Wonderful album review from OB1, as per the other poster’s comments. And like probably everyone else who has read it, it’s got me desperate to dig it out again and play the album again too.
It seems churlish to take issue with anything in tbh, as I basically agree. However, this being a forum an’ all, I guess I might as well.
1) I had it for ages on a single AD 90 TDK tape, and would always play side one of the tape, but just FF the second side. Like others have posted, I think sides 3&4 are more uneven, and the quality dips, with some ‘throwaway’ tracks. For that reason it’s a 9/10 album for me. If they’d just released sides 1&2 as a single album then it would be 10/10.
2) re the comment about Kashmir, great track that it is, for epic sounds, I actually prefer Stargazer. Even though possibly, ahem, inspired by Kashmir, that Rainbow track is unsurpassed in terms of lyrics, vocal performance, instrument playing and orchestration. They say Phil Spector created the Wall of Sound, well that track for me has it and then some.
3) ob1’s frequent mentions of layering of guitar sounds just kinda reinforces my view about how Zeppelin really were masters of the studio recording, but that with technology as it was in the 70s they would have benefited so, so much from having an additional musician tour with them live. Floyd did it to fantastic effect with Snowy White, and I don’t know if it was the band or Grant being money-minded, or an ego thing from Page, but to do justice to these off-the-scale studio tracks live they needed it, imho.
Anyway as I said, cheers
@OB1 - a pleasure to read :-)
