Pick your top 5 led zeppelin songs if you can

Yeah people back then might not have liked them as much because they had a different sound. What I'm trying to get across is that they were pioneers, and that different sound made them unique(sp?). Since then many bands tried copying their style and failed. To be great you can't do what other people are doing, you have to do your own thing and they did. It worked and thats why they are great!

 

I think what you were trying to get across was pretty well understood.

A large portion of their early work was covers of old blues tunes and such... it was a hard rock edge that they gave to it- so you do have a point... completely original? no... but unique sound... somewhat. there are some old Band Of Joy recordings (Plante's and Bonham's band before Zeppelin) that have a very striking Zeppelin sound.

The biggest difference between the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin was the stark contrast between the vocals of Plant and Relf. The other thing I see in terms of how the two groups evolved that the Yardbirds changed some members and remained pretty popular while zeppelin remained intact for its 12 year run but most of the live stuff shows that they were pretty washed up as far as performing by the mid 70's... and when I was in high school they were being regarded by many as a bit of a joke. Later bootlegs show why.

As far as my favorites... tough to say. Most of the album stuff falls flat to me- I seek out early bootlegs (from '68 and '72 or '73) and of those I like:

White Summer
Dazed and Confused (up to '70)
Communication Breakdown
How Many More Times
Heartbreaker

 

Babe i'm gonna leave you
Tangerine
Stairway
Going to california
Ten years gone

 

I can't comment on any live shows from the 60's and 70's obviously. I am only talking about albums.

"Most of the album stuff falls flat." That is just gobbledygook to me.

The biggest difference between the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin is that Zep was a real rock band and the Yardbirds were a grouping of rock musicians.


So you like white summer? I am more of a black mountain kind of guy


I would definitely not call Zep strikingly original...but they perfected the blues rock sound.

 

My dad told me Zeppelin were an "off" and "on" band... If you saw them live you had a 50% chance of them being completely wasted and fucking shit up....

I'd be pissed if I paid for a ticket and the band sounded like shit... Even if it was them. It's their job to play for people, not to fuck up in front of a large audience.

 

Go to youtube and google Led Zeppelin or The Nobs and listen to the live bootlegs and board recordings from '68 through '71 then listen to the later shows and you may get some sense of what I'm trying to get across.

Among other things, the success they enjoyed in their later years spoke more of young audiences being too wasted to care that they were being subjected to garbage for the price of their tickets... that they would buy anything connected with LZ. IMO the band should have probably broken up by '73 or so. Plant had pretty much wrecked his voice by then and Page often sounded "unrehearsed and confused" with his guitar- particularly after '74... when their studio stuff was about as good as they got- in part because studio tempo when recording tracks helped mitigate the vocal shortcomings when the tracks were sped up when mixing to create the masters... there's almost a helium quality to Plant's voice hitting the higher notes in albums after Physical Graffiti-

The concert boots clearly reveal that he was not able to hit them on his own. I still love hearing early recordings from shows- and seeing stunned disbelief on the faces of some of the audience members who had perhaps expected a sound more typical of the Yardbirds.

 

i think led zeppelin put on some GREAT shows in their later years.. not all of it was sloppy eh

 

You'd be pissed- and rightfully so. Most of the folks I hung with who were not Zeppelin fanatics considered the group to be a washed up joke- a shadow of what they could have been. I'd catch shit because I was one of the morons that didn't care and loved every bit of garbage served up on the radio airwaves.

 

A few, yes... but not many IMO.

They did seem to be getting their act together when they started what was to be their final few shows in '80. Plant seemed to be acknowledging his limitations by singing some of the lyrics an octave lower than originally written and recorded in studio.

 

Stinkfoot are u talking about British or American audiences? I didn't think American audiences would have flocked to Yardbird shows but...?

I've listed to all the Yardbird albums and I was way more impressed with everyone's later work.

 

American audiences were largely the undiscerning consumers of the garbage that characterized much of the later performances by LZ- whose commercial success greatly outlasted their artistic success. Captain Cannabis's dad said the band was a 50/50 prospect and I'd postulate that it is a generous estimate assuming that what is available in bootleg recordings from their last 5-7 years represents the best of their performances. I imagine the American market was the most lucrative- which is why they played only a handful of dates in Europe after '73 and before '79... they did play a few Canadian concerts as well as some in Japan.

The Yardbirds were a bit of a different genre and would have drawn a more mature audience and I agree that any such shows likely wouldn't have sold as well.

I imagine that LZ limped on in large part because it was an obscenely profitable venture because after the first three years there was little evidence in the performances that there was any artistic passion to motivate the group.

 

garbage..? cmon....

 

Perhaps a little bit harsh as there were some good shows- and some decent song performances within bad shows but so much of what I've heard from shows after '73 could not have come from artists who felt passion for what they were doing. I'm not saying they didn't try to give their best- but perhaps their "best" in '77 was a bit sub par because the lifestyle burned them out. There's a reason so many famous people (athletes, actors, musicians) self destruct. Too often it affects their ability to ply their trade.