Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

https://youtu.be/lGNljiG0Kwc
The famous LA 6-21-77
Bonham’s best imho.

Wow, that's incredible.

Found a LZ soundalike I hadn't heard that made me curious a couple of days ago. Checking out Mother's Finest track "Mickey's Monkey" which is a cover of Smokey & the Miracles, te arrangement pretty much sounds exactly like "Custard Pie". It was interesting after hearing the Mother's Finest track to go and check out the Smokey Robinson cut then go listen to the Zep number, even if a 12 bar blues shuffle at the root.

people talk about this band being "sloppy" in '77 like they were a prog act or something and I have never understood it

god Bonzo was a lunatic on some nights

Incredible show. Fury! That’s an amazing audience recording.

I don't think the band was ever sloppy, I think *Page* was often sloppy, not least because he was playing rhythm and lead at the same time, all while strung out. All things considered, still not that sloppy, tbh, just maybe only doing the best he could in less than ideal conditions.

for all their incredible musicianship Zeppelin was never about chops, it was always about feel, which is why that criticism always strikes me as weird

I love Page's druggy manic playing on this tour

I think a better way to put it is that their feel was so impeccable you never really focused on the chops.

yeah i think that's getting closer to what's going on

I'm saying it was the *band* that didn't really focus on the chops...I think the maniacal/OTT nature of those marathon 77 shows was sort of the point

I love Page's druggy manic playing on this tour

About an hour in, they've been going on an instrumental jam for a while - Page's playing actually made me think of a proto-Greg Ginn.

And yeah, wow, Bonham.

Also, yeah, never looked to Page for Metheny-like precision. When I got into 80s/90s Amerindie/noise-rock, part of the appeal was that it actually had a similar feel to it.

hair splitting, these guys could play their instruments quite well, “chops” isn’t this thing where it’s like Shrapnel Records or the highway smdh, “feel” is part of “chops”

I think that's right, what I'm getting at has something to do with "precision" on Page's part which I dgaf

sorry ha Sund4r yes

10 YEARS GONE
HOLDING ON
10 YEARS GONE
HOLDING ON
YEAH YEAH

Y’all dig that abstract space Jimmy moves into on the Over the Hills solo...just great

I think that's right, what I'm getting at has something to do with "precision" on Page's part which I dgaf

Weeeeelllll ... except that he's by and large pretty precise ("Heartbreaker" solo aside) on the records, and in the end the impeccable records are why the band is awesome. The live indulgences never quite made it to the studio; they knew better. And also could take breaks to do drugs and have sex while recording, whereas live they relied on 30 minute organ solos.

I like the live indulgences! I still marvel that a band who were among the biggest pop stars of their time could throw in things like a 15-minute unaccompanied guitar noise/theremin jam into a stadium gig.

Around the same time iirc the Stones were still playing essentially two hour-long sets each night, no?

An extended live version of "Dazed and Confused" might have been the first Zep I ever heard, actually, or close to it. MuchMusic's Power Hour liked playing it in 1988. Probably my first experience of improv and extended techniques.

high me listening to that bootleg: this sounds a lot like the Mars Volta in some parts. are the Mars Volta just a more fully realized Led Zeppelin?springing from punk instead of blues? it's nap time

Around the same time iirc the Stones were still playing essentially two hour-long sets each night, no?

Actually, no. They'd been doing roughly 90 minute sets since 1969 (sometimes twice nightly on that tour and in '72-3)

Here's what they were doing in '78:

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-rolling-stones/1978/sam-houston-coliseum-houston-tx-5bd6ef54.html

Setlist FM actually has several '69 Stones setlists posted, and looks like if they were playing a double-header, they'd do a shorter 12 song set that probably clocked in at an hour.

It's really apples and oranges, as the Stones were never an exploratory live act that jammed much other than vamping under Jagger playing the crowd.

it's also a bit different listening to the bootleg from the comfort of your own home than spending three and a half hours crammed into an arena with a bunch of fucking hippies

*leave them wanting more*

i mean how many people came out of that show utterly transported vs. how many came out thinking 'well i survived that'

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/72/8e/25/728e25a89f2e0c2540f9ce56a04224e7.jpg

If you are flying high with the guitar strapped up this low, you might not pick out that triplet all that clean.

xpost depends who won the pre-show "under your seat" LSD giveaway

honestly I have mad respect for any guitarist who can play for hours and maintain any level of precision, my anxiety makes my fingers sometimes twitch and then I mispick something. my hand cramps too. this is why I never really played in a permanent band outside of one show.

the first time I met Slayer, we were told not to shake their hands, as they would be picking so much they needed their hands at 100%.

i mean how many people came out of that show utterly transported vs. how many came out thinking 'well i survived that'

I mean, they had been touring for years by that point and people were still paying to go, surely?

the first time I met Slayer, we were told not to shake their hands, as they would be picking so much they needed their hands at 100%.

Haha wow, that's amazing!

Hey Zep-heads, I know next-to-nothing about live Zep, so please confirm if this is true: Back in high school my friend was heavily into bootlegs and he was like, “there’s this awesome Led Zeppelin bootleg out there of a concert where for some reason they had to end the concert early, so they played all their songs much faster than normal, so it sounds pretty wild. I think it’s one of the Destroyers.” Not being into Zep or bootlegs at the time, I thought nothing of it. So, is this true? Did Zep really play a speeded-up concert? Or (more likely) the bootleg was just mastered at the wrong speed?

Doesn’t ring a bell

Can’t think of one like that and I’ve listened to a lot of ‘em.

Good to know. Thanks!

As a follow-up to that, who can give a list of the most essential Zep live bootlegs? I'm interested in the ones with the best sound quality above all, so mainly soundboard or FM shows. Thanks.

There was a really awesome site I saw recently that broke them down into best performances vs. best sound, I'll try to find that.

the first time I met Slayer, we were told not to shake their hands, as they would be picking so much they needed their hands at 100%.

I interviewed DJ Q*Bert once, and he was the same way. He had a little portable mixer with him that he warmed up with while we talked.

Oh, that was easy, it was on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ledzeppelin/comments/9dvz2s/a_beginners_guide_to_led_zeppelin_bootlegs/

Perfect, thanks! Now to track these down...

I downloaded the Madison Square Garden 1975 show (soundboard) and holy fuck, it sounds amazing. Not far into it yet, though.

St Louis 1975 —— essential IMHO

Never thought I'd say this, but Ben Shapiro OTM:

I hope everybody really enjoyed that 1968-1980 period, because we're about to repeat it.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 8, 2020

A lot of US stadium bootleg recordings from that mid/late 70s era sound kind of aggro to my ears, endless whooping and catcalls, firecrackers going off, ppl yelling at others to 'sit the fuck down', can anyone confirm/deny?

There are a few Floyd boots from '77 that sound a bit hair-raising, for instance.

xpost lol, that's some great meta punchline recontextualizing.

There's a classic 1981 Springsteen show that recently got released as part of his live series where someone lights off a firecracker. Rolling Stone wrote this about it:

Prior to “This Land Is Your Land,” an unruly fan set off a firecracker. This was a recurring issue at arena concerts during this time and the incident understandably enraged Springsteen. “If anybody was around that guy, point him out, and throw his fucking ass out of here,” he said. “If you don’t have the respect for yourself, you ought to at least respect the people that are sitting around you.”

on the LA forum 77 show you can clearly hear fireworks during JPJ's jazz odyssey section on No Quarter...no respeck

Worth noting of course that Lennon was shot in 1980, might have made musicians even more sensitive to loud pops at their shows.

xpost
Hey, it coulda been raspberries!

If I had to sit/stand through a 30-minute"No Quarter" I think I'd be lighting things on fire, too. It's like the '70s version of "You Made Me Realise."

as far as unsettling audience remarks on live shows, there's a couple of shows from the Stones' 69 tour where you can hear people yelling "BRIAN!" over and over between songs.