fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
Posts: 4,554
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Post by fange on Mar 1, 2024 4:25:05 GMT
The English group's iconic fourth LP, released in late '71... I decided to play 'Houses of the Holy' yesterday on my walk, and then went back to play 'IV' as a bit of an antidote. But what do YOU think of it, dear people? What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now? Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre? What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it). What do you think of the cover art?
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
Posts: 4,554
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Post by fange on Mar 1, 2024 6:12:08 GMT
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 1, 2024 7:14:30 GMT
The Battle of Evermore is the best track.
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Post by osgood on Mar 1, 2024 7:30:30 GMT
What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now?
I first heard it almost at the time, probably 72, when I was 14* (though few months before I had bought the single Black Dog/Misty Mountain Hop). I was immediately blown by it, especially the closers on both sides, Stairway and Levee. At the time the more quiet tracks felt a bit underwhelming, not anymore.
Now I still think it is one of the greatest albums of all time. Flawless in every respect, not a wasted second and perfectly sequenced too (better on vinyl, of course, the time for flipping the record after Stairway had to be there)
Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre?
Their best and, depending on your definition of rock, a top 10 or top 50.
What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it).
I voted for all of them, though these days I would probably skip Stairway. At the beginning I struggled with Battle and dismissed California, but now I like both a lot. If forced to choose two fave tracks it would be Misty Mountain Hop and When the Levee Breaks. About StH, it is probably the most overplayed track in my life, thus not needing to hear it ever again. But if I happen to sit and listen to it carefully, I still recognize it is a fucking great song.
What do you think of the cover art?
It is as good as the record, and perfectly suited.
*I'm pretty sure my views on this album have a lot to do with it being uberpresent in my teenage, and most likely hardly shared by folks 10 years younger/older.
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Post by fonz on Mar 1, 2024 12:29:22 GMT
‘TSRTS’ was my gateway to LZ, but as a consequence I regard the live versions on that album as being the definitive article when it comes to RnR and StH.
I love the rest of the album. BD, TBoE, and WTLB are supreme level Zeppelin. It probably is their best studio album.
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Post by fonz on Mar 1, 2024 12:31:27 GMT
I think the cover is shit.
In my overall favourite album ranking it might be somewhere between 75 and 100.
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loveless
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Bringing ballet to the masses. Sticking to the funk.
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Post by loveless on Mar 1, 2024 13:02:10 GMT
What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now?
I was 11 when I first listened to it in full. Absolutely the perfect age for it. The local "burnout rock" station (this would have been 1981 in New Orleans) played it as a "midnight album" (I made a cassette of it), and I loved it to bits. Bought a copy (at a discount - I think the sticker said "SUPER SAVER" or something...some Warner/Elektra/Atlantic incentive to move overstocked titles) on a trip to New York a few weeks later, and the slightly older kids I was with (fairly elite as I recall, I think one of them might have been clutching The Gift) might have sneered a bit. I didn't care.
At the time, I only would have known II (their other big, ubiquitous behemoth), but...yeah, I remember absolutely LOVING "Black Dog" at the time (and assuredly "Stairway"). For a kid who'd owned his first guitar for less than a year, it was pretty powerful stuff.
I still love it. Objectively. But, possibly more than any other of their records (I don't really count ITTOD as being up to much), it carries the heavy stink of over-abundant ubiquity. Nothing to do with the quality of the music, just...this feels like the one (as I suppose does II to a lesser extent) that you could never hold up as your very favorite, simply because it really was a sort of behemoth containing so many of their standards ("Rock and Roll" and "Levee" among them, and...even the two masterful acoustic numbers might seem a bit more dour, grand and self-serious than, say, "Black Country Woman", or "Bron Y-Aur Stomp"), and maybe a type of perfection that offers fewer discoverable nooks and crannies than the slightly more playful and rough hewn likes of III, HOTH, Presence or Physical Graffiti.
There's castoffs/outtakes from the IV sessions ("Boogie With Stu", "Down By the Seaside", "Night Flight") that show up a few years later on Physical Graffiti. Those last two are two of my favorite LZ songs, bar none, and yet - I agree with the band that they wouldn't have fit and might have broken the spell. "Boogie" and "Rock and Roll" can't really live on the same album, and...ultimately, leaning into the grandiosity and largesse was probably the way to go.
NONE of this indicates any failing in the actual music. The band are playing AMAZINGLY together, CREATING wonderfully together, and there are some incredible ideas and textures throughout. 'Levee' is a fantastically impressionistic take on the blues (the combination of the echoed harp, the open tuned 12 string electric guitar, the slide with the reverse echo, Percy's wailing, and Bonzo's echoed, cavernous drums...it's ART with a capital A), the marriage of textures on "Four Sticks" (the Moog, the guitar sounds with some expansive, open ringing chords in the B section, and...the friction of clashing time signatures), the Leslie'd solo out on JPJ's 'Black Dog', that ridiculous drum fill towards the end of "Misty Mountain Hop", Sandy Denny, the recorders, electric piano, 12 string electric, stinging solo, etc. on "Stairway" (it builds wonderfully through some unlikely textural combinations)...Bonzo being tacit for the first four minutes builds an incredible tension/release, and his entrance is magical.
It's great stuff.
Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre?
There are several albums by them that I absolutely prefer and enjoy more (most of them? Most certainly III, HOTH, PG, and Presence), but...it seems churlish not to recognize it as a triumph.
Wider rock genre? I dunno. Not even sure how much that applies here.
What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it).
Surely I've said enough.
I'll probably pull it out of mothballs and give it a spin today.
What do you think of the cover art?
Always a strong suit with Led Zeppelin. This is a peak (there are several) in a long line of great album covers. The whole run of III-Presence is pretty spectacular looking, but even those first couple absolutely suit the music inside.
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Post by fearlessfreap on Mar 1, 2024 13:15:39 GMT
What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now?
I first heard it 50 years ago! Happy anniversary. I bought Houses Of the Holy first. It was currently in the charts, D'Yer Maker was a hit single and it didn't annoy me as a 5th grader. They were off a huge tour and were up there with Elton John, Paul McCartney, and maybe Chicago as the biggest band on the planet. They were probably the biggest - at least with high school and jr high school kids -- older people were probably more into Elton and Chicago. Pink Floyd was just starting to enter the stratosphere in the US, but they hadn't yet reached Zeppelin status, though they would very soon. The fourth album was the big one, though, the one all the kids had and it was the next one I would buy. In 73-74 up until probably the early 80's, when a major group released a new album, all of their albums would go on sale. I'm sure I bought it at a discount, I didn't have a lot of money back then. We weren't poor by any stretch, but kids didn't get huge sums of money from their parents 50 years ago. I can imagine my father's laughter if I had asked for the price of a used car to see Taylor Swift as a 10-11 year old.
Anyway, it had THAT song. It was a totem back then, an album you had to own, lest people think you were a drippy Donny Osmond/John Denver fan. Things like that were important to us pre teens in the Watergate years. Of course I loved it, I worshiped it like a holy relic. Led Fucking Zeplin as we used to call them.
There are two albums released roughly the same time that I cannot listen to anymore due to overexposure. Literally every song on them has been played to death. I don't voluntarily listen to classic rock radio, but sometimes, like at my various jobs over the years, I had no choice. These albums are Who's Next and LZ's fourth. Actually the vast majority of Led Zeppelin songs would fit here. Maybe not some of the lesser material on Physical Graffiti or Presence, but certainly everything up to them - shitty radio stations with their "classic rock blocks" - 4 Zeppelin songs in a row (you could guarantee one of them would be Hey Hey What Can I Do) and every autumn would bring "Zeptember."
Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre?
I suppose it would be in the top three - I prefer the third and maybe the first. Still, I don't feel the need to hear it. As far as classic rock is concerned, it's on Mount Rushmore with Appetite For Destruction, Back In Black and Dark Side Of the Moon. I'm talking about status, not listenability.
What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it).
My favorites would be Misty Mountain Hop despite the risible Hobbitisms in the lyrics (I didn't know what Hobbits were back then--those were the days!), Levee due to the overdriven harmonica as much as the Beastie Boys drum pattern, and Four Sticks because it has a weird psychedelic feel to it and sounds like its coming from a steaming geyser field on another planet.
What do you think of the cover art?
We used to call it old man with faggot. We were such cards back then.
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Post by adamcoan on Mar 1, 2024 13:33:06 GMT
Often, the trouble with folks on forums discussing the behemoths of rock, haven't listened to it for years. Coincidentally, I played the album on Tuesday . So there.
The cover art is great, no band logo or artful pictures of the band are deemed necessary. People gravitate to it because of stairway to heaven and its mythical status. I was stunned as a 13/14-year-old hearing it for the first time. I didn't have an experienced rock historians' ear, nor much of an idea as to how different it was at the time. Admittedly, bustling in hedgerows can often sound silly, mostly it is a welcome sidestep from songs about love and fucking. Playing it again after a gap of a few years, the whole composition excited me, and it just seemed to progress and flow in a wonderful ,pleasing manner. Familiarity breeds contempt of course, it is hard to raise an eyebrow or feel excited about the prospect of playing it normally, which is a mistake. It has raised itself to the level of a well-loved psalm. You know you love it , because if anyone else attempts it you feel a sense of disappointment, disapproval even. When the levee breaks (as was pointed out , and for the right reasons) is my personal favourite. Its just fucking huge, it's an armoured division coming over a hill, breathtaking really. Led zep 3 is my favourite album and I would probably say Kashmir really is their masterwork.
It's an album that is loved universally by most and loathed by few. If you decide to kick back with it tonight , I think you will fall in love with it all over again. I did.
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
Posts: 4,554
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Post by fange on Mar 1, 2024 13:53:28 GMT
Yep, i do too, Jimmy. Every time.
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Post by Half Machine Lipschitz on Mar 1, 2024 14:17:59 GMT
I think I discovered it around the same time in life as JSJ - somewhere between 10 and 12 years old, and I guess I must've listened to 'Stairway' a bunch because my dad bought me an album of classical guitar music with flute accompaniment, which I guess he thought might be a good companion piece, but which I dismissed out of hand. I should see if I still have that one or if it wound up with the majority of my dad's LPs mouldering in the basement of their house that got tossed when we sold the place.
As Jimmy correctly surmised, I haven't listened to the whole thing in years, possibly decades, so I should remedy that pronto before I let false memories intrude.
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 1, 2024 14:33:50 GMT
I think I discovered it around the same time in life as JSJ - somewhere between 10 and 12 years old Blimey, the first time for me was streaming it on youtube about six years ago!
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Mar 1, 2024 15:11:18 GMT
I think I discovered it around the same time in life as JSJ - somewhere between 10 and 12 years old Blimey, the first time for me was streaming it on youtube about six years ago! and I, predictably enough, have yet to do so. Herself is a fan, and sometimes listens to them on the CD player when she has a cookday, so I may have heard bits of it through the wall, but that's as far as it goes. In the circumstances, I thought it better not to vote.
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Sneelock
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you're gonna break another heart
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Post by Sneelock on Mar 1, 2024 16:54:32 GMT
I'll vote for you! Actually, I'm supposed to be filling out my Sample Ballot right now - last weekend before our Primary. I'd MUCH rather vote for Zeppelin IV songs.
What did you think when you first heard it or heard about it, and how about now? I'd heard "rock and roll" and "black dog" but when I heard "when the levee breaks" for maybe the third time I took a brisk, long walk to the nearest record shop and bought it. I thought it was a kick-ass album. I think it's a kick-ass album now. there was a time when I put aside all boyish things because I was a man. I wasn't much of a man so I'm into all that stuff again. it's a pretty singular collection of tracks that go together just so!
Where does it stand for you in terms of their catalogue, and in the wider rock genre? Did you hear me nodding my head at all the "mount rushmore" type talk? I was a music fan. I had a lot of good records under my belt. This is the first L.P. I can remember buying like an inner URGE. it was in my genetic program. I HAD to have it. Zep had built up a lot of good will. it wasn't until my blase' attitude about the "houses of the holy" cover that I started thinking about HOW much. with IV - it was just the right amount. it was the once and future greatest rock album in a whole lotta ways.
What are your fave songs? Pick the ones you like in the poll and tell us why (if you feel like it). I feel like I've been overdoing the "I picked them all because I could" card so I decided to try something new and have a little discipline. I do love them all but three stand above. Levee still makes me want to run out and buy the album despite not having owned something to play it on for many years. I'm glad to see "evermore" singled out. I agree it's their best. it's not my favorite though. my favorite is "four sticks" because it should be the soundtrack of your life RIGHT NOW. imagine the things you could accomplish if it was! that thing grabs on and won't let go.
What do you think of the cover art? I think it's absolutely perfect and I've no idea why. just my sort of thing.
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Post by Half Machine Lipschitz on Mar 1, 2024 17:59:10 GMT
I'm listening to it again right now for the first time in ages and all I can think is "I wish I could go back in time and hear this for the first time again."
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