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What's the closest a LZ song came to sound like disco


hecube

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They were one of the few bands who didn't branch out into Disco like everyone else - McCartney, Stones, Queen, Rod Stewart, Kiss, ELO etc.

As mentioned, the closest they came was a section of Carouselembra, but it's a very slight Disco influence.

Plant has done some Disco style dance remixes as a solo artist though.

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The Rolling Stones did a few disco songs after all...

What's your opinion?

"Trampled Underfoot" may be their most danceable song but I'm not sure I would call it (or anything they did) "Disco".

Well, "The Crunge" has that repetative 6/8 Bossa Nova sort of beat to it with what sounds like Kool & The Gang's horn section...

"The Crunge" reminds me more of James Brown than anything else which would be Funk and not necessarily Disco.

the whole ITTOD album

The entire album? So that would mean "I'm Gonna Crawl", a Blues tune if I've ever heard one is actually a Disco song? Then again, I don't hear any Disco in "Fool In the Rain" either. What follows the whistle is Samba. Not all music that you can dance to is considered "Disco".

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The one tune that requires no thought, that immediately comes to mind is the last section of keyboards in Carouselambra. That keyboard intro and main riff of that section sounds a little disco (because it's got a little dance groove to it), but progresses into another animal by the songs end. My second entry would be Trampled Underfoot, again-only for it's dance/boggie groove. Not exactly dico though..

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Same goes for the Stones. I saw a Mick Jagger interview for the "Some Girls" concert DVD and he addresses "Miss You" in particular, "the only thing the song has in common with disco is the 4/4 time." Not sure I buy that completely, they couldn't (Mick especially) have avoided the disco influence.

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"Trampled Underfoot" may be their most danceable song but I'm not sure I would call it (or anything they did) "Disco".

"The Crunge" reminds me more of James Brown than anything else which would be Funk and not necessarily Disco.

The entire album? So that would mean "I'm Gonna Crawl", a Blues tune if I've ever heard one is actually a Disco song? Then again, I don't hear any Disco in "Fool In the Rain" either. What follows the whistle is Samba. Not all music that you can dance to is considered "Disco".

Have to say that I agree 100% with the statements here.

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John Paul Jones' "Chilli Sauce" is a dire track! Trampled Underfoot is the closest thing to Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" and probably the nearest to a dance track. "Fool in the Rain" is latin / samba - not disco. Nothing that Zep did was disco. I think their fans would have started burning their records if they tried. Remember Queen's "Hot Space" album? But that was Freddie Mercury indulging himself.

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A lot of styles have been incorporated in Disco - pop, jazz, rock, funk,

but if you define Disco as the sound of Bee Gees, Donna Summer and Chic,

then Zep never came too close to that.

Interesting though that the two tracks that keep coming up are Trampled and Carouselembra,

mainly because of John Paul Jones' keyboard.

And given the above mentioned Chilli Sauce and also this one,

it's safe to say that Jonesy was the Disco fan amongst the four of them.

:banana:

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I would say none fit the bill as being disco & I say that as someone who likes disco or some of it at least. "Carouselambra" does have a part that sounds a bit like Giorgio Moroder on Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" but then I can say it also sounds like Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric" which wasn't disco. It's just similar instruments as far as keyboards but they're 3 different genres of music: rock/disco/electronica. I even hear a bit of Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" in there & I'd call that pop & that song is a tribute to the big band era. And "Trampled Underfoot" is funk influenced, not disco, as is "The Crunge". Funk & disco are not the same.

"Carouselambra" reminds me of a song that came out a few years later, New Order's "Blue Monday" which I really don't how to classify either or New Order in general. The songs don't sound alike but there is a similar approach. The same with The Cure's "The Walk".

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One of the key elements of Disco music is the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooYjf95rATg.

Bonham simply played too heavy for that Disco sound.

Disco would have been the

for Zeppelin to go into, even though that was the trend.

Even Pink Floyd inserted a little Disco in Another Brick In The Wall

and a couple years later, Van Halen went Disco on Push Comes To Shove

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I honestly don't hear it in any of their songs. Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe I'm right. Who knows!

You're not crazy - you're right.

First off, I want to say that while I'm not a huge disco fan, the music didn't come out of nowhere - it had roots in soul and funk, and helped give birth to rap and hip-hop. So Zep doesn't need to be defended against disco.

That said, Trampled Underfoot isn't disco; it's inspired by early '70s funk, which is very different. The fast tempo and Jones' clavinet don't make it disco.

Fool in the Rain is IMHO one of the band's most misunderstood songs. The instrumental break with the whistle isn't disco. It's clearly Latin inspired, and my guess is that it's Brazilian in inspiration - that whistle and percussion can be found (in various forms) in Brazilian music, and UK musicians like Plant, who were huge soccer/football fans, would've been influenced by the Pele-fueled revival of Brazilian culture on the world stage in the in the '70s. (Robert was photographed wearing a Brazilian football jersey at the 1980 rehearsals for the Tour over Europe).

As for Carouselambra, I know what folks are referring to, but I see more as prog rock than disco.

If you want to hear real disco influence on one of Zeppelin's kindred-spirit bands, check out Bad Company's "Downhill Ryder" from 1982:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YKKJ24kjY

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  • 3 weeks later...

"The Crunge" reminds me more of James Brown than anything else which would be Funk and not necessarily Disco.

Ah, but at the time (in the mid-70's) there was a lot less distinction between Disco and Funk, sure lines were drawn in the sand between Parliment and Funkadelic, but where you draw a line for the Bowie/Lennon collaboration of "Fame?" Of course it all turned to cocaine-dusted shit by the time Studio 54 got hot. Perhaps it's that Funk kept the R&B swing, where Disco had much more of a techno-gloss.

You got to remember too that "Funk" has been a term attached to "down & dirty music" (per Jelly Roll Morton) for well over 110 years. One of the most notorious of the New Orleans Storeyville dance venues in the early 20th century was called "Funky Butt Hall." So you're right-- The Crunge is definitely R&B Funk.

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The Crunge was really their only "dance" tune and like Jahfin said, that was more funk influenced than anything else.

Before disco almost destroyed popular music, people used to dance to funky tunes. That Zeppelin single which had D'yer Mak'er as the A side and The Crunge as the B side was pretty unique actually.

You might even be able to throw Misty Mountain Hop in there as a dance tune too, even though I'm sure that'll make peoples heads explode here, but people used to dance to that too.

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