Poll

What is your familiarity with Led Zeppelin

Beginner (Stairway to where?)
8 (8.8%)
Intermediate (I know the radio hits)
18 (19.8%)
Advanced (I know some of the deep cuts; have a box-set)
32 (35.2%)
Expert (I even own Coda, and have watched The Song Remains the Same)
33 (36.3%)

Total Members Voted: 91

Author Topic: The Led Zeppelin Discography Discussion: v. Everything still turns to gold  (Read 55632 times)

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Online Mladen

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Led Zeppelin is one of my favorite bands of all time (#4 probably), but I wish I could say that I like every album of theirs. Their debut, unfortunately, is the only one I'm not really digging. The heavier stuff like Communication breakdown or Good times bad times is good, but the bluesy tracks really aren't my cup of tea, which has to do with me not enjoying too much blues in general. I think their blues songs got much better with time, especially on the albums where there's one song of the king per record. But here, it's a bit too much and I get bored quite easily with most of them. I don't have a favorite or a single song I would call great on Led Zeppelin 1. Oh well...

Offline Ben_Jamin

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I'm intermediate,  with a hint of advanced. My first Zep cd was Houses of The Holy, I love the album.

I then bought Zep 1. Loved it all, although I never really cared for Communication Breakdown,  too overplayed.

Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You
Your Time Is Gonna Come/Black Mountain Side
I Can't Quit You Baby
Good Times, Bad Times
Dazed and Confused
How Many More Times
You Shook Me
Communication Breakdown
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Offline ThatOneGuy2112

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Might as well join the trend.

Dazed and Confused
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
How Many More Times
Your Time Is Gonna Come
Black Mountain Side
Good Times Bad Times
Communication Breakdown
You Shook Me
I Can't Quit You Baby

Offline TempusVox

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My order for LZ I would be:


How Many More Times
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
Dazed and Confused
Communication Breakdown
You Shook Me
Good Times Bad Times
Your Time Is Gonna Come
Black Mountain Side
I Can't Quit You Baby

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Offline hefdaddy42

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Tough to rank for me.
Hef is right on all things. Except for when I disagree with him. In which case he's probably still right.

Offline TAC

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I go:

Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
How Many More Times
Dazed And Confised

Everything else..
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Online jingle.boy

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As I hinted at earlier, Led Zeppelin's larger than life, legendary reputation and status in the history of rock music is largely attributed to their legacy as a live act - it certainly isn't for the quantity of their studio music.  Because of the hate-hate relationship with the music press, in their earlier years, their main (only) form of promotion was through word of mouth, and that meant playing a lot of gigs, and putting forth an unforgettable show.  They were pioneers in creativity, experimentation, jamming, and insistent on making every show unique, with Page once commenting that their "spontaneity was on the level of ESP"

After recording and mixing Zeppelin I, the band played a few gigs in London to get their feet wet.  On the same day that Plant would marry is heavily pregnant girlfriend, Maureen, they played their first gig at The Roadhouse in London.  The band then promptly fled the UK, deciding to attack the US market first.  Their first tour began December 26th, 1968, and wrapped up with sparsely attended shows at the end of January.  It wasn't until FM radio started to embrace the band that the audiences grew. They would tour for 18 months, and it didn't take long for them to establish a reputation as the most excessive and debauched rock group at the time, a title that would last with them their entire career, and perhaps brand them as the most debauched of all time.  Upon their arrival in LA, they were instantly adopted by the legendary groupie contingent The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously) - the worlds most famous groupies of the 60s.  They would also later run in circles with Chicago's Plaster Casters (known for taking plaster moulds of band members' "instrument").  Not only did they fulfill the hype with "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" - hell, they may have been the originators of the term, but there were stories that would go well beyond that - but, we'll leave some of those stories (except for the most infamous one) for another time.

Though Zeppelin was technically playing as the support act for a few other bands, mid-way through the tour, the "headlining" acts weren't even showing up.  On the final date of their first US tour, in support of Iron Butterfly, they might as well have been the headliners.  Living off the fame of their single In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Iron Butterfly refused to go on after Zeppelin's 2-hour set.  They would tour UK/Scandanavia in March and April, relegated to the pub scene, as they had not gotten any radio exposure in their homeland.  Returning to the US for tour #2, the band was like caged dogs finally let loose.  With their initial taste of fame, it started to go to another level... reportedly bankrupting one bar by not paying their tab, and living they typical rock 'n' roll lifestyle, They would return to UK for a more successful tour, then back to the US for Summer festivals, with Bonham starting his outlandish behaviour - at the Singer Bowl, the wasted drummer (as was par for the course with Bonzo) started stripping on stage, prompting police to rush the stage to remove him - but not before Peter Grant ushered him into the dressing room, telling Bonham he was fired if his clothes weren't on by the time the police broke down the door.  The pinnacle of their legendary debauchery from these early tours was at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle - a hotel famous for allowing guests to fish from their hotel window.  As legend has it, Plant, Bonham and Richard Cole were messing around with a groupie - well... more than just 'messing around'.  Bonham had caught a red snapper from his room, and the groupie, being red-headed, had a matching red snapper.  Cole later proclaimed "It was nothing malicious.. no one was ever hurt.  She might have been hit by a shark a couple of times for disobeying orders, but she didn't get hurt'. The legend grew to such proportions (with the aid of a Super-8 video filmed by Vanilla Fudge members that never surfaced), Frank Zappa even took inspiration from the event to write the song "Mudshark" about it, though Bonham would remain adamant it was a red snapper.  It's quite likely the 'legend' of the event is exaggerated far beyond the actual events that occurred that night - likely to be the case with many of the band's road stories

The band would return to Europe, then back to the US once more (for their fourth stint in 10 months) just prior to the release of Led Zeppelin II.  All told, they played 139 shows, with more than 100 of them being in the US.  By the end of the tour, they were headlining usually with no support act (though they opened for The Who in May - the only time the two bands performed together) and had increased their nightly fee from a few hundred quid to a rumoured $25,000+
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
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Offline Jaq

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Zep's 1969 bootlegs are only surpassed in my mind for sheer quality of performance by their 1973 German tour and their two tours of Japan in 1971 and 1972, and unmatched for sheer raw energy by any tour. They were that way from the start-their earliest known bootleg, their 12/30/68 performance at Spokane, is sheer energy and telepathic interplay, which was their fifth US date. Mere months after they came into being, Led Zeppelin was already a formidable live band, at their best the best live performers I've ever heard.

The 1969 tour gave birth to a legendary concert at a venue known as the Tea Party in Boston, namely "that show where Zeppelin played a four hour set full of covers!", but finding it, ahh, finding it, that's tricky. The legend suggests it was the band's 1/26/69 Boston show, since the bootleg is full of cuts and incomplete songs, but the likelier origin of the legend is a later date in May 1969 at the same venue which still didn't see the band play for four hours but saw them playing covers as encores for an audience that was dying to hear more. The four hour Boston Tea Party show that never happened pops up a lot in Zep bootleg circles, and even popped up in Steven Tyler's biography, and as a result the band's Boston gigs tend to be considered holy grail type shows for collectors. I have two (the 1/26 show that started this mess, and recordings from the 5/27 show that are the likely origin of it) and the band was really, really good those nights. Boston and San Francisco tended to get some epic shows on the 1969 tour. 

I feel I should mention the 10/10/69 L'Olympia gig that turned up as one of the bonuses in the recent re-issue of the debut. But mainly because it was the day I turned three years old  :lol
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Online jingle.boy

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That Olympia show with the new Zeppelin I remaster is fantastic.  I've never been much into bootlegging. And since Peter Grant was so opposed, I'm sure there's a lot fewer copies out there than there were attempts to record - or perhaps more likely, attempts to leave the gig with a recording!
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
I fear for the day when something happens on the right that is SO nuts that even Stadler says "That's crazy".
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Remember the mark of a great vocalist is if TAC hates them with a special passion

Offline LudwigVan

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At this particular time, How Many More Times was their 'medley jam' number, where they mashed up several blues and oldies standards into the middle of the song.  Whole Lotta Love later became the vehicle for this after II was released.

For Zeppelin, a lot of the on-stage improv and live experimentation led to riffs and song ideas that found themselves used in subsequent albums. Listening to their bootlegs, you'd hear snippets of riffs, solos and verses that would make you go: Hey! That's one of the riffs in Achilles Last Stand! That's the solo that was used for The Lemon Song!  They would take a verse or riff from an old blues and start tooling with it, flipping it around on its head or throwing in a little twist until they came up with something cool and different.   That's one of the things I love about live Zeppelin; you could literally hear the songwriting/creative process in progress just by listening to their live jams.  Granted, there are some people that DON'T enjoy the long and meandering improvs, much preferring to hear a fully realized song. Those are the fans that will stick to the studio albums. Nothing wrong with that either.
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Offline Jaq

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That Olympia show with the new Zeppelin I remaster is fantastic.  I've never been much into bootlegging. And since Peter Grant was so opposed, I'm sure there's a lot fewer copies out there than there were attempts to record - or perhaps more likely, attempts to leave the gig with a recording!

During their life time as a band, there were bootlegs that made it into release-pretty sure the 1971 era boot known as Blueberry Hill got a release on vinyl, as did the 1977 Cleveland show that was released as Destroyer, notable for being the first soundboard released-but Zep bootlegs exploded far, far more after the band broke up. While I imagine Grant hated them, Page loves them-around the time of the 2007 O2 gig, Page went to a store in Japan that sells boots and came out with an armload of them, and when he was putting together DVD he put out a call for bootlegs for potential use. Page loves to tinker with the sound on live albums-How The West Was Won is a hilarious instance of having two recorded dates and swapping things around from one night to the other, sometimes as little as a line or two-and bootlegs fill in lines for him.

As for the early days, when the band did long blues and pop song medleys in How Many More Times (which hung around as the medley number until Fall 1970, though it had been usurped on occasion by Whole Lotta Love), Whole Lotta Love (oh those 30 minute plus ones from their Japanese tours) and even the not so well known medleys built around a song called As Long As I Have You, a staple of their earliest tours, especially on nights when they played two sets at the same venue-oh, how I loved those. How they'd effortlessly move from hard blues to pure pop in seconds, sounding almost as if they had no idea what song was going to come next in the medleys. Sheer gold.
The bones of beasts and the bones of kings become dust in the wake of the hymn.
Mighty kingdoms rise, but they all will fall, no more than a breath on the wind.

Offline KevShmev

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10 days, 6 pages, and we are still only on the first album... I am getting the feeling that this thread is gonna take a year to complete.  :lol :lol :biggrin:

Online jingle.boy

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10 days, 6 pages, and we are still only on the first album... I am getting the feeling that this thread is gonna take a year to complete.  :lol :lol :biggrin:

Nah, Zep II coming today.  My plan is an update every couple of days, but each album has 3 updates - the album; song-by-song; and touring.  So, that's an album/week.
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
I fear for the day when something happens on the right that is SO nuts that even Stadler says "That's crazy".
Quote from: Puppies_On_Acid
Remember the mark of a great vocalist is if TAC hates them with a special passion

Offline hefdaddy42

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Sweet!
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Mine's a tale that can't be told, my freedom I hold dear.
How years ago in days of old, when magic filled the air.




Tracklikst:
1   Whole Lotta Love   5:35
2   What Is and What Should Never Be   4:44
3   The Lemon Song   6:20
4   Thank You   4:47
5   Heartbreaker   4:14
6   Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)   2:39
7   Ramble On   4:24
8   Moby Dick   4:21
9   Bring It On Home   4:21


Released a mere 10 months after the debut on October 22, 1969 on Atlantic Records, Led Zeppelin II came to the market with 400,000 advanced orders.  The recording sessions for Led Zeppelin II took place at several locations in the United Kingdom and North America between January and August of that year. Continuing with elements of blues infused rock, and now folk music, Led Zeppelin II continues where Led Zeppelin I left off, with the band primarily marrying blues influences with their guitar and riff-based sound. This is arguably the band's heaviest album, with Thank You as the only complete song to provide a softer break.  Like its predecessor, it was an immediate hit, topping the American charts two months after its release and spending seven weeks at number one (displacing Abbey Road), and even reaching #1 in the UK (again displacing Abbey Road).

Consider this a "Frankenstein" album - recorded in nine different studios, pieced together masterfully by (mad scientist) Page, and rising to be their first monster album.  The album was written and recorded during the 8 different tours they were on in '68 and '69, often times during periods of a couple of hours in between concerts, then a studio was booked and the recording process begun. Jones recalled that "Jimmy's riffs were coming fast and furious. A lot of them came from onstage especially during the long improvised section of 'Dazed and Confused'. We'd remember the good stuff and dart into a studio along the way."  "Thank You", "The Lemon Song" and "Moby Dick" were overdubbed during the tour, while the mixing of "Whole Lotta Love" and "Heartbreaker" was also done on tour.  Despite the writing and recording method, Led Zeppelin II is miles ahead of Led Zeppelin I in terms of cohesion, vision, production, maturity and songwriting - it truly features the band as a whole, not Page + 3 guys he hired to put his own album together with.  Touring non-stop for a year and a half had honed their sound immensely. 

If Zeppelin I stirred up some controversy relating to writing credits, Zeppelin II brought about a shit-storm - predominantly with their blues-inspired songs, most notably with The Lemon Song.  Originally credited solely to themselves, the song took a lot of "inspiration" from the Howlin Wolf song "The Killing Floor", Zeppelin actually had to change their pressings of the album to title the song "The Killing Floor" until matters were settled financially with Howlin Wolf.  "Reinterpreting" music in the blues genre was very common, but rarely was followed with a lawsuit for lack of credit given.  However, with Zeppelin's financial success, economics won out, and their music became a bigger target than anything exclusively from the blues genre.  As the old saying goes, you can't get blood from a stone.  Selling 3 million copies in it's first 6 months, and 12 million overall, there was blood to be extracted here.

Rolling Stone again took great pleasure in slagging the band and album, mockingly stating "This is one heavyweight of an album... one especially heavy song extended over the space of two whole sides.", claiming Page was the "absolute number one heaviest white blues guitarist between 5'4" and 5'8" in the world".

Led Zeppelin II finished #16 on my Top albums list of all time.  It's an absolute gem of an album, filled with so many amazing moments.  I'll never forget getting baked out of my mind for the first time that I listened to it, and hearing that opening riff absolutely blew me away - one of my most favorite guitar riffs in all of music.

Track-by-track thoughts to come later.
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
I fear for the day when something happens on the right that is SO nuts that even Stadler says "That's crazy".
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Remember the mark of a great vocalist is if TAC hates them with a special passion

Offline KevShmev

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Start to finish, this is arguably the best Led Zeppelin album.  It is consistent as hell and an effortless listen from start to finish.  Enough good things cannot be said about it. :coolio

Offline mikeyd23

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Great write up Jingle, and what a fantastic album! I agree with Kev that it certainly should at least be in the conversation to be considered the best LZ album.

Overall LZ II seems much more focus to me and really begins to show off the band's signature sound to a much greater degree than the debut managed to. 

Offline Orbert

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Great album.  Solid, and for me personally, much more listenable than the first album.

I've never seen that "alternate color" cover before.  Whoa.

Offline hefdaddy42

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Glorious album.  Power and wonder everywhere.
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Online jingle.boy

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Great album.  Solid, and for me personally, much more listenable than the first album.

I've never seen that "alternate color" cover before.  Whoa.

The 'negative' album covers are from the remastered I, II, and III that just came out last month.  The companion discs that come with them are REALLY cool.  All nine studio albums will get this remaster treatment.  Not sure on release timing though.

Quote
the band will launch an extensive reissue program of all nine of its studio albums in chronological order, each remastered by guitarist and producer Jimmy Page. Led Zeppelin will also open its vaults to share dozens of unheard studio and live recordings, with each album featuring a second disc of companion audio comprised entirely of unreleased music related to that album.
"The material on the companion discs presents a portal to the time of the recording of Led Zeppelin," says Page. "It is a selection of work in progress with rough mixes, backing tracks, alternate versions, and new material recorded at the time."

The companion disc for II contains some alternative vocal mixes, and instrumental/backing versions.
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
I fear for the day when something happens on the right that is SO nuts that even Stadler says "That's crazy".
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Remember the mark of a great vocalist is if TAC hates them with a special passion

Offline Big Hath

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My favorite LZ album.

Bring It On Home is awesome.
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Offline masterthes

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Definitely my favorite LZ album. Just about everything is pitch perfect, although I don't really listen to The Lemon Song that much.
Ranking: best to last

Ramble On
Whole Lotta Love
What Is...
Heartbreaker
Bring It On Home
Thank You
Living Loving Maid
The Lemon Song
Moby Dick

Offline TAC

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I am not a huge LZ II guy. When I was a kid, I traded my copy for Rainbow's On Stage, and have never looked back.
I get it and appreciate it for all its worth, but I never  have a hunkering for early Zep.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
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Offline senecadawg2

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The Lemon Song feels a little directionless to me and is probably my least favorite of the bunch. Good album though overall, and definitely more enjoyable for me than the first.
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Offline Accelerando

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I effin love that guitar break in Bring It On Home. I had it as my ringtone 5 or 6 years ago. That surge of energy from Page's guitar is incredible.

Offline Orbert

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This album also contains one of "our songs" as is "my wife and mine".  You know how at weddings, people often get their friends to sing or play a song or two?  Well, since my best man was also lead singer for the band, and one of the groomsmen was our guitarist, I thought it would be cool to play a couple of songs at my own wedding.

I whipped up arrangements for "Thank You" from this album and "I'd Be So Happy" from Three Dog Night's Hard Labor.  At the meeting with the pastor prior to the wedding, he asked about music, and we told him that we'd be doing a song by Led Zeppelin and a song by Three Dog Night.  The pastor turned white (and he was pretty white before).  Cautiously, he asked about the songs themselves.  We told him the the first song is about finding the love of your life, and the song is merely saying "Thank You" for being that person.  The second is about looking back after 20 years, and knowing that you'd made the right decision way back when.  He was sold.

The organist wasn't so sure.  She wanted to hear the songs first.  So we played them for her, and she loved them.  I wrote up charts for her to play, literally the organ part for "Thank You", and she basically filled in the strings and stuff on "I'd Be So Happy".  John sang lead, Chris and I did background vocals, Chris played acoustic guitar, and I got to play the grand piano in the sanctuary.  I'd always wanted to play that beast, and while the whole thing was very romantic and my wife loved the idea, that was actually my main motivation.  To play the grand.


Online jingle.boy

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That's awesome man!
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
I fear for the day when something happens on the right that is SO nuts that even Stadler says "That's crazy".
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Remember the mark of a great vocalist is if TAC hates them with a special passion

Offline jammindude

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I remember always thinking how HEAVY the drums sound on this album.   But when I put it in the context of its time???   MIND...BLOWN.    I defy you to find an album with a heavier drum sound before this album came out.    Even to this day, it just sounds like he's beating the living crap out of those drums.   I'm surprised he didn't break every head in the process of recording.  Bonzo's drums just sound *that huge* to me. 

There's no doubt this is a landmark album.    Thank You, Ramble On and Living Loving Maid have worn a bit thin on me over the years...but everything else is a home run. 

My ranking:

What Is And What Should Never Be
Whole Lotta Love
Moby Dick
Bring It On Home
Heartbreaker
The Lemon Song
Living Loving Maid
Ramble On
Thank You

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Offline Jaq

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That Led Zeppelin II is good at all is amazing given how it was written and recorded in basically spare time during the band's early tours. That it's as good and consistent an album sonically, with all the different studios used, is amazing. It's not perfect-Killing Floor was awesome live, but translated less so as The Lemon Song, and Moby Dick's kind of pointless since it seemed to only exist to serve to frame a drum solo, and Bonham was already taking a solo (called Pat's Delight) before Moby Dick came around, but the rest of the album is amazingly good. I actually waffle fairly regularly on what my favorite Zep album is, but II is easily their most consistent album from track to track.
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Online jingle.boy

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II is easily their most consistent album from track to track.

On this, I will agree wholeheartedly.  There aren't as many stellar highs as there are on other subsequent albums, but there aren't any clunkers either.  Hell, I'd be hard pressed to give any song on this album a lower grade than A-.  Every album after has at least a song (or four) that is better than the best song here; but they also have a song (or four) that is worse than the worst here.  Song for song, it's their best album in my books. 
That's a word salad - and take it from me, I know word salad
I fear for the day when something happens on the right that is SO nuts that even Stadler says "That's crazy".
Quote from: Puppies_On_Acid
Remember the mark of a great vocalist is if TAC hates them with a special passion

Offline Scorpion

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Maybe you posted it already and I missed it, but why did Rolling Stone hate Led Zeppelin?
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Offline jammindude

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Maybe you posted it already and I missed it, but why did Rolling Stone hate Led Zeppelin?

Because they weren't Bob Dylan...
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Offline Anguyen92

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Maybe you posted it already and I missed it, but why did Rolling Stone hate Led Zeppelin?

They were really different from what Rolling Stone magazine was reviewing and was scared of the sounds this band was making?  I probably think the similar reasons that reviewers hated Rush in their early days (the unique vocals?).

Offline Tom Bombadil

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Online jingle.boy

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Maybe you posted it already and I missed it, but why did Rolling Stone hate Led Zeppelin?

Didn't really post a specific reason, but I think it's because Rolling Stone just didn't know what to make of it.  What the first two albums gave the music industry were so radical and groundbreaking, I suspect that it was just as easy to shit all over it as it would've been to praise it.  Might've been the tastes of the individual reviewer as well. 

We might have to defer to an ultra-fogey like Ludwig or CrimsonSunrise who may have known from first hand experience why Rolling Stone gave bad reviews - they weren't the only musical publication to do so.  More on that in upcoming discussions.
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