Do yourself a favour and don't bother; you'll have to subject yourself to minute after minute of drum, organ and guitar solos that go absolutely nowhere and for anything after 1971, Robert Plant screeching and missing note after note after note.
Better to stick with their studio material in all of it's unoriginal, plagiarised glory which, at the very least, doesn't disappear up its own ass.
dudeofqueen wrote:
Do yourself a favour and don't bother; you'll have to subject yourself to minute after minute of drum, organ and guitar solos that go absolutely nowhere and for anything after 1971, Robert Plant screeching and missing note after note after note
Nah, far too harsh.
Zeppelin are pretty solid live up to 72-73. After that, there are various degrees of bad. You usually have to put up with Page's smack addiction and Plant missing about half the notes he tries for.
Europe 73 is the band at their instrumental best, and 71 as a whole is their collective best.
There are some decent moments after that (particularly the LA 77 shows), but even then they were still a fraction of what they once were - 80% at most.
But to dismiss everything because their shows had prominent improvisation is pretty short sighted. You must not like much jazz after 1956, then. The improv is a conversation, and sometimes it can be pretty magical. Dazed And Confused from Vienna 73 is about as good as it gets from a rock band.
Basically - if you don't like disc 1 of How The West Was Won, then you're pretty well hopeless and you should give James Taylor a try instead.
I picked a year that's kind of around that time when jazz was moving away from Ellington/Basie style big band and into more improvisational/conversational jazz.
But I'm no expert. It could have been a decade earlier for all I know.
Feel free to educate me.
The Real Wizard, re:
>>But to dismiss everything because their shows had prominent improvisation is pretty short sighted. You must not like much jazz after 1956, then. The improv is a conversation, and sometimes it can be pretty magical. Dazed And Confused from >>Vienna 73 is about as good as it gets from a rock band.
You're obviously a fan of their live work - I'm not. More power to you. And you're right on the jazz front. I grew up listening to my dad's Squadronnaires, Ken Colyer, Chris Barber and New Orleans Jazz albums - all pretty concise and perfect in how they made a deliberate, immediate impact. I get the freeform development thing of making music into a journey or a story, but entire SHOWS droning on and on and on just isn't for me I'm afraid.
>>Basically - if you don't like disc 1 of How The West Was Won, then you're pretty well hopeless and you should give James Taylor a try instead.
That's a bit aggressive, isn't it? I'm not, but hey, good on ya for trying.
Listened to it twice. Realised that they STILL aren't a patch on The Who as a live act at any stage of their career and returned it to HMV as a poorly mastered product.
It's all subjective.
Do I like Led Zeppelin? (Yes). Do I love Led Zeppelin? (Hell no).
Are their studio albums good? (Some...).
Is "How The West Was Won" (Disc 1) any good? (FUCK NO!!!!)
That's just how I feel. Does it make me hopeless? (No...)
And I ain't trying James Taylor ;)