Hello, my friends! It's been a good week for our blog, with an actual increase in the number of visits this time! Before we enter the new week, time to get on with our Led Zeppelin Top 50 Countdown. Here we go!
At #35 in our list is The Ocean, found on Led Zeppelin's fifth studio album, Houses of the Holy (1973). Dedicated to their sea of fans, The Ocean drops a knotty, funky beat that air drummers have been screwing up for decades. It's also a showcase for Bonham the vocalist; he and Jones make a rare appearance on backing vocals for the outro, and when he counts the band in at the opening, he sounds like a cross between a pirate and a rapper.
A very big beat and a very big guitar line, exhumed by Rick Rubin for the first Beastie Boys album, in a visionary sample that brought a new generation of respect to the band: "Jesus, that is some guitar sound." You go back to the track and marvel that, yes, that is some guitar sound. Then the ending fanfare is swell, another example of the Page throwaways that would be the pride of many other bands. Indeed, there might not be more than two or three hard rock bands from the entire 1970s who wouldn’t gladly trade their biggest hit for this one, a song that stuffs an entire King Crimson album’s worth of changes in tone, tempo, and time signature into one blistering four-and-a-half minute pop single, just to show how easily it comes to them. They don’t even bother to take out the phone that goes off in the middle of the song, because who cares, really? Maybe not their best song, but possibly the most casually brilliant thing they ever did.
This is the studio version:
This is a great live version:
These are Zebra covering the song, live in Brooklyn, N.Y. in November of 1990:
At #34 in our countdown is Thank You, the A-side's closing track on Led Zeppelin II (1969). One of the band's more tender songs, Thank You signaled a deeper involvement in songwriting by singer Robert Plant: it was the first Led Zeppelin song for which he wrote all the lyrics. According to various Led Zeppelin biographies, this is also the song that made Jimmy Page realize that Plant could now handle writing the majority of the lyrics for the band's songs.
"Sometimes Zeppelin was gross and very indecent, and sometimes it was delicate and beautiful," Plant said. Thank You presents a rare happily married side of the band. Plant sings a grateful declaration to his wife, Maureen Wilson, and Jones' organ part is like a regal processional.
Led Zeppelin was trying to broaden their palette on the second and third albums and this was one of these attempts; a pretty paean to 1960s' flower-children. Record producer Rick Rubin has remarked on the song's structure, "The delicacy of the vocals is incredible; the acoustic guitar and the organ work together to create an otherworldly presence."
This is the studio version:
This is a later recorded live version:
... And this is a cover version by the fabulous Lizz Wright:
At #33 is the first song on our list from the band's best album, Led Zeppelin IV (1971). Misty Mountain Hop title's most common interpretation involves a reference to the Misty Mountains in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The lyrics refer to the events of the 7 July 1968 "Legalise Pot Rally" in Hyde Park, London, in which police made arrests for marijuana possession. The lyrics reflect Plant's quest for a better society, a place and time when hangups are replaced with individual freedom and a life of mutual support and rapport. The Misty Mountains are mentioned in the lyric: "I'm packing my bags for the Misty Mountains... Over the hills where the spirits fly."
The Zeppelin canon is full of mysteries, but none greater than this: How can a song about flower people and Tolkien be so crushingly funky? Jones' humid electric piano locks in with Page's headlong riff and Bonham's slippery avalanche of a groove, as Plant evokes a fracas between cops and hippies that makes him want to escape to the fantastical peaks alluded to in the title. Plant later said the lyrics were about "being caught in the park with wrong stuff in your cigarette papers."
It’s an absolute blast, and one of the more underrated numbers from Zep’s classic period, if such a thing is even possible. Unfortunately, the studio version is unavailable on youtube, so listen to it here:
Here they are, live at the Madison Square Garden, NY 1973:
... And here's a good version by the 4 Non Blondes:
The song at #32, Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman), is found on Led Zeppelin II (1969). It was also released as the B-side of their biggest hit single, Whole Lotta Love. The lyrics rank among Zep’s most vile, as unapologetically misogynistic as Zeppelin would get on record. For better or worse, though, the hooks come out of this thing from so many different directions - not to mention that at a scant 2:39 (and bursting out of the speakers after the surprise end to Heartbreaker), it’s one of the group’s tightest jams - that it remains impossible to deny completely. Unless you’re Jimmy Page, anyway, who allegedly hated the song and never once played it live. Still, the fast, hard-twanging rocker about an aging groupie became a radio standard. Conversely, singer Robert Plant took a liking to the song and played it on his 1990 solo tour promoting his album Manic Nirvana.
This is a 1999 cover version from the Great White:
Finally for today, at #31 is the opening track to their seventh studio album, Presence (1976). Achilles Last Stand is, in my opinion, the second best track on this (not so strong) album. It was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant at Page's house in Malibu, California, where they stayed for a month while Plant was recovering from injuries he sustained in a car accident in Greece in 1975. The song was then recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany. It is often seen as a precursor to the new wave of British heavy metal sound that would expand soon after.
It’s hard to imagine how the general malaise of Presence didn’t seem to infect one note of Achilles Last Stand. Whatever else was going on with Zep in ’76, for ten-plus minutes of Achilles they remembered that they were the best band in the world, and put together a chugging monster of a jam that never lags in energy or feels even slightly redundant, its impact so relentless that you’d be grateful for another five minutes of galloping bass and rapid-fire drum fills. Oh, and the band invents the Cult’s entire career with the bookending guitar riff, just for good measure.
Achilles Last Stand, at 10 minutes and 26 seconds, is the third longest studio recording released by Led Zeppelin. It has been suggested that the title of the song was originally supposed to be known as Wheelchair Song as an acknowledgment of Plant's broken ankle which caused him to fear he would never walk again, and which was a result of that car accident. Lyrically, the song was inspired by Plant's experiences in Morocco, where he and Page traveled following Led Zeppelin's 1975 Earl's Court concerts. Plant specifically refers to Morocco's Atlas Mountains in the line: "The mighty arms of Atlas hold the heavens from the Earth". The title's Achilles is the famous Greek warrior who was killed during the Trojan War. Interestingly, the title is never mentioned in the lyrics.
Page applied vari-speed during production of this song to speed up some of the guitar overdubs, one of the few times he employed that device in the studio for Led Zeppelin songs. In 1977, he explained: "I'll tell you about doing all the guitar overdubs to Achilles Last Stand. There were basically two sections to the song when we rehearsed it. I know John Paul Jones didn't think I could succeed in what I was attempting to do. He said I couldn't do a scale over a certain section, that it just wouldn't work. But it did. What I planned to try and get that epic quality into it so it wouldn't just sound like two sections repeated, was to give the piece a totally new identity by orchestrating the guitars, which is something I've been into for quite some time. I knew it had to be jolly good because the number was so long it just couldn't afford to be half-baked. It was all down to me how to do this. I had a lot of it mapped out in my mind, anyway, but to make a long story short, I did all the overdubs in one night ... I thought as far as I can value tying up that kind of emotion as a package and trying to convey it through two speakers, it was fairly successful."
Here is the studio version:
Here they are, live at Knebworth, 1979:
... And here is the Dream Theater with a medley of The Rover, Achilles Last Stand, and The Song Remains The Same:
Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; finally a week with an increased number of visits; there was a formidable 27% rise in the weekly number. Last week's Led Zeppelin did great, Darby Crash did very well and Genesis P-Orridge did well, also older entries are also doing very well - and not just George Maharis! I actually like it this way, it means that people are coming back to read the stories they didn't have time to finish when they were originally uploaded. Thank you, my friends!
As far as countries are concerned, this week's winners are the United Kingdom, as is customary lately, but France even more so. Italy did very well, followed by South Korea, which entered this week's top 10 at an impressive #6. Belgium, Spain, Ukraine, and Australia also had a good week. For Greece, Cyprus, and the United Arab Emirates it was business as usual, which means that they kept their overall rate intact. The United States' overall percentage dropped, even though it was at the top of this week's list. Germany and (especially) Russia had a rather bad week.
Here are this week's Top 10 countries:
1. the United States
2. France
3. the United Kingdom
4. Greece
5. Italy
6. South Korea
7. Cyprus
8. Spain
9. Ukraine
10. Australia
Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Argentina, Armenia, Austria, the Bahamas, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen. Happy to have you all!
And here's the all-time Top 10:
1. the United States = 39.0%
2. the United Kingdom = 9.0%
3. Greece = 8.8%
4. France = 7.5%
5. Russia = 4.7%
6. Germany = 3.5%
7. Cyprus = 1.37%
8. Italy = 1.26%
9. Belgium = 0.67%
10. the United Arab Emirates = 0.65%
That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!
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