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Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Led Zeppelin 3, 1970

I knew that eventually I would get around to reviewing a Zeppelin album. So why then did I pick an album that has never exactly been one of my favorites of theirs? Well, the first reason is that I have not heard the whole thing in a long time and it was high time that I gave it another chance. The other reason is that I finally got around to getting it on CD. The reason this album was not one of my favorites was because I tend to prefer the band's more hard rock songs and this album has mainly slower songs. Yet in listening to the album this time around I can tell the band approached the album the same way as any other album done between the debut and Physical Graffitti. That is that it is well written, expertly played and done with a lot of emotion and feeling. The music is a different style, but the results are the same which means it's excellent. In looking at Zeppelin's overall career I would say this is a testament to their skill that this album was so good. Their second album is great and then they turn around and do an album that is almost as good, but a completely different style. How many rock bands can pull that off? Not too many that's for sure. You have to have the skill, be diverse as players and writers and be excited about what you are doing. If you lack any of those elements then the results will be either a lame album or an album that sounds very forced. I don't think Zeppelin faltered at all until "Presence" and "In through the out door" when fatigue and other problems caught up with them. Anyway , 3 is an important and spectacular chapter in Zeppelin's incredible career. It's an album that's both beautiful and stunning without being overdone. My favorite tracks are Immigrant Song, Out on the tiles, Gallow's Pole and Tangerine.

5 comments:

  1. Mark, when I saw the subject of this post I immediately pulled up the album to listen to as I read. Your review of the album was excellent. I think the one thing I would have added is that in order to pull this off they also had to be extrememly confident in themselves and willing to make music and risk not selling it. If that makes sense. They were still relatively new at that time and could have easily been temtped to compromise to make the charts.

    I personally love "Since I've Been Loviing You", "Celebration Song" and Tangerine.

    I am going to link to this if you don't mind. (Oh - I re-did Layla's Classic Rock, let me know what you think)

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  2. I agree that Led Zep III is a very good album. "Presence" and "In Through the Out Door" have a few good tunes, but songs like Candy Store Rock and I'm Gonna Crawl are just space fillers.

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  3. Anonymous6:23 AM

    Great album, no doubt; and I love Immigrant Song, too. A side note to this album... Jason Bonham got permission from Plant and Page to perform "Out on the Tiles" with his fellow bandmates in "Supergroup", the Vh1 show. Another note to that song is that Jason's dad basically came up with the words to the song after a night of drinking. I'll have a post up on my site later today about the show, in case you want to check it out.

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  4. Layla-Thanks for putting up a link at your site.

    Ben-I think people writing reviews make up words all the time because they get bored of using the same ones over and over.

    Mike-Both those albums have some good songs, but as a whole they are both far below the standard set by the other albums.

    Bruce- Sounds Interesting. I think a lot of ideas came easy to these guys.

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  5. I think this is the most underrated Zep album. I agree with your comments (and Bar's take on this, too).

    --- david

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