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Chasing the long tail of new media

Led Zeppelin

Certain Songs #918: Led Zeppelin – “Kashmir (Knebworth, 1979)”

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Album: Led Zeppelin DVD
Year: 1979

This is really a quick little postscript capping a month or so of Led Zeppelin posts. For the longest time, “Kashmir” was the one Certified Led Zeppelin Classic that I just couldn’t get behind.

On Physical Graffiti it was, as needs be, too perfect. It was like an impenetrable tank that was impossible to get inside of, every attempt at understanding its deep dark mysteries beaten back by a phase-shifted drum roll. So it wasn’t like I skipped it, or even changed the channel when it came on, I just didn’t love it, even though I could hear how amazing and groundbreaking it was.

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Certain Songs #917: Led Zeppelin – “In The Evening”

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Album: In Through The Out Door
Year: 1979

So what if John Bonham hadn’t died? What if, instead of being Led Zeppelin’s last studio album, they continued to record — ever more sporadically, of course — for the next couple of decades instead?

How would In Through The Out Door be looked at then? Obviously, it’s now seen as The Last Led Zeppelin Album, with all of the psychic weight that entails. Added to that is the fact that In Through The Out Door is clearly their weakest studio album, continuing the decline that some detected (wrongly!!!) in Presence, and some folks might even assume that it was a good thing they had an excuse to break up before further tainting their legacy, like other ::coughs:: The Who ::coughs:: bands didn’t do.

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Certain Songs #916: Led Zeppelin – “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”

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Album: Presence
Year: 1976

See that’s the thing about Presence: it’s got three of my top 10 — hell, practically three of my top 5 — Led Zeppelin songs.

I’ve already written about the grandly epic “Achilles Last Stand,” and the sleazy, dirty “For Your Life,” so now it’s time to tackle what’s probably my favorite of all of their songs, the upside-down blues of “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

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Certain Songs #915: Led Zeppelin – “For Your Life”

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Album: Presence
Year: 1976

Working much of the same lyrical territory as “Sick Again,” the sticky, sweaty, sleazy, stomping “For Your Life” is one of the those songs that chronicles the backstage excess that made Hammer of The Gods such a salacious success.

With Robert Plant alternating between resisting temptation and succumbing to temptation, knowing full well the risks he was taking, “For Your Life” utterly captured the those moments where you know you shouldn’t be doing any more drugs or having any more sex . . . but you keep thinking maybe you should.

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Certain Songs #914: Led Zeppelin – “Achilles Last Stand”

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Album: Presence
Year: 1976

If a band that sold eighty gazillion (that’s an estimate) albums in its career could be said to have a cult album, then Presence is absolutely Led Zeppelin’s cult record.

From the moment it was released, Presence was kind of underrated, and I think it’s for the same reason that I love it: it’s their most straightforward and uncomplicated record, bereft of any kind of extraneous instrumentation whatsoever.

Just Jimmy Page on guitars (and more guitars), Robert Plant on vocals (and harmonica), John Paul Jones on bass and John Bonham on drums.

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Certain Songs #913: Led Zeppelin – “Sick Again”

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Album: Physical Graffiti
Year: 1975

What was your reward for wading your way through two full discs of Physical Graffiti? Perhaps their most decadent song, the underage groupie opus, “Sick Again.”

Despite their “lock up your daughters” reputation, the darker side of Led Zeppelin’s lifestyle really didn’t make it into their songs all that much. Page was too reticent and Plant too utopian to write about their encounters in the same way that, say, Pete Townshend or (especially) Mick Jagger did.

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Certain Songs #911: Led Zeppelin – “In The Light”

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Album: Physical Graffiti
Year: 1975

Kicking off the second disc of Physical Graffiti with the sound of John Paul Jones’ synth winding around Jimmy Page applying a bow to an acoustic guitar, “In The Light” is perhaps the greatest of all of Led Zeppelin’s art-rock songs.

Not that there were that many, of course: Page and Plant were too enamored with rock and roll basics to drift too far away from them, and — weirdly enough — I think that songs with multi-part structures and tricky time signature changes would have been too limiting for John Bonham, who did his best work banging his drums against a relatively confined space.

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Certain Songs #910: Led Zeppelin – “Houses of The Holy”

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Album: Physical Graffiti
Year: 1975

While Houses of The Holy would probably been a better album with both “The Rover” and “Houses of The Holy” on it in the place of “The Crunge” and “Dy’er Ma’ker,” those songs ended up making Physical Graffiti as great as it was, so things worked out just fine.

And as a bonus, putting “Houses of The Holy” on Physical Graffiti put Led Zeppelin in that small group of artists that put the song that was supposed to be the title track of their previous album on a future album instead. Which is such a small group, I can’t even think of any others, even though I know that there are.

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Certain Songs #909: Led Zeppelin – “In My Time of Dying”

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Album: Physical Graffiti
Year: 1975

Because I’m a lifelong Keith Moon guy, I don’t think that John Bonham was the greatest drummer in rock ‘n’ roll history, but I don’t think he wasn’t, either.

And in the ten years or so that he was Led Zeppelin’s drummer, I don’t think that he ever topped his performance on “In My Time of Dying,” the ancient blues (and secret Bob Dylan cover) that ended the first side of Physical Graffiti.

At just over 11:00, it’s the longest studio track on any Led Zeppelin album, and in nearly every one of those 11 minutes, John Bonham is doing something utterly amazing. So here’s a minute-by-minute breakdown highlighting some of ridiculous things he’s doing.

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Certain Songs #908: Led Zeppelin – “The Rover”

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Album: Physical Graffiti
Year: 1975

Physical Graffiti is officially my favorite Led Zeppelin album.

It’s also their most atypical album. A combination of freshly-recorded tracks and songs that didn’t quite fit the records they were recorded for, it could have been a complete mess, with the stylistic variety turning the whole thing into a hodge-podge.

Instead, because none of the leftovers were from their first two albums, and because the newer tracks incorporated pretty much every trick they’d learned since those records, what we were left with was an album that displayed the depth of their ambitions as well as the breadth of their mastery.

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