Best Track on Led Zeppelin III

Agreed. Fun to play on guitar too

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/led-zeppelin-iii-19701126

Their albums refine the crude public tools of all dull white blues bands into something awesome in its very insensitive grossness, like a Cecil B. DeMille epic. If I rely so much on visual and filmic metaphors, it's because they apply so exactly. I've never made a Zep show, but friends (most of them the type, admittedly, who will listen to anything so long's it's loud and they're destroyed) describe a thunderous, near-undifferentiated tidal wave of sound that doesn't engross but envelops to snuff any possible distraction.

― j., Friday, 27 February 2015 20:44 (two years ago) Permalink

This is massively otm and puts into words why I have no patience for corny blues dudes whining about how Zep "rips off" others. Save that line for Canned Heat, Zep transcends.

Except Led Zep did actually rip off others and lost lawsuts over it.

And canned heat are awesome. Hooker n heat is all time

They had a thing in their first albums to credit cover songs as their own compositions and changed it in further releases when sued.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Led_Zeppelin_songs_written_or_inspired_by_others

They’re awesome covers and they add so much to them that they are practically new songs but still... not giving credit is stealing.

This one is in the wikipedia article, Regarding Whole Lotta Love ripping “you need love” by Willie Dixon:

The band was sued over this song, settling out of court in Dixon's favor.[1] Plant later said "Page's riff was Page's riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, 'well, what am I going to sing?' That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time and influence that...well, you only get caught when you're successful. That's the game."

Hahaha what a cynical answer. No Robert you get caught when you rip the whole lyrics to ‘your song’ from other artist and you don’t get to decide if a song is already public domain or not.

Plant otm tbh

“So far away in time” apparently less than ten years

Except Led Zep did actually rip off others and lost lawsuts over it.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, November 20, 2017 12:37 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obviously, that's been beaten to death, I'm just talking about corny blues dudes who won't listen to them over it.

I like how anti-Zep fervor over their borrowing never seems to extend to, say, the Rolling Stones

Or Dylan

Obviously, that's been beaten to death, I'm just talking about corny blues dudes who won't listen to them over it.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive)

Oh yeah those guys suck. Show me the blues bands that have drummers half as good as Bonham and I’ll stop listening to LZ.

Lol yes, good one

Xp

Also ripping off in Blues is a thin line tbh. LZ got caught over Plant’s stolen lyrics... if the lawsuits were based on Jimmy’s guitar alone it wouldn’t have worked against them half of time.

fwiw Willie Dixon was famous for stealing songs and copywriting them

also I kinda feel like listen to Memphis Minnie When the Levee Breaks and then listen to Zeppelin's, the lyrics are the same and deserves proper credit but no offense to Minnie she didn't come up with that drum beat either

Well...that we know of

heh

ums is otm though. I haven't bothered to go into how historically tangled authorship questions are w blues (and folk, and country, and reggae) traditions but it isn't as straightforward as detractors always make it out to be - that Robert Johnson wrote this, or the Carter Family wrote that, or Joan Baez or whoever. Just because someone copyrighted it doesn't actually mean they were the first to conceive and perform something, it just means they were the first people smart enough to take care of the business end of things. And, oddly, Zep is one of those bands (like Dylan!) that saw themselves as part of the folk/blues tradition where authorship was often inconsequential and everything was understood to be borrowed from or a variation on something else, but they happened to be producing their music in the middle of a highly litigious and almost incomprehensibly lucrative environment, where there were naturally going to be consequences and conflicts. But anyone using their copyright issues as a hammer to beat them with re: their creativity (or lack thereof) has ears of tin imo.

also I kinda feel like listen to Memphis Minnie When the Levee Breaks and then listen to Zeppelin's, the lyrics are the same and deserves proper credit but no offense to Minnie she didn't come up with that drum beat either

Memphis Minnie DID get a co-writing credit for this one tbf.

she played the harmonica part backwards on the track iirc

Bill McGill to thread

The thing with Zeppelin is that with them, it's not as simple as "they were a blues band/folk band/hard rock band" ... they may not have been a prog rock band in the typical way one thinks when they hear the term, but Zeppelin were a seriously progressive outfit that tied a lot of things together and fused together a lot of things in very creative ways. Yes, they may have lifted things, but their sound was all their own - so many have tried to imitate Zeppelin and get it spectacularly wrong.

It's also remarkable that John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were session guys prior to Zeppelin, but I don't get any kind of real "session guy" vibe from any of Zeppelin's stuff. These guys really liked making and playing music and you can tell from the tracks they're totally vibed on what they're doing. Of course, it totally helped that both John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were so musicianly, but in Zeppelin nothing ever felt "academic", even when they threw in odd time signatures etc.

they may not have been a prog rock band in the typical way one thinks when they hear the term, but Zeppelin were a seriously progressive outfit that tied a lot of things together and fused together a lot of things in very creative ways.

Iirc, Page did refer to them as a progressive rock band in Light and Shade.

If Pink Floyd hadn't so clearly demarcated "RULES" as the default answer to all attendant criticisms, I'd just stamp LED ZEPPELIN RULES about 300 times over Moka's recent posts.

I listened to Led Zeppelin II amongst a bunch of stuff that came out in the late '60s, and production wise it just wiped the floor with pretty much everything I listened to that day from the same period. Everything else just sounded weedy by comparison.

remarkable all the more considering the haphazard nature of the recording and the speed at which they put it together.

Absolutely! Sometimes I wish all quickly recorded albums from the '60s sounded as good as Led Zeppelin II does sonically, but I guess it wouldn't be as special if everyone had figured out how to do it.

Page was brilliant as a producer right from the go.

He had some great engineers working on those records who don't get as much credit as perhaps they should - people like Glyn Johns who engineered a lot of great sounding records. Page may have known what he wanted and have been no slouch in the studio, but he didn't achieve those results alone!

I should have known that Johns worked on them. Makes perfect sense.

You guys should check out pagey’s interview with Jeff koons at the 92 st Y.

physical graffiti thread got me running through the discography again. prob a controversial challopsy opinion but this record is a quantum leap over the first two

More challopsy to prefer the first two I would have thought? (I do, by the way).

general opinion suggests this one is still kinda underrated somehow

"friends" is so mindblowing

“Friends” def in the POX.

"Bron Yr Aur" didn't make the cut is insane. Some of Page's best picking.

This is still the lowest selling of their proper albums?

i'm really fond of the version of "friends" by this flash in the pan prog band around 2000 called azigza, so great

yeah, wow that bron yr aur was in a low tier. that's some of the best zep ever

Keep a swingin
Keep a coolin

Out on the Tiles

Out on the Tiles

fuck yes it is

I love this album, it's def the most joyful zep record

"friends" / "celebration day" = "brain damage" / "eclipse"

If they would have swapped Hats Off to Roy Harper with Hey Hey What Can I Do, this would have been a perfect album for me.

I don't mind 'Hey Hey' not being on it, I don't think it would fit with the mood of the album. It's a perfect b-side tho

one of my favorite zeppelin stories is robert plant is the first person to have smoked up jon anderson