As I recall, JPJ also did an album with Diamanda Galas, which I believe Guitar Player hailed as "hands down, the best solo album by any Led Zeppelin member".
As I recall, JPJ also did an album with Diamanda Galas, which I believe Guitar Player hailed as "hands down, the best solo album by any Led Zeppelin member".
Yep..."The Sporting Life" is the name. I think I have it, or at least heard it. Wasn't my thing (I do like some of DG's early work tho).
I had Thunderthief. Got rid of it after a month. Did nothing for me.
Your predictability is almost charming.Originally Posted by Skullhead
Actually no it isn't.
Do you think maybe JPJ (who has done this music thing a bit) has a better and more inclusive view of what music and creativity are than you do?
No matter how many laptops you stack on a stage, no matter how many samples, loops, plugins, filters, pitch shifters, sound banks, triggers, midi processors.... no matter how many cut and paste, copy and edit, or bit rate dithers you perform, you will never leave the "Virtual World" that by definition means a pretending approximation finalizing in "almost".
Regarding JPJ, when history files his name on the stone tablet of musical history, he will be remembered for his analog bass playing and anlalog keyboard playing on No Quarter... not his computer manipulated releases he explored later in his career.
Of course I could be wrong, but I bet I'm not.
And herein lies the silliness and the overestimation: In the grand scheme of things, he won't be remembered at all, in a Pop Culture sense. Even the giants of a particular era fade into insignificance in the eyes of those who come after, and we have reams of evidence to prove it.
When Houses of the Holy was released, journalists 'accused' Led Zeppelin of becoming progressive. Purists seemed to hate the album. However, it is the only Zeppelin album that I like, along with the remastered The Song Remains the Same (with extended versions of the best tracks from HoH). Again the TSRTS film and album took a lot of stick from the diehards. I saw the former in quadrophonic, with about three other people, at the Civic in Aylesbury - a building which they have now demolished in place of various fast food outlets.
Member since Wednesday 09.09.09
Cat Stevens played himself Yamaha GX-1 in this excellent & well-know early synth-pop song Remember (the days of the Old Schoolyard) from his album Izitso (1977)
Also, he played Yamaha GX-1 in this instrumental synth-pop track from the same album:
My fav track from Izitso the album; monster synthesizer Yamaha GX-1 can be heard as well:
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-04-2017 at 02:58 AM.
Re progressive rock & besides of already mentioned ELP's Fanfare..., the great use of Yamaha GX-1 can be heard on 2006 albums Новый Фауст and The Sixth Sense by Russian band Little Tragedies:
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-04-2017 at 03:33 AM.
Well, the equivalent of half of HotH is "progressive" (not like they were about to unseat Yes or ELP from their throne either): TSRTS, RS, NQ and OVTAFA. The rest is purely not "progressive: Ocean, Crunge, DD and DM are not any better than stuff found on Graffitti, Presence or ITTOD (like Hot Dog or Southbound Suarez).
However, it's not the hotH tracks that are "extended" in the movie... Sure NQ is quite longer, but the other two are not really.
I could've found the critics from those "journalists" (always had difficulties calling those writing in music mags "journalists") valid, if Kashmir and In The Light had found their way on HotH.
BTW: can any Zephead point which Graffitti song belongs to which album session (at least in terms of the "when" of the songwriting)
obviously HotH the song belongs to HotH the album, but the rest?
Last edited by Trane; 02-04-2017 at 09:22 AM.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
read on RYM about Graffiti
Jimmy Page "Right lads, we've made enough money to set up our own record label, and our next album is going to launch it."
John Paul Jones "Great stuff."
John Bonham "Belting."
Robert Plant "Awesome."
JP "Anyway to launch this record label the next album's got to be bigger and better than anything else we've done before."
JPJ "Obviously. What have we got so far"
JP "Well me and Bob have got about an album and a half of material."
JPJ "Sounds good, how much of that is at least as good as the stuff we've done before?"
JP "In all honesty, about two thirds."
RP "Yeah, I'd go with that."
JPJ "Well that's great, we've got enough material for one perfectly formed album."
JP "Ah."
JPJ "Ah?"
JP "Yeah, management says we need to make a big splash with the next album."
JPJ "How so?"
JP "Well there are other bands doing qute well at the moment. Black Sabbath have cracked America, Deep Purple are louder than us, Jethro Tull are selling out stadiums quicker than we are and Pink Floyd are selling albums by the warehousefull without releasing singles."
JB "But I thought that was our thing?"
JP "It was, but we've got competition now."
JPJ "So what's the plan?"
JP "We release a double album, using all the new material and all the cast-offs from our previous albums."
JPJ "That sounds a bit of a cop out. If the stuff wasn't good enough to go on the other albums, what makes it good enough to go on this album?"
JP "Because it's a double and loads of people are more impressed with size over quality."
RP "Hurr hurr."
JPJ "Shut up Bob. Look, why don't we just use the really good new stuff and abandon the rest?"
JP "Because we've got to look bigger and better than the competition."
JPJ "So we're going to sacrifice the quality for quantity?"
RP "Hurr hurr."
JP "Well not really, cos the new stuff that's good is really good and we don't want to set the bar too high."
JB "Where's the bar?"
JP "Also, we can draw out some of the songs to unnecessary lengths to pad it out a bit. Bob, can you write some more lyrics for us?"
RP "Can't I just do what I usually do and go 'Ooh yeah', 'Oh darling' and yelp a bit instead?"
JP "Yeah, I think we'll get away with that."
JPJ "But we don't need to pad anything out, we can just put out one really good single album!"
JP "But that's just not the big over-the-top statement that Led Zeppelin needs to make."
JPJ "Yeah, but it's a much more sensible one."
JP "Since when did we do sensible?'
JPJ "Point taken."
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
To my ears, Physical Graffiti is Led Zeppelin's most progressive rock album. "In the Light" is very proggy along with Kashmir, "Ten Years Gone"...
some other very interesting tracks. But had JPJ added his classical musings, it would have been even more so. A nice classical piano piece might have fit nicely on that album.
Aside of their flirting with post-hippy mysticism and borrowings from (almost) all possible 60s & 70s genres, & rip-off from many bands & solo artists, Led Zep never exceed in the Progressive rock as a genre as well, because the frontman was a Rock singer, and he was always singing in that way, and also Blues, but never in Prog Rock way. And everybody can heard that.
However, people tend to neglect the importance of human voice in the genre(s) determination, and even pay more attention to e.g. the studio effects.
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-04-2017 at 05:45 AM.
The Wikipedia page explains it fairly well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physic...#Track_listing
Three tracks from the HotH sessions - the title track, The Rover and Black Country Woman - were left off the final album. And instead of any of those three, they let "D'Yer Mak'er" on there...
thx
I like D'yer, though.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
FWIW, it's not my favourite Zeppelin track. I view it as a worthy but failed experiment. That Page-led mid section is by far the highlight. Such a magnificent, inventive musician when on form and such moments are sadly rare on here.
OK, I pulled out my Graffity album (recently found the mini-lp dirt cheap, but had not listeed to it yet) and listened to their previous session stuff.
Yup, the Bron-Yr instrumental should've found space on III (short enough to have found space on it.
The Runes session tracks are fairly disappointing (IMHO), though Night Flight might've found a welcome spot on the flipside to give it some air and aleviate some of the lourdeur (heaviness) away from it (California not really being enough) Seaside & Boogie are indeed better on Graffity
For HotH, I can easily see The Rover replacing the stinking Dancing Days (the worst on that album). The title track is not very good, but could still replace either ocean or Crunge, while Black Country Woman sounds more like Zep III leftover than a HotH one.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
'Bron-Yr-Aur' (not the Stomp!) was even played live in 1970...see the (in)famous Live On Blueberry Hill. However, for me, 'Hey Hey What Can I Do' should have been on that third album instead of 'Hats Off To Harper' which is in 'The Crunge' category of throwaway studio doodle, really.
'Boogie With Stu' is the one 'leftover' on Graffiti I could probably have done without. Note the sour credit to 'Mrs. Valens'!
The only track I'd happily expell from HotH is the terrible "D'Yer Mak'er". "The Crunge" is silly, but there was no lack of silliness on some of their earliest albums either. "D'Yer", however, is outright irritating. As for "The Ocean", I think it's the single best rock'n'roll song they ever created, and simply the finest closing-tune on any Zep record.
Graffiti is still, to me, one of the hugely overrated rock records of the 70s. Themes that are somehow conceived as "clever" apparently ooze with self-assurance and consequently flog themselves to death in overlong, halfbaked arrangements of halting energy. "Kashmir" gets tedious halfway through, but "In the Light" truly annoys me with its pitiful merger of wannabe-mysterious mood versus Plant's impeccably unimaginative lyric ("Babe...[uhm...], Babe I would neva... [Eff off! Not interested in wtf you would or wouldn't do with that f'n 'babe'! Sing about plastic bags or the Irish potato famine or something, just no more of your mofo 'babe'!]). Yes, there are other great songs there, but they are less generally remembered.
They were uneven. The great bits were wonderful, but the bad ones just sank it for me.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
I love The Crunge. I'll take it over Dyer Maker.
When Plant released his first solo album JPJ was asked what he thought of it and his answer was not very complimentary. Something like "I thought he could have done better". I wonder if Plant ever forgot that.
I also remember reading that Plant was considered as "just the singer" in the band, among the musicians. His solo success certainly allowed him a chip as to not having to reform with the other two
I really like Walking into Clarksdale but no doubt JPJ could have elevated that one.
A speculation about Jones:
Jimmy Page may have recruited him for the band precisely because he was both a superb musician and not a would-be leader. He was the perfect musical collaborator, a guy who'd let other people start the songs, join in at finishing them with the benefit of years of professional know-how, yet didn't (at least when the band formed) have a strong style or musical agenda of his own. After all, he'd been doing that sort of thing in the studios for years - joining in on other peoples' songs and making them sound fantastic, turning raw but inspired ideas into finished products. And that continued to be the role he took in Zeppelin: Jones was the anchor man, the guy who stayed in the background but held it all together, who was all about the music and not the rock 'n roll lifestyle, who everyone could count on to stay clean and sober and make the music happen.
But all that did mean that when he had to step up to the plate on In Through the Out Door, he was used to Page being the inspired guy, and maybe didn't quite know how to be inspired himself.
He (JPJ) has said that when he got that Yamaha synth, he was inspired by its sound and immediately wrote a fair amount of material based on those inspirations. Obviously that's where the ITtOD material originated.
When I saw Led Zep live at Knebworth Festival 1979, where I attended primarily to see Todd Rundgren & Utopia, JPJ played Yamaha GX-1 instead of Mellotron when they played Kashmir and, to these ears (btw I'm not a musician, just a fan), Yamaha GX-1 sounded great live.
maybe a bit oddly enough, but I see a parallel to be made with Entwistle and JPJ, both bassists
Entwistle was also the arranger in in his band and had to deal with a crazy drumlmer (albeit, JPJ had an easier job at this), both of them who died within a year of each other... Driving their band's main writer (the guitarists Page and Townsend) into depression and even more severe drug abuse . Both bassists stepped in the tail end of the 70's and early 80's to pick up the slack for their albums (Ok, I know Bonham was still alive for ITTOD and Moon wasn't for FD and IH, but Bonham wasn't fine at all), which turned out poor or the lesser ones, that drove both bands to call it quits. On stage, indeed, JPJ and Ent were the guys that kept it together
though, Entwistle was both a drinker and most probably dorking groupies (and later indulged in heavy coke abuse), was JPJ really not doing drugs & groupies??
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
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