Jump to content

Am I the only one who hates Jimmy's noise solos?


Eman the Epic

Recommended Posts

I love when Jimmy goes out there and gets creepy. Lucifer Rising, Death Wish 2, middle of WLL, etc.. Love it...

 So ... a big thumbs up from me on the "noise" solo. Very few were going that far out there back then and very rarely now.

 And as mentioned..  a great segue into ALS.. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/21/2016 at 3:31 PM, the chase said:

I love when Jimmy goes out there and gets creepy. Lucifer Rising, Death Wish 2, middle of WLL, etc.. Love it...

 So ... a big thumbs up from me on the "noise" solo. Very few were going that far out there back then and very rarely now.

 And as mentioned..  a great segue into ALS.. 

Hammer. Nail. Head. ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can see where the OP is coming from in a way and knowing how some of us here devour Zep bootlegs ... One could put it on par with JBs drum solos in light that it seemingly gets in the way of songs and possibly more songs... But all of that just takes it out of context... JBs solos as well as JPs helped the band rest up to give you the marathon shows that they did... And just for a moment if we put on our 1977 goggles as hazy as they may be and imagine seeing Led Zeppelin ... I mean LED ZEPPELIN ... (alec baldwin once said he would give his left testacle to be Jimmy in '77) ... Live right there in person ... The sights SOUNDS smells of the event ... I really would believe that noise solo comes over a bit groovier than over some headphones listening to a bootleg (even the greatest bootlegs dont compare to anything live just listen to ur fav bands cds then check them out live i know we all agree). 

 

So in all that devouring, schedule off an evening pull out Listen to this Eddie drink a little wine, smoke two joints of some sweet sticky icky, and slip on those 1977 goggles for awhile... Bet that noise solo will ... Trip.you.out. peace (drops mic)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On June 6, 2016 at 2:57 AM, Sue Dounim said:

Im gonna regret saying anything but I love them. One of the coolest things about the 77 tour if you ask me

I like them too--I wanna say June 13 & June 26 are my favourites, but I'll have to think about it more carefully.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The best noise solo from 77 (IMHO) is from 6-23-77.

 The Toggle switch bit is magic, The theremin is wild like a war between to wizards lashing out back and forth with their power! The bow solo is like listening to gods speak to one another. Of course, you need to have an imagination to appreciate this but some people will never get it. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On June 26, 2016 at 7:30 AM, cosmic_juice said:

I can see where the OP is coming from in a way and knowing how some of us here devour Zep bootlegs ... One could put it on par with JBs drum solos in light that it seemingly gets in the way of songs and possibly more songs... But all of that just takes it out of context... JBs solos as well as JPs helped the band rest up to give you the marathon shows that they did... And just for a moment if we put on our 1977 goggles as hazy as they may be and imagine seeing Led Zeppelin ... I mean LED ZEPPELIN ... (alec baldwin once said he would give his left testacle to be Jimmy in '77) ... Live right there in person ... The sights SOUNDS smells of the event ... I really would believe that noise solo comes over a bit groovier than over some headphones listening to a bootleg (even the greatest bootlegs dont compare to anything live just listen to ur fav bands cds then check them out live i know we all agree). 

 

So in all that devouring, schedule off an evening pull out Listen to this Eddie drink a little wine, smoke two joints of some sweet sticky icky, and slip on those 1977 goggles for awhile... Bet that noise solo will ... Trip.you.out. peace (drops mic)

Placed in that context you just may have converted me. However, a 20+ minute drum solo, I think I would pass, even with 77' goggles on and two Mandrax.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, IpMan said:

Placed in that context you just may have converted me. However, a 20+ minute drum solo, I think I would pass, even with 77' goggles on and two Mandrax.

I love the drum solos, but I'm a drummer so I might be a bit biased.  However, I appreciate virtuosity on any instrument/in any sport, etc.  I think we would all agree that Bonham was a virtuoso drummer, so if you appreciate virtuosity you should be able to enjoy the solos on some level.  Even if it's not "Wow, this sounds so pleasant," it can be "Holy shit!  How did he do that?!"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Bonzo_fan said:

I love the drum solos, but I'm a drummer so I might be a bit biased.  However, I appreciate virtuosity on any instrument/in any sport, etc.  I think we would all agree that Bonham was a virtuoso drummer, so if you appreciate virtuosity you should be able to enjoy the solos on some level.  Even if it's not "Wow, this sounds so pleasant," it can be "Holy shit!  How did he do that?!"

Oh I love Bonzo's solo's when they are around the 10 min mark, but over that amount of time the thrill is gone. I always thought the version in TSRTS was just perfect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Stairway is NOT stolen said:

When I hear and read about the noise solos, I'll always think about that guy on Listen to this eddie, who screams 'We've already had the Guitar lesson' :lol:

 

That guy is a goof!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, reswati said:

Love them too............imo it's art.

Absolutely.
At this stage of the show in '77 it was a 180 from what had preceded.

The creaking sounds Page was creating which I'd never heard before.. throw in the bow which adds a different dynamic, then witness the fucking spinning laser vortex or slimmed down pyramid spinning wildly while it envelops Page, and that energy ever increases, then momentarily eases, as it segues into the Achilles intro.... then blast off again!

reswati nailed it, it's art.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is this a "you really had to be there!" type deal where even if sufficiently lubricated, its just not the same (I know that applies across the board, but in this case the difference between struggling to enjoy it (boot) vs. understanding it fully when there live)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, rm2551 said:

Is this a "you really had to be there!" type deal where even if sufficiently lubricated, its just not the same (I know that applies across the board, but in this case the difference between struggling to enjoy it (boot) vs. understanding it fully when there live)

 

 

When I saw Jimmy back in 84 and 5 I was blown away by his bow solo.  When you are there, the sound is so fucking cool that it's hard to explain. The tones move your whole body in ways regular guitar doesn't and then there's this fucking laser cone thing spinning around! it's the perfect psychedelic experience.

Plus! while you are there it really doesn't seem as long, in fact, it's over before you know it. Listening at home time is experienced differently.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, riffsofpage said:

I don't know who coined the term "noise solo"

 

JP is a brilliant artist on many different levels.

 

If you need more convincing, then, I don't know, check his bank account?

 
 

The amount of money made is not always a sign of talent. There are plenty of "ehem, cough, cough" artists out there who have made millions selling their crap.

 

The Bow and Theremin require the listener to have an open mind, imagination, and an attention span of more than 40 seconds. Jimmy's solo is avant-garde and folks without those qualities find this sort of thing boring to say the least.

Is each and every solo Jimmy did great ? no, but what artist is always 100% when high as a kite. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

His innovation: theramin and the bow, beyond his utterly unique style of playing which stands on its own as one of the greatest of all time. Innovation in other circles is laughable:  Pete Townshend smashing the guitar or Hendrix playing with his teeth.

Noise is often confused with something simply foreign or new to the ears.- easily re-defined over time to music or genius

I just wish he had a special guitar to lay the bow - maybe one with a curved stage so he could single out certain notes better ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/6/2016 at 1:57 AM, Sue Dounim said:

Im gonna regret saying anything but I love them. One of the coolest things about the 77 tour if you ask me

 

On 6/6/2016 at 10:33 PM, the body electric said:

When I first got Destroyer on vinyl sometime around 1980 when I was in high school, I struggled with the whole thing until I got to the Theremin solo. It blew my little psychedelic mind away. 

I love the Theremin solos of the 1977 tour. They were ahead of their time. I don't feel the same way about the noodling before or the bow after. The Theremin solo of 6/25 is my current favorite. 

There is just something otherworldly about the echoes he gets. I love it to no end. The thought of those sounds bouncing around an arena are just breathtaking to me. I want to create a compilation of them someday.

There's an H. P. Lovecraft story called "The Music of Erich Zann" (Best of HP Lovecraft, Ballantine Books, 1982) in which the writer takes a room at a house and meets his upstairs neighbor, a musician named Erich Zahn Zann  - who on some days looks completely wrecked, as though something had drained him of all life.  The mystery grows, until one day the writer ventures upstairs, following the sound of this shrieking wild violent and sometimes desperate and beautiful violin playing.  He follows it to the roof, and there, under the stars, Zahn Zann is waging a horrifying sonic battle with astral demons and the nightmares of other worlds.  The writer watches in fear and wonder and the story ends.

Jimmy Page put himself, alone, wasted and frail, on very large stages and projected noise into the stratosphere.  What he was doing he never explained, and it sure didn't sound like music or anything I ever heard before.  I had Destroyer when I was a teenager, and that guitar solo raised a lot of questions about what a guitar should do, along with the obvious questions about what exactly he was doing:  Where was this taking him?  What is he trying to connect to?  What's out there?  Was this a form of prayer, an expression of inner turmoil - perhaps an effort to liberate his spirit - he talked about that in interviews many times.  I realized that what Page was doing there, whatever it meant to him, was what electric guitar players were supposed to be doing.  The idea of simply playing notes and making chords and reproducing scales - a dead end.  He was onto something much more important - the forces of nature, maybe even those beyond.

No, it's not for everybody. But it should be pointed out that The Yardbirds were part of the avant gard with Velvet Underground and Mothers of Invention in the 1960s, and, in recent interviews,  Page has often framed the Yardbirds/early Led Zeppelin in this context.  He's talking about "Glimpses" and "Dazed" - so at the very heart of what Page is all about, we find a noise artist sitting next to the blues artist listening to Davey Graham.   I wish Jimmy was talked about as a noise pioneer like John Cale/Lou Reed or  Neil Young - but he's not. (Well, he is NOW, if anybody's reading this). I wish Thurston Moore would mention Jimmy Page in an interview - but he hasn't.  (I guess he didn't have a copy of TSRTS or Destroyer.) [Edit: When watching live video of Sonic Youth from just a few years ago, it's next to impossible not to think of Jimmy Page when Lee Ranaldo moves to the theremin and begins coaxing noise demons out of the machine.]  

Someone said it hasn't aged well.  I don't know what that means, but noise didn't stop evolving after the 1977 Led Zeppelin tour - the No Wave movement had begun in NY - and things continued to develop - the Chicago noise sound (Big Black, Steve Albini) is a thing of its own.  The Minnesota slowdive approach that Vertigo pioneered is really cool.  The fact that people were able to build careers doing what Page was doing in "Guitar Solo" is a testament to the noise movement in the US in the 1980s and early 1990s, which turned out to be a purely Gen X art thing, I suppose.  It's not for everyone, but some people earned Gold records off of legitimate noise records (Helmet, Sonic Youth for sure).   ---  Arc/Weld by Neil always sounds good to me - early Stereolab still sounds good, and I love  Sonic Youth.   Helmet's as heavy as ever.  I think the "guitar solo" from the 77 tour holds up just fine, and should be listened to, studied and appreciated as a pioneering effort in what became a legitimate form of artistic expression w/ guitar and light and sound.

But I must confess - I just made a Yardbirds mix that has three versions of "Glimpses" on it.  And I wish Jimmy Page would compile some of his "best"" noise solos, write a couple of new things, and put out his "Erich Zahn Zann" record.   If he ever does, I will personally deliver it to Thurston Moore, I promise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mercurious said:

 

 I wish Jimmy Page would compile some of his "best"" noise solos, write a couple of new things, and put out his "Erich Zahn" record.   If he ever does, I will personally deliver it to Thurston Moore, I promise.

1

Doesn't the stuff he did on Lucifer Rising and the Death Wish II soundtrack covers this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...