On The Turntable I - Led Zeppelin I

It's late but I'm on a roll and I have a quota to meet. (That's an inside joke.)

The title of the post is a euphamism in this case, because I'm actually listening to a CD. (Boo! For shame! What kind of 'Vinylator' are you!?!)

This album is a rock and roll classic that I happen to know my good friend Johnson DeLonghi despises. So in fairness to him I plan to rip it as much as possible, even though I love it.

"Good Times Bad Times": What hits me immediately is the importance of John Bonham's drumming. Even though he's a rock drumming god, he's still under-rated as far as Zeppelin goes, where he and John Paul Jones are unfairly made analogs of George and Ringo, kind of second class band members. Right from the beginning his drums are a pseudo jazz battery, very forceful and exciting. The recording quality for the kit is quite good too, though the snare sounds a little too wet for my ear.

JPJ's bass sounds like crap. It sounds like he's playing underwater. There's no high end or attack at all. I hate that tubby, sixties tube amp sound. And he's overplaying in parts, which is unfortunate because he can be a very solid player when he keeps to his limits. I saw him playing with the Nickle Creek kids last year in Cleveland and he was way over the top there as well. It's not that he plays too much, it's that he plays too much beyond what his playing ability allows him to play and stay solid. He's not Jaco.

Jimmy Page sounds like Jimmy Page, which is colourful and earcatching guitar gymnastics of low technical difficulty, just the what the doctor ordered for recording while high on smack. Page comes from the Yardbirds school of guitar cred, which puts him in the same league as Eric Clapton. Which isn't saying much. Sorry if I've hurt your feelings.

Robert Plant is a gorgeous, world-class front man, if you can get over the fact that he sounds like a whiny little girl. He's a wide-eyed scenery chewing prima donna in this track. (Hey, sometimes visual metaphors work best for describing music.)

They say when you taste wine, you should first examine the colour, the clarity, the legs, and the bouquet to give you an idea of the quality of the wine. And then you should forget all of that and actually taste the stuff, because that's what's really important. It's the same with music. The engineering and the individual performances can be horrible and yet have a chemistry that results in a great mix.

That has sort of happened with this track, and it's definitely a fan favourite. I'd rate it a C+.

"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You": Page's guitar sound is okay. His playing is a little off in places, but who cares? It's rock and roll, baby!

Plant's vocal style is suited to high pitched shrieking and does not include the ability to be confincingly quiet and soothing. And the lyrics are more or less drunken babbling about "leaving you, baby, baby, babe". Enough said.

After the initial guitar and vocal duet, the full band comes in with a train wreck of up tempo stuccato nonsense, sort of flamenco-ish. Whatever. It was the sixties and people were experimenting with all sorts of things. And then they put away childish things. Well, I assume some people did. Rock and Roll!!!

There's some spacey sound effects about a third of the way in, and later there's some obligatory rocking out, and so on. I've already panned this tune enough. D+

Well, it's way too late to continue this post for now, so I'll take on the rest of the album tomorrow, I promise.