in a matrixy kind of way.
back when i was a young'un and a classic rock radio fiend, i always viewed this album as a 'hiccup' in their career. except for possibly the opener, the hits on here arent that epic. half the album is acoustic. and the cover is just odd. its almost cartoony in a way, too, what with the mouth and teeth on the "Z," - although looking at it now, they may have intended all the negative space around the little doodles to represent the negative musical space in all the acoustic numbers. bahahahah, who the hell am i kidding, they're not that smart. anyway, i always just viewed this as some kind of musical blip between the comfortable and blues-heavy zep II [whose every song i had already heard on the radio before acquiring on cassette] and the all-the-songs-are-epic zep IV. and listening to it now years later, i still do not see zepIII's appeal.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin_discography
a quick look at wp shows that zepII went 12x platinum in the US, zepIII went 6x platinum, and zepIV went 23x platinum. and i think that sums up well the comparative quality of these records. i mean, even zepI sold more in the US, at 8x platinum! it was up, up, down, waaay up. i know this is not a scientific way to assess these albums, but i think it makes a strong point. also as a side-note - i knew this kid who was my age and occasionally went to the same religious house of worship as myself. we also went to high school together. i remember him bragging to me how he owned zepII on record, cassette, AND cd. he ended up dropping out of college, dropping out of auto-mechanic school, and anytime i see him now he just gets more and more odd. he shares the same name as one of my brothers, and anyone who knew both of them would refer to my brother as the normal one of their namesake, despite my brother's penchant for mutton chops and oversized late 80s 'computer programmer by day, child molestor by night' glasses.
i honestly think the writers of the pitchfork top 100 of the 70s list were biased and pro-zep. there are 4 zep albums in total on this list. and i have no idea why this one is so high up there, but if you are predisposed to thinking that zep are gods, then you're going to find and amplify the positive in even their mediocre output. this is the best i can do to explain their godliness with this album. lol its a circular argument, much like most involving gods.
'immigrant song' is probably one of the most powerful album openers i have ever heard. its not like it starts with a powerful riff, like 'black dog.' it just opens with power and gets directly to the point. hell, its just a rhythmically interesting octave, but they make it work really well. i forgot how much i still like this song. plant's typical shrieking vocals actually fit in well with this song, and i have no idea why. heh, dig his tarzan wail in the intro.
ReplyDeletelets face it, these guys can groove. their drummer and bass player work very well together.
you want context? lets go to the stereotype. imagine you're a middle or lower class teen in the early 70s, smoking multiple joints a week (if not per day). you're not doin that well in school and you dont care all that much. you turn on the radio and somewhere between credence clearwater revival and the mamas and the pappas, you hear 'immigrant song,' this really really heavey led zep tune. the shrieking vocals and pounding drums grab your attention. they sound like Cream - but they're actually heavier! the drums are less jazzy and jimmy page probably overdubbed twice as many guitars as clapton did, getting a huge sound. all the other stuff on the radio was whimpy compared to this stuff. its way heavier and more macho, and lyrically very simple and dumbed down, but presented with [contrived] authority. man, sarge, i wish i could explain the context better. i've been around these kinds of dudes who grew up in this era, dudes who claim the pot was waaay stronger then, dudes who view the 70s through some kind of sepia toned dumbed-down over-simplifed and over-dramatized sentimental lens, dudes who didnt do crap with their lives but seemed moderately content anyway until they're forced to be honest with themselves, dudes who - CARL! Carl from aquateen! imagine him as a teenager rocking out to this, his fist pumping in the air, shreiking along to robert plant's "aaaaahhhhs" in the beginning of 'imigrant song'. "dis is AWESOME! dis ROCKS!" i know the character of Carl was a teen in the early 80s, but zep was probably even bigger then, their influence having seeped in deeper.
the beginning of 'tangerine' is epically beautiful, but then the chorus just sounds almost poppy and ruins the song. 'gallows pole' is also a decent track, but its credited as 'traditional' and not to any bandmember. not that that matters though.
the rest of the album just doesnt stand out for me.
I think one of the things that made led zeppelin great (if not in your opinion, then at least in terms of public opinion) was the way they seamlessly transitioned from the innate ass-kickery of “immigrant song” to the light, folksy grooves (and what foreboding arrangements!!!) of “friends” to the straight-up blues of “hats off to (roy) harper.” I don’t think that any band before them encompassed such a broad range of rock sounds and I don’t think any band since has managed to come close…with one exception.
ReplyDeletewhen disdainty equates radiohead to led zeppelin, I think he’s a little off the mark. radiohead has always been aligned in my mind with the moody, experimental and (mostly) humorless pink floyd. for led zeppelin, see: stone temple pilots. hated by critics, loved by fans, stp deftly shifts from heavy grinds to introspective ballads to folksy jams. it’s no surprise to me, then, that disdainty never really dug stp. sgt. phanto, think about stp as being directly influenced by zeppelin and maybe you’ll find a couple of inroads to zeppelin’s music that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
granted, I’m sure you won’t ever really dig zeppelin. after all, it’s blues and I’m pretty sure I recall you discussing at length how much blues bores you. but I LOVE it!!! and I’d ask you whether you can name many other pop or rock acts who play around with pulse – as I believe you referred to it earlier – like led zeppelin does. “friends,” “out on the tiles,” “gallows pole” … songs like these are all phrased to keep your ear just a little off-balance. choruses, back-beats, chord changes all hit exactly where they need to, but never exactly where you’d expect them to. and it’s so easy not to notice unless you’re really paying attention. idk. maybe to y’all’s advanced ears, it’s pretty standard stuff, but again I’d ask who else does stuff like this in pop/rock?
and I’m not trying to restart the argument or anything, but I think it just speaks to very different approaches to music that disdainty hears zep as humorless. when I hear zep – particularly III over IV – I hear a lot of humorous touches. ). the intro to “celebration day” is pure hootenanny. can you imagine radiohead or pink floyd getting off on a riff like that? or whimsical the banjo and electric guitar on the macabre “gallows pole”. did you listen to the story there? sure, not written by zep, but great delivery, great choice. and what about those lyrics to “hats off to (roy) harper”?
gave my baby/a 20 dollar bill/well if that don’t get that woman out/I’m sure my shotgun will
if the last few albums have proven anything, tho, it’s that dainty and I could listen to silence and have an argument over what we heard! I can definitely see how the cryptic symbols of IV, the tolkein references in the lyrics, and the sheer self-absorption of tunes like “tangerine” could lead one to think “humorless.” but I hear a lot more going on here, and I really love what I hear :)
I think dainty's last post hit zeppelin on the head. imagine it’s 19fucking70 and you’ve been listening to the beatles and maybe the who and shit, and then you hear the banshee wail and the freight-train chugging guitar lick of “immigrant song.” that tune could come out today and people would STILL be like “oh shit! rock just changed!” guitarists everywhere would lick their lips and think “mmm…delicious guitar chops.”
ReplyDeleteand that's zeppelin. that's their sound, their inimitable essence.
of course, once you delve deeper into the albums, you find these blues tunes and pot-ready hippie trips. the albums start off as macho music you can rock out to, then transitions into music you can get stoned to and get laid to (see: fast times at ridgemont high).
maybe because of dainty's extensive breadth of musical knowledge it just comes off as "plain blues" or whatnot. however, i think that for 99% of pop music fans, hearing these blues tunes and blues-influenced tunes with crazy string arrangements is really pretty mind-blowing.
also, laf. "drums are less jazzy" than cream. drums are anti-jazz, as far as i can tell!
ReplyDeleteschnitzel -
ReplyDeletevery good call comparing radiohead to pink floyd. i've never noticed that, and that little tidbit will be great brain food for me to chew on when i'm not focused on various female sex organs [like brains. sexual arousal starts in the brain, ya know]. and i can totally see that, especially 'dark side' and onwards. i believe there are a few pink floyd albums on this list, i'd love to discuss this further when we review those, but i still feel that radiohead is most like zep.
as i said before, my feelings on zep are really confusing - but i certainly dont view them always as 'plain blues.' and i certainly dont dislike the blues! at times, yes, i think zep could be unoriginal, and lapse into a comfort zone when playing the blues. i've listened to a lot of blues artists, and the more you get into it, the more you notice subtle differences. its no dif with zep, they were amazing musicians and at times bring a lot of originality to their blues tracks. on zepIII, i dont think they bring that much. way more on zepII [although not lyrically!]. and my main gripes are with plant's voice and the general aura of godliness surrounding the band.
i do have to say, that going from one style of music straight to a different style is a major aspect of "prog." so is strange time signatures and pulses. many times it even sounds like its thrown in just for the sake of being thrown in - like a 9/8 riff just for the hell of it, to throw the listener off or whatnot. prog bands like yes, early genesis, king crimson [who are kind of also not prog...oy, long story. i just put KC in a classification of their own when discussing this], etc incorporated this stuff a lot more than zep. granted, they didnt receive nearly as much commercial success or fame. as it turns out, there isnt much balls-out prog on this pitchfork list, but there are a couple king crimson albums. we can discuss prog further when we reach those. but even the white album, almost every song has elements of a different style of music.
also its strange that you mention the who in the context you did - as a group that sounds lighter than zep. because when i was going through the the rest of the bands on the list of the 70s and 80s, the only bands that struck me as being most like led zeppelin were GnR and the who!
i just cant even fathom how this is #27, when two of my favorite albums in the 70s released by popular bands arent even mentioned [pink floyd's 'animals' and the door's 'la woman.' 4 pink floyd albums on this list and they skip right over 'animals.' sheesh.]
"if the last few albums have proven anything, tho, it’s that dainty and I could listen to silence and have an argument over what we heard!"
LOL! if only john cage's 4'33" was 'recorded' in the 70s and put on this list!
sarge, maybe you could just choose the next album to be a blank posting and see what happens. [smiley face]
If You Don't Know Me By Now
ReplyDeletev special considerations will be afforded he who can most correctly explain why sarge strongly dislikes albums (such as this one) whose songs span a range of styles and genres. note: there is more than one correct atnswer, but only one Best answer.
If You Don't Know Me By Now
so, it must unfortunately be said that the opening octaves of immigrant song, to me, conjures the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVdnqEyToqg
ReplyDeleteha! i own that song in .mp3, .flac, AND .ogg formats!
ReplyDeletemy sharona is one of the greatest songs of all time!!! it's so dirty and rocking and yet too ridiculous to be anything other than harmless, PG fun. love those tight rhythms.
ReplyDeletetho for the life of me, i can't hear how on earth you equate these two songs. i guess it's the same octaves played on the guitar parts, but totally, totally different sounds.
to DD:
ReplyDeleteyeah, it's definitely strange and fun to hear your conflicted musings on this band. at times i read your posts and it seems like zep is your arch nemesis. then i read another post and you seem in awe. at the moment, i can't think of a band that strikes a similar chord in me.
i agree, tho, that #27 is waaay too high for III. however, it seems to me that I, II, III and IV were necessary choices for a top 100 of the 70's list. not having them on the list would be like leaving Pearl Jam's Ten and versus off of a top 100 of the 90's list.
what's that you say? pitchfork left Ten and versus off of their top 100 of the 90's list in favor of EVERY YO LA TENGA ALBUM? idiots.
great call on GnR's sound. they probably do sound more like Zeppelin than any other band, but i think they were never quite versatile enough as musicians to approach what zep did. maybe if they hadn't imploded...
as for the who, i don't hear it. i guess ideologically, they're similar. but sonically, i think the two bands are very distinct. bonham and moon are THE two drummers of rock. period. but i hear the who as punk rock, occasionally fucking around with folk and progressive sounds. in fact, i meant to mention this in the television thread, but i felt like television must have been heavily influenced by the who given the way their two guitarists were always trading off rhythm and lead parts to create very interesting, non-traditional rhythm and lead non-distinctions.
page, though, just orgasms all over his guitar parts. completely indulgent and maximalist in opposition to townshend's minimalism.
sarge:
ReplyDeleteyou pretty much dislike any album that plays around with any genre other than "j-pop featuring a hot lead singer with innocent, screechy, atonal vocal delivery." it's only natural, then, that III's combination of sex-and-ego-driven blues, folk and rock would turn you off.
although plant does sound pretty screechy...
"tho for the life of me, i can't hear how on earth you equate these two songs."
ReplyDeletehttp://cuby.us/misc/my_sharimmigrant.mp3
welcome to my world
pigeonholing me as a devotee solely of jpop is outdated, inaccurate and unfair, and you know that. cheap shot.
ReplyDeletebear in mind that, as much as i try these days to approach songs from without, when it comes to music -- any music -- i come at it from within. music necessarily is my first epistemology, it is the very first way i encounter anything that has notes in it. not "is this awesome", or "these guys rock", or "what are they trying to say". it's just the notes.
notewise, try to put yourself in my position. immigrant song is like 75% just a riff. it's one note played in 2 octaves in a regular, non-changing rhythmic pattern. before it "rocks" or "is awesome", it's just notes. that's my first experience with it. for me, there couldn't possibly be anything MORE BORING than a simple, predictable pattern of one note repeated constantly.
i'll say it again. before immigrant song is ANYTHING ELSE, it is just a pattern of 1 note played between two octaves, in a NON-CHANGING PATTERN. so you can't say "but it rocks" or "but it's awesome" yet. YET. now if you're me, and that's the first impression you're hit with -- which i have NO CHOICE about -- then this is an uphill battle.
it is incumbent upon me then to try and FORGET about that first impression, since in this kind of music it's not relevant. musical diversity isn't the cornerstone of rock.
then i need to find other ways of encountering this material. that can come in many forms, and in every album we've listened to thus far, it's come in a different form. in each album, i found the best ways to listen, and i'm happy to have been rewarded. you'll remember that i didn't find television at ALL noteworthy until i put myself in the context of a bandmember. E2-E4 was mind-numbing until i put it in the background and let my head bob to it. and buzzcocks was easy, because there was a lot of fine-tuned attention to structure and detail.
led zeppelin III just DOES NOT TRY. not to these ears. it's lazy, indulgent jams that sound absolutely generic to me. as Schnit said, yeah i come to the party predisposed against blues because blues is fundamentally uninteresting musically.
BLUES ... IS FUNDAMENTALLY ... UNINTERESTING ... MUSICALLY.
by its very defenition it is derivative and unoriginal. so it has to have some pretty CONSIDERABLE additional levels in order to make it even remotely worth listening to. but in this album, i am not finding it. it's blues. with an annoying singer.
this is why the faster songs appeal to me. i'm not a roboheathen, immigrant song is really awesome. the monotony and simplicity of the riff very, very quickly fades away because the groove is so fucking good that i can turn my brain off and listen to the song properly. but lingering, indulgent, endless jam songs give me a lot of time and opportunity to think. and led zeppelin does NOT want me thinking :P
LOL, very clearly put, sarge. my_sharimmigrant is a hot track!
ReplyDeleteschnitz, i want to make some points on your previous posting:
zepI and zepII were released at the tail end of the 60s. hence, they dont make this list. the other two on the list are actually 'houses of the holy' and i think 'physical graffiti,' the two that came after zepIV.
i'm going to wait until 'whos next' shows up until i further compare the who and zep. i'd love to hear what the sarge says about similarities, before i parlay my propaganda.
man, i havent looked at the 90s list in ages, but i really like yo la tengo, hehe.
well, if disdainty is right and zep is basically more of a religion than a band, i guess that pretty much explains it. they definitely don't want you thinking, just trying to keep you distracted with their jesus posturing ;)
ReplyDeletealso, i go on record as publicly stating that "immigrant song" and "my sharona" sound absolutely nothing alike. they may both rely on a riff built on the same two notes, but the pacing, the feel, the rhythms are very different. would make a nice mash-up, tho. i kno how you love mash-ups...
disdainty:
ReplyDeletethx for correcting me. i hadn't looked ahead on the list and i'm shocked they put out I and II BOTH in 1969!
schnit mentioned the way that zep plays around with the barlines, those strange pulses that keep the ear from getting bored.
ReplyDeleteit's called hemiola and it dates back at least 400 years, and almost certainly as much as 500.
considering yourself mildly unbound by the barline may be uncommon in many pop or rock acts, but i don't see this as anything to write to the president about. how are we judging this music, on its own merit, or against all other music out there? because i can guarantee, the latter would not work out any better for led zeppelin.
cory showed me this passage about led zeppelin written by chuck klosterman.
ReplyDeletehttp://tuesdaysonthephone.blogspot.com/2007/10/chuck-klosterman-on-led-zeppelin.html
it begins to seem clear that there is something to the "religion" argument.
from the link, an excerpt from Killing Yourself to Live:
ReplyDelete"Led Zeppelin sounds like who they are, but they also sound like who they are not. They sound like an English blues band. They sound like a warm-blooded brachiosaur. They sound like Hannibal's assault across the Alps. They sound sexy and sexist and sexless. They sound dark but stoned; they sound smart but dumb; they seem older than you, but just barely. Led Zeppelin sounds like the way a cool guy acts. Or - more specifically - Led Zeppelin sounds like a certain kind of cool guy; they sound like the kind of cool guy every man vaguely thinks he has the potential to be, if just a few things about the world were somehow different. And the experience this creates is unique to Led Zeppelin because its manifestation is entirely sonic: There is a point in your life when you hear songs like 'The Ocean' and 'Out on the Tiles' and 'Kashmir', and you suddenly find yourself feeling like these songs are actively making you into the person you want to be."
genuine thanks for the education on "hemiola."
ReplyDeletewe should judge these bands both on their own merit and in comparison to other music. so compared to chopin, yeah, page prolly isn't such a great composer. composed to everybody else working in pop/rock for the past 50 years, he's definitely above average, and many would put zep as a band in the elite category.
here's the deal-y-o: if you ever want to find some merit with zeppelin, it's about getting your hands on a guitar and playing these licks yourself. that's why the wayne's world "no stairway" bit is so funny. every kid in the world learns guitar by playing led zeppelin. "over the hills and far away" was one of my first songs. the riffs just feel great to play. i imagine even disdainty has a beloved zep riff he learned as a guitar zygote...
RE: Chuck Klosterman blog post
ReplyDelete"It is perfect because, like most anything that is perfect, it is true."
to the contrary, my experiences in life have shown me that perfect things are never true. or maybe i should change that to "my experiences with women..."
and i def have to thank you both...i never knew that this "cult of zep" was a thing that existed and was largely recognized. sure, i've seen it. but i've seen the cult of metallica and megadeth and skynnard and grateful dead, too. i never thought that it was a thing, particularly a thing worth analyzing. zeppelin was just a band that some of your older brothers' friends (or alternately, your friends' older brothers) would probably punch you in the arm if you didn't know, so you listened to a few albums enough to figure out that "immigrant song is awesome" and "when the levee breaks kicks ass." zep is how you got into classic rock if you got into classic rock, but they were never a thing...they were just a thing.
ReplyDelete