Artist of the month Discussion

An area to discuss erm... musicians?

Moderator: Capt. Black

Post Reply
kwhelan
Vintage Post Junkie
Vintage Post Junkie
Posts: 1400
meble-kuchenne.warszawa.pl
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:25 pm
Has liked: 123 times
Been liked: 93 times

Artist of the month Discussion

Post by kwhelan »

Just putting it out there as forums been quite quiet
After listening to Spotify led Zed albums 1 thru 5 in sequence on friday, Im lucky as I work in office alone so can go on any musical journey I have to say didn't really like the new remastered versions, seemed a bit too perfect
but digressing
maybe a thread of anything, fav song, or album, good book or article from some old mag,
good video clip, maybe a good cover version of one of their songs you've heard
they seem to have plenty of mystery ,talent, controversy and legends that everyone on here should have some opinion/memory on
have you seen them Live? they were here in 72 apparently
honeydrippers,black crowes,



I only recently learned that the first 2 albums were done on telecaster but when you listen its actually pretty obvious now
DUH

First memories back in my High school Form 3 or year 9 everybody had green army satchel school bags and you either had Led Zed emblems along with the mandatory cock and balls in biro or you had Bob Marley.
Song remains the same was out and was my first purchase of theirs
Girlfriend at the time loved houses of the holy
Life was quite simple

Many years later I discovered all the lovely acoustical stuff from the earlier albums
but Your time is gonna come would have to be the pinnacle for me.
must be all those years at sunday school with church organs
Attachments
744px-Zoso.svg.png

User avatar
Glacial Pace
Tokai
Tokai
Posts: 400
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:30 pm
Has liked: 31 times
Been liked: 25 times

Re: Artist of the month Discussion

Post by Glacial Pace »

My parents were big Led Zep fans which put me off a bit to be honest, when you are young anything your parents like is immediately uncool! I have discovered over the last few years that they are pretty good though, Kashmir is a current favourite of mine.

kwhelan
Vintage Post Junkie
Vintage Post Junkie
Posts: 1400
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:25 pm
Has liked: 123 times
Been liked: 93 times

Re: Artist of the month Discussion

Post by kwhelan »

Hating Led Zeppelin
By Andy Whitman | December 12, 2007 | 10:16am
MUSIC FEATURES LED ZEPPELIN

I hated Led Zeppelin for a long time. Part of it was the presence of those interminable songs about Gollum and Valhalla at every stonerfest, and earnest stoned mystics proclaiming the utter heaviosity of it all. Part of it was my aggrieved sense of injustice, knowing that Page and Plant had ripped off deserving blues musicians wholesale and credited their non-creations to, you guessed it, Page and Plant. And part of it was pure and simple jealousy. Okay, it irritated me that these Viking hippies could have their pick of an unending line of groupies and still have enough testosterone left over to casually toss heavy furniture from hotel windows. It wasn’t fair.

So what did I do? I followed my inner elf. I studiously ingored the Led Zeppelin siren song, proclaimed my independence of stonerfest groupthink, and snatched up all the British Trad rock I could find. Okay, they weren’t exactly equivalent – Fairport Convention’s and Steeleye Span’s songs about woodland nymphs and faerie queens and Led Zeppelin’s thunderous blues anthems. But impossibly the two converged, and my life has never been the same.

The occasion was a song on the Led Zeppelin IV album called “The Battle of Evermore.” The day the album came out, one of my friends, knowing my fondness for all things Fairport Convention, brought over the album. “Listen to this,” he said. And there it was – the exquisite voice of Sandy Denny, lead singer for Fairport Convention, entwined with Robert Plant’s banshee wail, proclaiming yet another Tolkienesque tale of dark lords and ring wraiths and epic warfare. But this time it sounded great.

I didn’t rush out and buy the Led Zeppelin back catalogue. That took almost another 30 years. But I did cautiously explore some of the earlier music, and backed off some of my intractable positions. “Gallows Pole,” a folk song on Led Zeppelin III, had actually been credited (correctly) to “Trad.” I recognized it from a much earlier Leadbelly album, but at least Plant and Page hadn’t claimed it as their own. “Tangerine,” from the same album, actually sounded pretty, a quality I never expected from the Barons of Bombast. I grudgingly admitted my admiration for this music.

And I suppose I just mellowed. Robert Plant was involved in a serious car accident in the mid-‘70s, and lost his young son not long after that. Whatever petty jealousies I might have harbored seemed just that – petty – and not worth holding on to. In spite of that impossibly great mane of hair and outsized ego, he was just a guy, prone to screw ups and inexplicable tragedies, just like me.

Five or six years ago a certain breed of layabout stoner/slacker started hanging out at my house, one generation down the line. They were the friends, and sometime boyfriends, of my daughters. Stuffing down my inner urge to grill them about career goals, I asked them instead about their musical tastes. And it turned out that most of them liked, God help me, Led Zeppelin. “Jimmy Page is godlike,” one of them told me. “’Black Dog’” is the greatest song ever written,” another solemnly intoned. “Nah,” I countered. “’Communication Breakdown,’ that’s the essence of balls-to-the-wall rock ‘n roll.” Touché, dude. It struck me as odd that I was using the phrase “balls-to-the-wall” when discussing music with an acne- ravaged sixteen-year-old-kid, but maybe Led Zeppelin does that to you. I felt like wearing a Viking helmet and throwing furniture.

So I bought the back catalogue. Every studio album, the two live multi-disc albums, the set of outtakes and in-studio appearances from the BBC. I still don’t understand why Robert Plant, he of the fantastic mane and the Viking countenance, was worried about Gollum stealing away with his girl. Relax, man. Toss a couch. But now, finally, I can hear what was there all along. Sure, the band ripped off some of the greatest American music ever made. But they set fire to it and pummeled it and sent it soaring. They might be the greatest rock ‘n roll band, ever.

They just got back together, the three surviving original members, and Jason Bonham, a slacker/stoner one generation down the line, and played an incendiary set in London. Sixty-year-old men aren’t supposed to act like this. But these guys spent their formative years pillaging and plundering, and if they’re older and a bit wizened, they’re still bound for Valhalla. By all accounts they were great. I missed them the first time around, and couldn’t have cared less. Now I’d like to see them, hear that banshee wail before it fades.

User avatar
Vince
Vintage Post Junkie
Vintage Post Junkie
Posts: 7449
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:31 pm
Location: Upper Hutt The Brave
Has liked: 383 times
Been liked: 186 times
Contact:

Re: Artist of the month Discussion

Post by Vince »

I had a bit of a Led Zep epiphany one night.

It was the 80s and bands like Led Zep were really uncool, and they were on this big pedestal, put there by other uncool rock pig types. You know, all that bombast and lots of pointless grandeur and all that shit. I mean, I liked them when I first heard them at 14 but then punk and post-punk happened and they were these fucking dinosaurs. This gold standard that you had to live up to (or that old farts at the pub told you you had to live up to) and it was boring as anything and twee and just dated.

And then one night I came home and my neighbours were playing Vol IV and I was listening to it through a wall and it was muffled and lossy and sounded like some cassette of a local band playing down the local pub. It put them on the same level as any other band I could go out and hear.

And fuck they were good. After that, I saw them very differently.
"Vince, have you ever tried playing an expensive bass?" - Polarbear.
"And isn't that the finest acoustic bass guitar feedback solo you've ever heard?" - Billy Moose.

My Bandcamp Page
Facebook

kwhelan
Vintage Post Junkie
Vintage Post Junkie
Posts: 1400
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2016 9:25 pm
Has liked: 123 times
Been liked: 93 times

Re: Artist of the month Discussion

Post by kwhelan »

History made: Led Zeppelin, Western Springs

By Roy Colbert

In 1972, Roy Colbert was writing a column for The Evening Star in Dunedin, earning $4 a week less tax, and spending $150 going up to Auckland to see rock concerts. And he flew north to see Led Zeppelin play Western Springs on Friday 25 February 1972.


When Led Zeppelin came to Auckland they had already been denied entry to Singapore because of local laws banning males from wearing long hair. The good thing about coming up for concerts was that I got to talk to the bands. The promoters knew me, and that I'd spent all this money coming a long way, so they made sure I got interviews.

I was playing cards when the promoter Barry Coburn called up and invited me to co-promoter Robert Raymond's Remuera house. I thought he was just making conversation, and I realise now they needed pot.

All the band and Peter Grant were there. Robert Plant opened the door - he had a woman in each hand; he literally was balancing a girl in each arm. "I'm Robert Plant and I'm the greatest rock'n'roll singer in the world," was his greeting.

Peter looked evil, just a huge man in a huge chair. John Bonham was very big as well and making a lot of noise. I spoke to Jimmy Page a lot. I was a record geek so I had millions of anal questions about recordings he played on, obscure bands like Cartoone.

They were all pretty shattered - they were at the bottom of the world. I didn't know about the whips in the guitar cases.

These were the drug years - me and my mates constructed the concert around drugs, and I thought we should have some nitrous oxide because they didn't do it in Auckland - we did it in Dunedin all the time. So I remember we had to drive some distance to get a huge cylinder of NO2. We were seated on the bank and got a good seat halfway up the hill, and passed the blue cylinder backwards and forwards along the row until it was empty.

An MC introduced Led Zeppelin. They opened with Immigrant Song - I can't think of a better song to open. Breaking into the opening rumble when the opening vocal started up, it was like a lion roaring in a jungle.

Not too many years earlier The Rolling Stones and The Beatles played 25-minute shows and now a near three-hour show was like a whole life experience. I like all types of music. I liked folk music, and they did folk as well. At the show Plant thanked the crowd for "makin' this the biggest thing that's ever happened in New Zealand".

There were sound effects for Dazed and Confused, and Rock and Roll was much better live. The finale medley in Whole Lotta Love included an extended Boogie Chillun, an excellent Hello Mary Lou, and a riotous rendition of Elvis Presley's Let's Have a Party.

It was an enormously long experience, way longer than anything I had seen before. It was all Page and Plant really - totally complimentary, their two bodies slinky and curving like snakes. Page held the guitar really low and Plant was strutting. They bent into each other.

I was about 22. I'd like to think I was 18 because then I wrote about it for Rolling Stone and I thought I was just like Cameron Crowe, but he was like 16 and I was a grown-up.

I wasn't a huge Led Zeppelin fan - I liked them, but I didn't love them, but it may be the best concert I've ever seen.

Who: Led Zeppelin
Where: Western Springs, Auckland
When: Friday 25 February 1972

User avatar
Slowy
Vintage Post Junkie
Vintage Post Junkie
Posts: 22638
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2009 4:13 pm
Location: Orcland
Has liked: 1011 times
Been liked: 2466 times

Re: Artist of the month Discussion

Post by Slowy »

My introduction to Zep?
4th form at High School. Music class. Teacher, Foster Brown; small, lean, red haired, tobacco stained, stuffy. In his green courdroy jacket with tatty leather elbows, he appeared more ancient than his years.

Standing in front of a record player, "Boys, I have heard a piece of contemporary music which gives me some hope for the future".
Que Stairway to Heaven.

Zep was a slow burn for me. The older I get, the more I appreciate their music.
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.

null_pointer
Vintage Post Junkie
Vintage Post Junkie
Posts: 3674
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 9:37 pm
Location: The Tron
Has liked: 162 times
Been liked: 410 times

Re: Artist of the month Discussion

Post by null_pointer »

Too much Led Zep for me in my teens. Kinda blunted them for me in later life to be honest. I now appreciate rather than like them, whereas back in the day it was the other way around. Thanks Dad...

Post Reply