Classic Rock Song of the Day (Deep Cuts now being featured!!)

[bl5150]

Not a fan of Zep in general but love this song.  Never released as a single either .

Pretty sure that 45s were made to handle 8 minute songs.

There were fakes around that's for sure.  My understanding is that promo singles were sent to radio stations but it was never released to the general public as a single and therefore never officially charted as such.

[Orbert]

It's good to see support this amazing song.  It is overplayed, which is never a good thing, and I'll admit that I used to consider it overrated.  Then I seriously sat down to learn the song, and realized how well constructed it is.  The production is great, and the arrangement is amazing.  It's actually a great song to play on keyboards.  If anything, I feel a little sorry for the guitarist, who has to keep up the tension for several minutes while basically doing the same thing over and over.  In a live setting, you usually can't add a second and third guitar along the way, but with keys, I can do the whole song justice.

My wife is one of those who listens to songs and basically only cares about the words and vocals.  She considers this an okay song, but a bit "boring and repetitive".  But she considers a lot my music boring and repetitive, and that blows my mind, considering some of the stuff she listens to.  If she says a song is repetitive, I tell her to listen to parts that aren't repeating.  How the guitar is soloing underneath the whole time, or how the keyboards come in the partway through and help with the buildup, or how the bass and drum fills are all over the place, etc.  She doesn't care.  The "song" is boring if the words and/or vocals don't do anything amazing.  Sometimes that's not the point.

My comparison to sex hit me just today when I thought about how the song builds slowly for so long, then kicks into high gear, and then again, and then actually has a catharsis.  It's actually a valid comparison IMO.  Most songs don't do that; you get a couple verses, a solo, then another verse or chorus.  This song is a journey, an experience, and it goes through a natural progression.

[7deg_inner_happiness]

Excellent posts, Orbert!  Stairway to Heaven is indeed an awesome song among LZ greats.  I can honestly say I've never heard the analogy to sex, but I think it's fitting.

Also a bit of sympathetic affirmation for you, my wife thinks all the music I listen to sounds the same as well.  In fact quite often I hear my better half say, "Can't we listen to something different?  Who is this....Dream Theater, Neal Morse, Porcupine Tree, The Flower Queens (as she refers to them), or the Whiny Dogs (ditto)?"

[King Postwhore]

Was way overplayed but because I've stayed away from it for a long, long time it sound so fresh to me.  A masterpiece.

[masterthes]

Ziggy is my favorite Bowie song. Stairway is in my top 5 Led Zep songs

[Podaar]

A truly marvelous achievement in rock both compositionally and production wise. I really can't put it any better than Orbert did so I won't try.

[KevShmev]

Eagles - Seven Bridges Road

This live cover is a vocal masterpiece.  It is no secret how awesome the Eagles harmonies were, and there is no finer example of that than this song.  This was actually one of the first songs I heard by the Eagles, and I loved it immediately. 

[jingle.boy]

So much awesomeness packed into 3 little minutes.  One of my most favorite Eagles tunes.

[King Postwhore]

The opening harmony is pure gold.

BTW Kev did you see the documentary, "The History Of The Eagles"?  And if not, get it right away.

[Orbert]

I'm not a huge Eagles fan, but they have some great songs, and some great harmonies.  This is a good example of both.

[7deg_inner_happiness]

This song is great.  I can't imagine what it must have been like for the Eagles to sit back and listen to this after just having recorded it.  They had to be amazed themselves!

[bl5150]

Hotel California is one of the few memories I have of radio in my preppy school years , that and Stairway to Heaven - it was at saturation point.  Aside from a few other hits I've never really got into The Eagles as much as (I think) I should've.   As part of my quest to work my way back to classic bands that I ignored as a kid I've recently got The Complete Greatest Hits (33 tracks on 2 CDs) so I should have a good idea after that on whether I need to explore even further.

I quite like the track featured above too.

[KevShmev]

BTW Kev did you see the documentary, "The History Of The Eagles"?  And if not, get it right away.

No, but honestly, I don't like them that much to buy that.  It's probably something I'd watch once and never again, and I am trying to be a bit more selective with what DVDs/Blu-rays I buy now (since I don't wanna own a million of them ).

[Orbert]

It's been on TV a bunch of times.  I found it interesting enough to watch once.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Late to the party, but an excellent fact about Stairway - the solo is obviously revered as one of rock's greatest.  I read an interview with Page in an old guitar magazine who said that when recording it, he basically went in and winged three solos.  Agonised over which one to use and went with the one we hear today.

Wow.

[Orbert]

I remember reading that, too.  And while that sounds pretty mind-blowing to us mere mortals, I have think that that's pretty much how it's done anyway.  Record a solo.  Record a different solo.  After numerous takes, figure out which one should go on the album.

The difference is that this guitar solo is iconic, so well known that most of us can and do sing along with it, or at least air guitar the whole thing.  Heck, Zappa's band (The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life) covered this song and the horn section played the solo, it's that melodic.  Frank just played the descant line on the guitar.  So we imagine that each of Jimmy's three takes were similar.  I'd like to hear the other two.  Maybe someday, alternate versions of the song will be released with the other takes.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Right, it's fairly standard recording MO, but as you said, this one is just so iconic, you just have to imagine that every note was carefully selected and the whole thing was hand-crafted over weeks.  then to find that he just winged it?  Amazing.

Of note, when my band does "Mary Jane's Last Dance", I play the Stairway solo over the outro.  It works really well. 

[Orbert]

Now that would be cool to hear.  Does anyone ever comment on that?

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

It's pretty cool, because it works great.  Only difference being that every time Page hits that low F note on the A string, I change it to the E instead, so it won't sound as out of place.  To be honest, I'm not sure if anybody ever even notices, which is kinda sad.

One night though, my drummer decides he's gonna see if the rest of us have the balls to take it all the way and started working that off-accented beat (on the F chord in STH) into the rhythm.  So once I got to the end of the solo, we naturally took it the next step and played out the post solo section of Stairway.  It was pretty f*cking magical.

It's always cool throwing unexpected things like that in.  On "I Wanna Be Sedated", there's that empty section just before the key change to F#.  Well, may as well put something there.  Like the Flintstones theme.  Or in "She Hates Me" by Puddle of Mudd, there's a solo section that's exactly the same length as the solo to Def Lep's "Photograph".  So in it goes.  Helps keep it intersting for me. 

[Orbert]

That's the kind of cool thing you can do with a bar band.  I live for those magical, unscripted moments.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

It is.  Those moments ARE the best.  Edited my post to illustrate other examples.  One night we, completely off the cuff, intermingled Mary Jane's Last Dance and Dani California (Chili Peppers) into one another, since the chord progressions are exactly the same.  So cool to pull that kinda stuff off without even rehearsing it. 

[KevShmev]

That's pretty cool.  And since we now have Tom Petty on the brain...

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Don't Do Me Like That

His songs can sometimes be hit or miss for me, but this is one I enjoy quite a bit.  It's catchy, and packs a good punch for being such a short song.

[masterthes]

Yeah, short and sweet

[King Postwhore]

Catchy and has a great hook to it.  Tom Petty live is a great show.  Mike Campbell lets loose live and can really tear it up on the guitar though you never hear that in the studio.

[Orbert]

I love "Runnin' Down a Dream".  Is that Campbell on guitar?  You're right, though, we usually don't get to hear him wail.

In general, I like Tom Petty's upbeat songs (with or without The Heartbreakers) and his mellower ones don't work so well for me.  This song, being uptempo, rocks out pretty good.

[Podaar]

I hate this song, but not because of the song but because of my first wife. It was her favorite TPatHB song and would often refer to it as "our song." Yeah, she wasn't too bright. Anyway, she left me and our two kids just to shack up with another man...so, she did me like that. 

[King Postwhore]

I love "Runnin' Down a Dream".  Is that Campbell on guitar?  You're right, though, we usually don't get to hear him wail.

In general, I like Tom Petty's upbeat songs (with or without The Heartbreakers) and his mellower ones don't work so well for me.  This song, being uptempo, rocks out pretty good.

The two constants For Petty, solo or The Heartbreakers is Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench the keyboard player.

[Orbert]

So there's not actually that much difference between The Heartbreakers and the band on his solo albums?  Oh well, I'm sure the hardcore fans will make the distinction.  As a casual fan, I lump it all together.

[King Postwhore]

I do too.  I saw Petty twice and once with Jackson Browne and let me tell you what a great, non stop hit parade it was.  Favorite live tune watching Petty was It's Good To Be King.  The outro and the ripping guitar solo is unreal live.

[TAC]

Obviously Tom Petty wasn't my thing, but I knew plenty of people who saw him back in the day, and they swore he was great live.

[KevShmev]

My brother and I saw him once, early in the 2000s, and it was a good show, but there were two couples in front of us who wouldn't stop blathering during the whole concert, so that sapped much of the enjoyment from it. 

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

I saw him live and it was an awesome show.

[7deg_inner_happiness]

I never saw him live, but he did turn out a lot of great songs.  I think my favorite might be American Girl.

[KevShmev]

Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way

One of the many known hits from Rumours.  I like this song, and I have a special fondness for the live version from The Dance, as Lindsey Buckingham wails away at the end with a killer guitar solo.  But the original is obviously good, too. And the lyrics are notable for being about the break-up between Buckingham and Steve Nicks.  Of note, too, is that Nicks wanted Buckingham to remove the line, "Packing up, shacking up's all you wanna do," but Buckingham refused.

[bl5150]

Rumors is the only album I own and I really like that track.  I had tickets to my first FM concert only a few months back but it was cancelled due to John Mcvie's illness.  Apparently he's back on track with his health now and they're touring again.