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2.57pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
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Von Bontee said
Haha no WAY am I taking on you and all the other millions who love “Evening!” I just find it a very mundane riff and beat. Do love the eerie intro, though, and the sound of Stratocasters being tossed downstairs during the solo.
HAHAHAHAHAHA I love that description 
Those are my favorite parts of the song as well (the way the eerie atmosphere of the intro is shattered by Robert’s reverb-glazed howl is such an excellent opening to a song and album), but I like the riff and beat too — it’s minimalist but effective, and that sick whammy bar action really makes it (otherwise it would be boring). I personally find it quite satisfying. Milk that Strat, Jimmy! 
I guess it’s just the problem of measuring up to Zeppelin standards of awesomeness that hurts this song. 
On its own merits it’s just a pretty enjoyable headbanger with some fun Stratty happenings.
also am I the only Ledhead who actually enjoys “Hot Dog”? I think it’s hilarious, along the lines of “The Crunge”, and one of the most overtly humorous moments on what I think of generally as a rather humorous album (though for reasons I explained above, it doesn’t work quite as convincingly as HOTH).
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3.10pm
26 January 2017
Offline I think the reason I personally dislike LZ’s more humorous stuff is because while with a band like The Beatles there was a sense of fun and not taking yourself too seriously right from the beginning, to me part of LZ’s appeal is how mystical and godly they seem. It sort of cheapens that when you go from songs as epic and mysterious as ‘Stairway’ and ‘Kashmir’ to ‘Hot Dog’.
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Von Bontee, JulesI've been up on the mountain, and I've seen his wondrous grace,
I've sat there on the barstool and I've looked him in the face.
He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow him down,
he was humming to the neon of the universal sound.
3.30pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
Offline I see where you’re coming from, but I just don’t see it the same way. I think Zeppelin’s appeal was that they were versatile and exploratory, just like the Beatles. They could do light as well as shade, heavy as well as soft, and to me that includes laughing at themselves from time to time as well as intoning epically about the mysteries of nature and man and supernatural spirits. Led Zepp aren’t just epic – they’re a lot of fun as well, and sometimes you laugh when you have fun, y’know? I find the often gloriously sloppy, I-don’t-give-a-s**t-cuz-I’m-awesome-sauce panache with which they perform amusing as well as socks-blowing-off and almighty. Goodness knows we’re all chuckling a little bit when Plant babbles ecstatically on about winners who are losing and rusting like a book on a shelf and god knows what else (or is that just me? I promise I laugh lovingly. I adore Robert and his ecstatic babbling 
), and so it’s nice to know they had enough self-awareness to understand that the line between over-the-top epic and over-the-top absurd is often drawn quite thin. They’re as campy as they are self-aggrandizing, and to me it adds to the mystique if you’re sometimes not quite sure if they’re being serious or not. Maybe I don’t take anything seriously enough (that is an accusation I’ve had cast at me, even as I often think I take things too seriously*), but I seriously love Led Zeppelin and the fact that they had a sense of humor and did jokey songs from time to time only makes me like them more. 
HOTH is either one of their best albums, or their best album period, and it contains humorous genre parody songs and some that explore/transcend musical bounds in earnest and a couple that seem to be in earnest but are low-key talking about gods and hobbits and s**t 
but are also exploring/transcending musical bounds in earnest at the same time like whut???? They did it all, man.
*I think I do both. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
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10.59pm
18 April 2013
Offline I’m surprised most of you rank Presence so low.
"If you're ever in the shit, grab my tit.” —Paul McCartney
11.57pm
26 January 2017
Offline Achilles Last Stand is one of my all time favorite songs. I couldve bumped it up a few spots as I made my rankings up on the spot. I guess I lowered it because if I had to own one Zeppelin album I wouldn’t think Presence before 1-Physical Graffiti. HotH is my favorite and Two is number two. but I’ve already said that.
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12.05am
Moderators
15 February 2015
Offline Expert Textpert said
I’m surprised most of you rank Presence so low.
I was honestly surprised I ranked it so low, too. How I feel about it really depends on the day, so I was trying to inject some kind of logical structure into my rankings — and also, it’s relative. I love Presence quite a lot, it’s just going up against all the others
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1.41am
8 January 2015
Offline I won’ t make a listing because it’s been a long time since I heard many of the albums straight through to make some judgements but there’s little I disagree with in @Jules ‘s list. But coincidentally some of us were discussing Houses of the Holy on Facebook and there’s usually a point of difference about The Crunge and D’Yer Maker that suggests a very common reaction. While I’ve not heard a persuasive argument against Crunge I might meet the haters half-way on Maker this way: I don’t think the structure of the song is really at fault, I think it’s more a matter of production. It’s telling that we have no “in progress” version of it on the Deluxe version of the album (but Crunge is represented), and it seems to be that Page was doing “his” version of a reggae song and wasn’t inclined to budge from that view. The idea seems to have been to put an Rnb “spin” on a roots reggae framework and I think that’s wrong-headed. If you listen to the song with a style like the Wailers or the Maytalls in mind you can immediately see how the rhythm snaps together with the main melody much better (particularly with a bubble organ part throughout), the song wants to be a straightforward reggae song. On the other hand perhaps its a bit of weird Page psychology in the hope that someone would cover it with a straight reggae cover 
Maybe that’s overthinking it but I think the song is overthinking it anyway!
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but I may have to get more specific in the future.
2.21am
8 August 2019
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9.27am
28 February 2020
Offline Have I ever mentioned I have the have that I have the all the Zeppelin studio albums 4 times over? Anyways I loaded the rips I made from the original CDs yesterday after I stopped workingand cranked it up. Almost made me feel like a kid again. Then I remembered tat pulling a stunt like that
in 1982 would have required doing it on 8-Tracks and that would have been impossible
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10.32pm
8 January 2015
Offline In 1982 I was making mixtapes with a double-slot cassette recorder. That thing lived for over 10 years recording band practices and composing sessions, the band’s singer basically commandeered it for writing lyrics and I never got it back 
Anyway I would record things off the radio and dub them onto a collection, I still have some of those tapes around, half of them are probably demagnetized to blankness now. I can’t tell you how many songs I never knew the name of but liked that I had on those tapes and only caught up with later, and a good many Led Zeppelin songs were among them because their “second-half” or more diverse-sounding albums were so different from the “first-half” that if I wasn’t clued-in by Plant’s voice or by a riff, I genuinely didn’t recognize them as Zep songs. Past some of the Physical Graffiti tracks I don’t have much of a handle on later Zep bar one or two things, although that’s also partly because by that time I was getting into late 70’s punk/reggae/ska/new wave anyway.
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vonbontee, sigh butterflyI'm like Necko only I'm a bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin and also everyone. Or is everyone me? Now I'm a confused bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin everyone who is definitely not @Joe. This has been true for 2016 & 2017 but I may have to get more specific in the future.
11.49am
28 February 2020
Offline ewe2 said
In 1982 I was making mixtapes with a double-slot cassette recorder. That thing lived for over 10 years recording band practices and composing sessions, the band’s singer basically commandeered it for writing lyrics and I never got it backAnyway I would record things off the radio and dub them onto a collection, I still have some of those tapes around, half of them are probably demagnetized to blankness now. I can’t tell you how many songs I never knew the name of but liked that I had on those tapes and only caught up with later, and a good many Led Zeppelin songs were among them because their “second-half” or more diverse-sounding albums were so different from the “first-half” that if I wasn’t clued-in by Plant’s voice or by a riff, I genuinely didn’t recognize them as Zep songs. Past some of the Physical Graffiti tracks I don’t have much of a handle on later Zep bar one or two things, although that’s also partly because by that time I was getting into late 70’s punk/reggae/ska/new wave anyway.
Actually early 83 is when I got my first cassette deck. among the albums I bought were Thriller, 1999, and Coda. I didn’t get a dual until a year or so later.
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1.00pm
14 December 2009
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Yep, I myself upgraded around that time to a sub-$CDN 200.00 Sears turntable that had radio, dual cassette and 8-track capability, so that (plus the portable radio-cassette player – “ghetto blaster” in those less enlightened years) satisfied all my needs. Damn thing played about 5% too fast though – someting like 35rpm for the 33 1/3s!)
Anyways, back on topic, I wanna speak up to defend “The Crunge”, which made me laugh out loud upon first hearing (days after xmas 83, and immediately following “SRTS”, “Ocean” and “No Quarter in cassette sequence). I knew very little of James Brown’s music (“Brand New Bag” and “Get Up Offa That Thing” and nothing else) and so didn’t understand the musical context or the references to the mysteriously missing bridge; for its first three minutes I was just finding it a weirdly compelling curio, with a beat I kept losing & a vocal that was more like a spoken hipster soliloquy than any previous Plant voice I’d heard employed. And then suddenly, a perverse ending: they all stop mid-bar and an indignant Percy finally breaks character, and the fourth wall, and comes up with “Where’s that *confounded* bridge??” *mic drop*” And I LOSE it; it’s so sudden and enexpected (“Led Zeppelin make a JOKE!!”), and also “confounded” is such an adorably stilted and old-fashioned sounding word, that I’m giggling and snorting for several minutes before I can rewind and immediately replay, and laugh again, before flipping to experience Side 2 (“Hills”, “Rain Song”, “Dancing”, “D’yer Maker”). I still find it a better, funnier musical “surprise!” joke than “[……]CRASH “Her Majesty ‘s a pretty nice girl…”. And I find the concept of the track perversely funny, too, now that I understand it better – the idea of taking James Brown-style rhythms (an homage, not a steal) and deliberately rendering them unsuitable for dancing by making them 5/8 rather than on-the-one = very droll indeed. And as for Zeppelin allowing their compelling inscrutability to crack by making a silly/clever joke or two: Maybe there is something vaguely regrettable about it, but HOTH was already showing signs of levity, with the 3-year olds and tadpoles in jars and “Whatever happened to Rosie & The Originals?” appended to the lyric sheet…
So, yeah, love “The Crunge” (and JB)(and Otis) and think it’s the best of Zep’s three obvious piss-take/parodies. (“D’Yer Maker” doesn’t do it for me anymore, but I still love the also little-loved “Hot Dog!” (Great great piano, fun sloppy drunkabilly guitar solo, Plant pretending he’s a Texan using Americanisms like “U-Haul” and “Greyhound”…what’s not to like??! 
)
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1.21pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
Offline ^”The Cringe” as I used to call it (that was honestly a typo and not a Freudian slip I swear 
) took some time for me to get the joke, but now I love it. 
It’s so adorably heartwarming when Robert tries to pretend he’s someone else because it always comes as a surprise because he’s normally so extremely Robert Plant, and I think he pulls if off rather well while at the same time remaining so unmistakably Robert Plant. 
or maybe I’m incREDibly biased 
See also the piss-take of “Royal Orleans” – WARNING: if you like to think of Led Zeppelin as serious and holier than thou houses, then don’t listen to this, it will ruin Zepp forever.
WHRRRS-
KRRRRRRRRRZZZZZ!
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12.41am
11 April 2016
Offline Beatlebug said
See also the piss-take of “Royal Orleans” – WARNING: if you like to think of Led Zeppelin as serious and holier thanthouhouses, then don’t listen to this, it will ruin Zepp forever.WHRRRS-
KRRRRRRRRRZZZZZ!
Sounds like he’s trying to do a Mick Jagger impersonation. 
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12.44am
14 December 2009
Offline “WHRRRS-
KRRRRRRRRRZZZZZ!”
More of those Led Zeppelin R&B homages: Live “Communication Breakdown”-straight-into the Isleys’ “It’s Your Thing” both in 1969 and 1975! (Maybe other times too, someone look it up)
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1.47pm
28 February 2020
Offline Just curious as to how many of the regulars on this thread has listened to this? Also, I’d like your thoughts if you have.
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2.09pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
Offline I haven’t, maybe I should.
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5.46pm
1 December 2009
Offline Meh, it’s not the best Yardbirds album. Only a few decent songs, few originals, a blues rewrite or two. Nice JPJones string arrangement on the title cut, and its interesting to hear “Think About It”, the 1968 b-side featuring Jimmy playing what is basically a note-by-note runthrough of his “Dazed & Confused” solo.
Basically, I think the Jeff Beck era of the ‘birds produced the most lasting work.
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7.31pm
8 August 2019
Offline Well, I think we can declare thread Zeppaton II over by now. I had a wonderful time. See ya all in October when Led Zeppelin III turns 50
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8.02pm
11 June 2015
Offline 
All I have to say here is that some people on this forum have to be professional writers. I would pay to read some of these music reviews. They really enhance my listening experience, even for songs I’ve heard 100 times. .
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Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
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