Best song on Physical Graffiti

It can't be done.

I think "Kashmir" will win it, but I'm going to go with "In My Time of Dying". The climax they hit is unbelievable, and I like how the song never actually ends, after all the time it eats up.

It can't be done.

"Trampled," obv.

It really is hard, isn't it?

I voted "In the Light," but I can't defend it.

THE ONE WITH THE CLAVINET

I am going to annoy everyone with my vote but I can't help it due to my love of excessive use of delay effects on drumkits

"In the Light" is a great choice--the shift to the major key after the minor drone, the electric piano break, Plant's woo-hoo-yay-yeah!
I didn't vote for it, though, because the extended synth lines come to drag on a bit after you've heard the song 100 times.

I am going to annoy everyone with my vote but I can't help it due to my love of excessive use of delay effects on drumkits

What, "Boogie with Stu"? I was thinking of voting for that one, too! Really, this poll is impossible for me...love every song on this album.

Ten Years Gone narrowly beats The Rover

haha yes I love it but everyone else I know just thinks its boring blues piffle

x-post

10 Years Gone

Kashmir has stolen ITL's thunder as PG's epic jam, so the former gets my vote…

"The Rover." That guitar riff under the chorus rules.

'Sick Again' holds up well, and of all of the boots I've heard it's the one that they seem to get into and Jimmie wakes up from his stupor. Then again, it was usually early in the set.

yeah, and they would play the intro to "The Rover" but then go into "Sick Again"! man, 77 tour was so sick.

Wanton over My Time of Dying.

Ten Years Gone. Oh wow that riff at the end repeated over and over. So awesome.

Wanton Song obv what is wrong with you people

Ten Years Gone

Dammit I wanted to be the first one to say "Wanton Song"!

Of course, I'll wanna retract my vote tomorrow and say "Kashmir" or something. But "Wanton"'s always in my top five, no question. Basically it always comes down to "Wanton Song" or anything off the first LP except "Custard Pie".

ok but you're forgetting one thing: "Custard Pie" kicks ass.

"Trampled," obv.

also, as much as I'd love to stomp on this as the dumb rock radio choice, it also kicks ass. Much ass.

interesting about "Trampled Under Foot" -- for all the big talk of the name of the song, the production is thin compared to the rest of the album (see: Kashmir). The drum sound could have been 10x bigger and there would have been a lot more trampling, but the groove would have been the same. "Trampled" is one of their best exercises in groove.

Its the obvious choice but I'm gonna go with Kashmir, that drum sound, Plants vocals. Its about as epic as it can get.

I would say that "Kashmir" probably deserves the win...

"Ten Years Gone", in a close one over "Houses of the Holy". Probably my favorite Plant performance, esp. the multitracked wailing at the end.

The Rover!

I considered "Wanton Song" too, but I ultimately went with "Trampled" for the disco-metal element.

I more prepared to vote on which album sequence I prefer (the cassette version with "Bron-Yr-Aur" closing out Side One and "Down By the Seaside" immediately following "In the Light" on Side Two) than I am prepared to vote for "Best Song" on this record.

IN MY TIME OF DYING: Excluding their live cuts, it is the longest Zeppelin song (11:08).

HOUSES OF THE HOLY:The squeak of John Bonham's drum pedal can be heard about 3 minutes in.

KASHMIR: The signature guitar riff began as a tuning cycle Jimmy Page had been using for years.

IN THE LIGHT: Never played live because Jones could not reproduce the synthesizer sound outside the studio.

talkin' 'bout love!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I don't know if it is the best song, but I picked "In My Time of Dying" because it is my favorited Zep tune. The way Bonham's drumming continually builds in intensity over a gruelling 11 minutes is mind-blowing.

"Kashmir" and "Trampled" are pretty much perfect too.

Franz Ferdinand got their whole sound by playing up the disco elements on "Trampled Under Foot".

The way Bonham's drumming continually builds in intensity over a gruelling 11 minutes is mind-blowing.

Yes. That is one of John Bonham's finest moments.

This is really hard. "The Rover", "Ten Years Gone," "Houses of the Holy," and "The Wanton Song" are all life-affirming (not to mention "Kashmir"). I'm leaning towards TYG but it hurts to choose.

Fuckit, I voted for "night flight". what the hell.

Ugh, it can't be done.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

If I only voted, I could have made it a tie!

Nice to see so many votes for the rover

I think this was the first non-Beatles album of whose status as a "classic"/big statement I was aware

"In the Light" is quite remarkable - like a lot of great Zeppelin moments, it's hard to think of anybody else evoking a similar mood or even trying to: for all their blues roots 'n' trappings, the end result is very much a thing apart

I should have written that book about them that I was supposed to write, but life got in the way

I'm kind of surprised that there hasn't been a bigger throwdown thread on this album, too - it has such a distinctive signature, it's so all-by-itself: whose double album is quite this this one? what are they trying to do? has it got a big single-album unity to it or is it just that they had a lot of songs & were kind of in-the-pocket?

perfect summer music for me although probably still has to take a back seat to Houses of the Holy in the final analysis

I always feel like the first disc is super-unified, and if it stood alone would be LZ's greatest album, but the second disc is kinda thrown-together, "here's a whole bunch more songs we had kicking around." They're good songs, but they're not an album the way the first disc is an album.

If I remember the liner notes correctly, the 3rd and 4th sides were filled with stuff that had been recorded previously, the first two sides were new. I think the first disc has a pretty cohesive, almost "funk" feel, while the second is all over the map. In a good way.

xpost

you know, I hear you kinda, unperson, insofar as if the second disc had been released as a single album it might have tanked, but on the other hand it's sort their "experimental" side - drums dropping in & out, some weird transitional stuff - it's like the more Album Rock album to me, allowing itself to be weird 'cause they've already proven themselves on the first disc. Also, "the Wanton Song" is massively underrated.

wow i must have missed this. but id have voted for "ten years gone"

I wonder what I voted for.

I didn't vote for "Sick Again", but I remember thinking after I clicked it that I should have.

Down By The Seaside is very long, but again I think that's because it's this weird mutant that's really two songs welded into one - that "You still do the twist till you find you remember things that well" bit is a totally different song to Plant's Neil pastiche. And I love that weird fusion of two discordant elements!

Full disclosure though, there's very few double LPs I'd ever edit down. The fact is that the 45-minute format is perfect, every double feels overlong and unwieldy, and you just need to make peace with that and consume it in the way that feels right. White Album, Exile, this, even Zen Arcade, they're overlong and hard to swallow in one go, and I think that's sort of the point. They're their own belligerent things, not made to go down easy.

i kind of love Night Flight’s goofy energy. feels a little bit like they’re doing an impression of The Who.

Sort of the Faces too?

I've never looked at what was an outtake from a previous album and what was newly recorded - it's interesting:

1. Would you bump any tracks from the previous albums with a PG track recorded with those sessions? I hate Rock and Roll off IV, so I would add either Boogie with Stu or Down by the Seaside in a second. The Rover would have to bump something on HoTH, but that album is nearly perfect, so I don't know what.

2. What would PG be like if it was a single with only tracks from PG sessions? Pretty amazing (IMTOD might have to shave a minute or drop one of Wanton Song/Sick Again):

Custard Pie 4:13
Ten Years Gone 6:31
Trampled Under Foot 5:35
Kashmir 8:37

In the Light 8:44
The Wanton Song 4:06
Sick Again 4:43
In My Time of Dying 11:04

Which is probably how they got to a double. The PG tracks wouldn't fit on a single, so they thought, we don't want to cut anything + have all these outtakes laying a around = let's do a double.

That's exactly what happened.

I hate Rock and Roll

Ah yes, the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" answer to Joan Jett.

I like it.

I do agree that the album is kind of overlong and jumbled. It's one of the only ones where the track order isn't really burned into my brain - I tend to skip around on it for the tracks I like.

disc 2 feels like falling in a gully but in a good way

1. Would you bump any tracks from the previous albums with a PG track recorded with those sessions? I hate Rock and Roll off IV, so I would add either Boogie with Stu or Down by the Seaside in a second. The Rover would have to bump something on HoTH, but that album is nearly perfect, so I don't know what.

I honestly think if you replaced The Crunge and D'Yer Maker with The Rover and the title track, Houses would be my favourite Zep record (would need to maybe move some songs around).

the rover yes, but keep dyer maker and put in the title track for “dancing days” because they sound kinda similar

“drop one of Wanton Song”

get thee behind me Satan

sometimes Wanton Song sounds to me like the meanest, lithest, most directly Zeppelin song in the history of Zeppelin

In the Light is the best zep song, i like all their albums and wouldn't call PG perfect but it is still my favorite
i do find it fascinating how some acts can have 1000 interesting outtakes (dylan, beach boys, monkees, neil young) and a behemoth like LZ has barely any truly good leftovers - 60s vs 70s maybe (but neil contradicts that).

Wonton Song rules

In the Light is the best zep song, i like all their albums and wouldn't call PG perfect but it is still my favorite
i do find it fascinating how some acts can have 1000 interesting outtakes (dylan, beach boys, monkees, neil young) and a behemoth like LZ has barely any truly good leftovers - 60s vs 70s maybe (but neil contradicts that).

^^Pretty much. JPJ has said that the lack of Zep outtakes was down he and Page still having a session player mentality pushing them to get the most out of recording sessions and waste as little time as possible on dead ends.

just listened to this whole thing and man the sequencing is pretty messed up/weird, "Sick Again" is not a good note to end on, shoulda gone with "Into The Light"

The first disc is a masterpiece, a totally cohesive statement; the second disc is a mess.

I love In the Light as the first track on side 2. Beautiful landing spot after the hammer of Trampled/Kashmir.

xpost A mess as far as cohesion goes, in an "Exile on Main Street" sort of way, but most of the stuff still rules. At least half of those tracks are up there with the best of Zep.

Wait, I guess that’s track 1 side 3.

Xp

Never got used to the weird sequencing of the second disc because there's three songs I always skip

Weakest track in itself: "Night Flight"

No! No! NO!

It's one of the few recordings where they should have restarted the arrangement from scratch, Plant is forcing it and everyone else is half-hearted.

good job ILM recognizing "ten years gone"

The only quibble I can imagine to choosing this as my favourite Zeppelin song is that it isn't a particularly good showcase for Jones and Bonham; however, it took me 38 years of listening to manifest that potential objection, so I guess it doesn't bother me. And even touches like the bass countermelody to the verse riff, or the drum rolls in the guitar solo, show how much they bring to a song just by playing on it.

Today I learned the stones waiting on a friend video was shot at the same location as the PG album cover

People ragging on Night Flight, wow.
Been lurking here for over two decades and I can still be surprised.

happy 50th

'the rover' ftw

Got this for 50 cents as a kid in high school, with all the sleeve inserts and everything
I like all these songs but 'Custard Pie' is a helluva an opener, with the clavinet and everything

Probs my favourite Zeppelin album. Still have my dad's ex-gf's OG copy, which I stole off her as a teenager, though it's fairly beaten up now.

The various die-cut LPs from the 70's that I bought back then have not help up well, Graffiti, Some Girls, From The Inside, etc.

Trampled has such a weird structure. Just seems to go on forever. I counted 6 lines in the verse “factory air conditioned” etc, then the keyboard solo, then 3 more lines “I’m so glad I took a look inside your show room doors” until the outro jam.

I'm guessing like many of y'all, seeing this thread revived makes me dive back into the record.

Have any of you noticed this unique feature about PG: Is this the most "classic" of classic rock albums where such a low % of the songs have a traditional chorus?
It's easy to miss, because the tracks with a chorus like "The Rover", "Trampled Under Foot", "Down By The Seaside", or "Night Flight" (and even those choruses are not as 'trad' in comparison to something like "Communication Breakdown", "Ramble On", or "Over The Hills and Far Away") are matched by those with an instrumental break substituting for one ("Houses of the Holy", "In The Light", "Ten Years Gone", "The Wanton Song"), or no chorus at all ("Custard Pie", "Boogie With Stu", "Black Country Woman")

(in response to calstars' structure observation)

Some of the songs have the vocal part of the chorus withheld until the coda, which is effective because it would be too much if Plant were singing "ten years gone, holdin' on", "sure like a piece of your custard pie", or "light, light, light, in the light" throughout the respective songs. They're memorable, though, as vocal tags to see the songs out.

That’s a great observation

I thought it was “tellin’ the people you’re custard pie”

Robert would never tell the people that

Lyrics sites say "I chew on a piece of your custard pie" which I find gross compared to my interpretation

“chewin’ a piece” maybe

"Kashmir" is the most played song from this album, and yeah, it's another one with just an instrumental break for a chorus.

Down by Your Kashmir

*Yr

We are the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium

If I was in CVS or had a radio station playing in the background while I was driving, I would most want to hear "Houses of the Holy" - this album's "D'yer Mak'er".

But more rocking

nah, this album's "D'yer Mak'er" is "Boogie With Stu".

I'd probably agree, and I'd call "Houses of the Holy" this album's "Dancing Days". Though an eight-song Physical Graffiti that included "Boogie with Stu" would be starting with a bad handicap.