an overview of the so-called father of heavy metal while reviewing their weakest moment, the live album, the song remains the same. 

inspired by the news of a reunion, the new live re-release and the re-re-re-remastered collection coming out i had to blog zeppelin.

i am a huge zeppelin fan. their early material (69–72) may be some of the best music commited to wax in the name of rock ( or specificaly, among their peers in the “classic” sub genre). i’m the first to dismiss their blooze theiving and macheesmo rock indugences (up to and including, the mother of all double lp’s physical graphiti) because i think they did produce some really great music. who can deny “immigrant song”, “when the levee breaks”, “the rover” , “communication breakdown”, and all the other solid rock numbers they churned out during their decade of activity? 

as i read more about the reissue of tsrts i discovered that not only was this half-baked abortion to be reissued but it had been remastered, restoring the set to resemble the actual performances it was supposed to showcase at nyc’s madison square garden in 1972. here is an overview of led zeppelin by way of a rant about the worst release of their catalog, even considering presence,coda and in through the out door.

zeppelin’s only live album relased during their existance, the song remains the same, is pathetic. this lead balloon exploding in disgrace in the twilight of its live performance heyday is what this set is. a record making cash grab for the band, affording them their own jet and a large fortune in greenbacks, which had at some point been misplaced or stolen. but, an artistic failure. they seem tired, out of tune and the fantasy footage doesn’t help the motion picture. the recording is a subpar recording and the video is the band at their most indugent, pretentious and retarded. it would otherwise provide a decent romp through the group’s first five albums in live form but the performances are so half baked it simply wades in it’s own filth. the epic soloing, and junked out beyond coherence, jimmy page, is at his sloppiest. most zep heads in their right minds know this is only for the complete collection. after the bbc sessions and how the west was won live sets were released tsrts, is merely a bad call in the later half of zeppelin’s catalog that is consistent…ly full of bad calls. to give tsrts 3 of 5 (as blender has) is an insult to zeppelin fans who prefer to listen to stairway backwards in an attempt to find something amusing about it. 

the first disc of tsrts is a roll through their more conventional rock numbers. by 1972 the band was reaching their second phase. their recordings sound slick and bright (fouth album) in comparison to the mostly dank and muddy heaviness of the first three albums. “rock and roll” begins tsrts and sets the tone. never a huge favorite of mine, it does benefit from the sloppy delivery of the live zep. jimmy page’s guitar solo nearly drips with drool, but in the context of such a dull 12 bar r’n’r tune it works. it almost redeems the shiny happy recorded version which sounds all too perfect. which is the problem with much of the material after III.
“celebraton day” follows and is actually a treat. a rubbery funk riff which benefits from page’s almost tuned les paul and a trashy execution. at this point things seem to be going fairly well. even the banal “black dog” comes to life when compared to it’s slickly over produced album version. plant’s vocal doesn’t quite peel the paint off the walls and the zeppelin drums and bass lock into sync with page’s guitar in a way that is classic zep. 

the live version of “black dog” is something from nothing. that is, its thin sound compared to the LP version is effective even though the song is just kinda a rocker for the sake of a rocker. what marks the change from the third to the fourth albums are slick production and the band are well rehersed for the first time. the earlier records were recorded on tour or created more in the studio. the raunchy and loose elements of the first three albums is gone. the dark sonic explorations of “dazed and confused” and the psychedelic hell of the middle part of “whole lotta’ love” are traded for pristine marble stairways, well maintained hedge rows and the angels of avalon. what made their blooze biting acceptable was that they added to the original in such a way it did become theirs. “battle of evermore” from the fourth album coul be fairport convention and even includes one of that group’s vocalists. snooze, snooze. wake me when it’s time for “four sticks”.

“over the hills and far away” from houses of the holy (yet to be released at the time of this recording) is a punchy tune which gains something from the sloppiness of its delivery but it’s just a slice of faux-folk n’ rock fit for lite FM radio. not much else. i have always hated this song. “misty mountain hop” is a decent offering. again, the more loose performance thaws the cold and soils the sterile production of the album version. plant’s vocals are laid back an octave or so from the paint peeling falsetto of its studio version. the song drags just a little too much at points. fatigue had starting to set in and a rock by the numbers feeling takes hold. going through the motions they sound like their heads are off in their respective fantasy sequences already. 

the ship had finally exploded and the rest of the set would be marked by silly over-self indulgence and their wild animal energy had difused itself. the lion of the late 60’s early 70’s rock had become a manicured poodle. kennel club trophy winners on album, a drugged and matted carrion live. certainly down but not yet out, most of their best laid behind them by the early 70’s. they had taken blooze rock to the limit of heavy and displayed a mastery of dynamics by contrasting the heavy with an equally intense softer side. more acoustic songs from the first three albums like “friends”, “tangerine” and even the appropriated tracks like “babe, i’m gonna leave you”, and “black mountain side” helped define the zeppelin sound as something mercurial. more faceted than sabbath and less cartoonish. 

by the fourth album their folly was they had the right musical sense of humor but lacked the ability to laugh at themselves. this cock sure machismo in sound and emotional fragility as artists and in content, worked for the group at first. when this was replaced with a forced softness and the group’s growing sense of self-importance they shed their sense of humor. the mini-epics like straiway and tsrts are delivered straight faced and preachy. these rock gods had unlocked the secrets of life and were illuminating the path to total freedom. and fucking groupies with fish and tossing televisions out of hotel windows. mature and enlightened artists lighting the way for mankind ? hardly. 

the next four songs represent the groups mini-epics and allow the first of the lengthy solos to worm into the rest of this snooze fest. it also illustraits the turning point in their development. zep’s earlier long indulgent numbers were more akin to free jazz. simple blooze vamps drawn out for the sake of solos which would mainly feature guitarist jimmy page, running the blooze down while implying flavors of eastern music with drones and odd intervals. his use of echo and phasing effects recall syd barrett ‚hendrix and jeff beck at his best. his willingness to let chaos almost devour the early long jams excites the white blooze at their core and when things fall back into place for the endings there is an uneasy resolve. the chaotic element would be lost for zeppelin’s mid-period mini-epics and replaced by calculated changes and dime store granduer. not enough to approach prog but too much for the animal element that they used early on to appear convincing. they matured? maybe. call it what you like, but it is still lacking the something that made their earlier work so charming despite a detour or two through a lifted riff or an indulgent r’n’r cliche’. they invented a few of those cliches, for better or worse.

“since i’ve been loving you” is only made partialy listenable by bonzo’s slow and hard driving drumming. jimmy page’s guitar work is some text book blooze wacking but it’s better than listening to santana. “no quarter” is another low key drum and organ number which sets jpj up for his organ solo. grab your bong. but don’t think that any amount of pot will make this enjoyable. i like this song but the live version is boring. “the song remains the same” is listenable and maybe the best of the mini epics. dense, aggressive 12 string strumming moves into a more fluid verse before evolving to a more angular jam and back to more fluid lines. more of page’s solos than necessary undermine the tune’s strength and round some of the edges. a few flashes of bright white hot embers escaping from the exploding balloon. “the rain song” is another cut from hoth, another song i could do without. i can’t say anthing good about it. the new first disc ends with a slight return to form with “the ocean”. a decent song but overrated. bonzo is on point and page’s riffage is classic. the riff is almost scientific. it’s almost as if at this point page had figured out his own formula and turned the organic coca straight into crack. the vibrant studio musician whose legend would begin to imply he had actually pinch solo-ed for townsend and dave davies among other of the pre-zeppelin era’s guitar giants had gone from adding life to droll pop songs to sucking life out of the genre’s saviors in the post-beatles era. page’s (and the other’s) egos and excesses would get the better of them. 

because of this, and tsrts’s recording in 1972 coinciding with this the 2nd disc is nearly unlistenable. “dazed and confused” which would be among the best of zep’s long jams in the early days appears here as a nauseatingly long (thanks to the bow solo) obligation that page phones in from a waking, junk sick dreamland. as he hacks and whacks the guitar with his frayed violin bow he sounds bored. this is the millionth time he’s done it and he seems to be trapped by the thing that used to sound as if it had liberated something in him. the hunger had been satiated and now it was time to make sure the crew of the lead balloon could continue to live the lives they had become accustomed to. 

a sloppy “stairway”, a drum solo ruining the only worthy listen of the second disc, “moby dick”, another guitar interlude or two for “heartbreaker” and the “whole lotta love/meddly” combines another phoned in classic with a phoned in meddly of blues, rockabilly and an almost interesting drum, bass, theremin, vocal-echo breakdown. the swirling, abstract middle of “wll” is turned into a funky break but it still can’t save this set from the rest of itself. it also indicates again, that there were still some untapped potential but the momentum had run out. they had nothing to prove. they were stale. so instead of baking a new loaf they dipped the old crust in cheese and made fondue. 

the group’s last great effort, “physical graffiti” would collect tracks recorded during sessions for the group’s first 5 albums. the records following would produce a few decent songs. “achilles last stand” from presence is 10+ minutes of brilliance that would be their own last stand before punk and new wave made them obsolete. the song combines a driving, punctuated drum groove with a dramatic and dynamic musical foil. the sound is the group’s excesses catching up to them and it is a convincing expression of the frustraition the group must’ve felt facing or not facing the damage.

the remaining two proper studio albums would be filled with more pop concerns which, failed to be pop and which concerned only the zeppelin itself. they were no longer relevant. they were boring, fat and would eventually choke to death on their own vomit. an almost fitting end to a group whose strength was a dumbed down distilation of the blues, stripped down and dressed in some hippy beads and a dashiki or electrocuted back to life. 

the founding of their swan song label marked the groups creative nadir at the height of their commercial success. tsrts is the begining of the end. recorded in 72 and released in 76 after the cinders had all extinguished from the explosion of the blimp as an attempt to remind the world how great they had been. and people still bought the hype. zeppelin would be the prototype for heavy metal and eventually cock rock, though i think aerosmith are the true fathers of that sub genre. but it was them aping zeppelin that planted the seed in the motley crue’s that would take cues from all the wrong details. 

my opinion of zeppelin is based on what i think of their best though. not their worst and not their disciples work. the bbc sessions, III and physical graffiti cover most of the stuff i think comes closest to greatness. how the west was won offers a decent peek at the band closest to their live peak, though i feel their earlier bootleg US live material is more intense. their sloppy chops work better on their more dumb material than on their more ambitious mini-epics, most of the time. i think the hodge podge of the earliest zep is more effective than their folk prog electric mini-epics. straight apes like “black mountain side” work in context of the crude heavy pop of the first album with its dancable tabla beat. “battle of evermore” from the fourth album seems forced and trite and “the rain song” from hoth is just boring. but they were still cranking out stuff like “when the levee breaks”. a funky element in songs like “the crundge”, “trampled under foot”, “custard pie”, “houses of the holy”, and event he latter day “walter’s walk” take the original zepplin sound to the next level. it seems to me the logical progression from the early blooze-biting.

i love them for the good stuff and loath them for the bad. but spinal tap had to come from somewhere…what you need to get a complete picture of zeppelin’s best are:

the bbc sessions (intense heavy rock, this is why they were so huge)

led zeppelin III (the ultimate example of their light/dark dynamics are here.)

pysical graphiti (loads of good stuff and few clunkers but this is zep’s funkiest album.)

presence (about half good, a decent almost return to form.)