Jump to content

Tadpole in a Jar

Members
  • Posts

    91
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Tadpole in a Jar

  1. You really, REALLY ought to hear Johnny Cash's version of this song, from his Sun Records era. It's awesome. Rockabilly energy.
  2. Thank you, sir! Another impact I would say they had is the performers' style became more important than the song itself. The way the Beatles and Stones wrote, and the way songs are still written in Nashville today, is based around the melody and lyrics. The idea is you should be able to perform a song solo, with just a guitar or piano, and it should come across. With Zeppelin the delivery of the song was as important as the content. You can play "Let It Be" alone on a piano or with an orchestra and it's the same song. If you play "Whole Lotta Love" alone on an acoustic, you look foolish. And even if you play it with a band and a Marshall stack, it still won't be the same without Robert Plant on the mic. I could go on...
  3. You've got a lot of questions. I'll take the first one. " LZ, unlike those bands, brought old American blues (e.g. Willie Dixon) into the fray." The Rolling Stones were THE band that popularized blues among teenage white kids in Britain. It's why they took off like a rocket. Their name comes from a Muddy Waters song. According to a current radio interview around the song "Scarlet," Jimmy Page says he first met Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at a blues festival in Manchester well before the Rolling Stones were even formed. The Stones were blues fanatics. Riff based music existed before Led Zeppelin. "Day Tripper" is built on a riff, "Hound Dog" is built on a riff, and it goes even further back. "Lastly, LZ branched into multiple genres like few other bands." The Beatles were the band known for skipping around genres and making it fashionable to do so, around the time they evolved into the Rubber Soul , Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour era. Zep benefited because the Beatles had primed audiences to not expect a dozen versions of the same song on an album. Check out an album by The Who called Live at Leeds, and a documentary about them called The Kids Are Alright, or 50 Years of Maximum R&B. The Who set the template for Led Zeppelin, and John Paul Jones has even said so. Watch their 1968 Woodstock appearance and you'll get it. What Zeppelin had that was different was Robert Plant and John Bonham. Steve Marriott of the Small Faces (check out their song "You Need Love;" you're in for a shock!) and Roger Daltrey of the Who could hit some high notes, but they didn't have the supernatural attack of Robert Plant in his prime. Keith Moon of the Who is a standard bearer of rock drumming, but like Bill Ward he had a loose and jazzy style. No one had heard anything like John Bonham in rock, who was essentially the sound of Buddy Rich in a rock band, with stack amps. I can tell you more, because I am an old person who has not dwelled on much else all my life, but that's for your first question.
  4. With either Marriott or Reid it would've been more of a straight-ahead blues-rock band in the vein of Humble Pie. If you go to Amazon you'll see Terry Reid was quite prolific but he didn't have any huge sellers, I don't think. I saw one of his discs at the used CD store the other day and thought about getting it. Maybe I should.
  5. You must not have seen the Live Without a Net solo, then! Especially check out the part where he elaborates on the "Mean Street" opening. Don't get me wrong, and I think you may have, Led Zeppelin is far and away my favorite band, there's no comparing them to anyone else, but pure guitar-playing wise...Eddie's the greatest.
  6. Not really. Just because it isn't used anymore by today's crappy bands doesn't mean it wasn't an innovation. The steam engine was still an innovation even if we moved to other kinds of power. Aw, c'mon the "Secrets" solo is really melodic. Most of them are, even if some of the same "tricks" are employed in each one. As I say, you gotta check out his earliest years. It's all fashion. Bands like Dragonforce (not that I like them) and the G3 tours show Eddie's star shines on. Also, give me five Ratts over one White Stripes any day. It tells me that with one well placed gig in London, Page's one concert reunion upstaged EVH's whole reunion tour. No doubt about that one. By the way my post count might be low, but I've been on Sam's boards since the late `90's, and have been a mega Led Zeppelin fan for 20 years now. Or is it 21?
  7. Okay, as long as someone got the Jimmy Page vs. Jimi Hendrix debate going, let's solve the Jimmy Page vs. Eddie Van Halen argument once and for all. Edward Lodewijk Van Halen: Definitely the better lead player. The more innovative guitarist, especially considering he came along just when everyone thought it had all been done. If you think tapping is all there was to him, you need to hear some of the bootlegs when Van Halen was playing in high school gyms and small bars. His playing was at its unbelievable peak then, when he was using just a Les Paul, Jr. -- no vibrato bar -- into a Marshall. Also, the Nashville 1978 makeup show with Black Sabbath: what an incredible ovation to an incredible solo! James Patrick Page: Despite Edward's superior dexterity and imagination around the guitar and guitar solo itself, there's no comparing the two as songwriters, however much I love "In a Simple Rhyme" or "Hang `em High." Jimmy's songs, like "Tangerine" or "What Is and What Should Never Be," resonate with me on a much deeper level than anything Ed has done. Also as a producer, who's done anything as good, much less better, than Led Zeppelin I? Possibly the best-produced album ever. (I don't discount JPJ had a LOT to do with all of this.) Let me hear Ed rip a big solo in his heyday, but if I'm going to listen to one guy's of albums all day, let it be those by Jimmy Page.
×
×
  • Create New...