Something I like

Sometimes listening to this album is unrealistic. i feel like it all must be a hoax or something because there's no way that any seven people can play music like this together. for instance; St. Stephen has a special ending and goes right into The Eleven which seems to have two different parts, then out of nowhere becomes Turn On Your Love Light, totaling three tracks, five different "songs" and over 30 minutes of constant playing, most of which is improvisational in nature. this record is a premium example of a band just happening to find a way to do exactly what they want. they found a way to be able to get together and play music for pretty much as long as they wanted to. being able to jam so well with one another meant that they can pretty much play whatever it is they want (it's no wonder that they were a band for such a long time). but this actually may just be my favorite Grateful Dead album. the fact that it's live means that you can really hear everyone's importance, no song is driven by one person, and every instrument does something in each song that makes it unlike any other version. Phil Lesh gets incredibly groovy in The Eleven, which is a fine moment in the history of the bass guitar. Jerry Garcia could be named one of the best guitar minds in rock and roll based off of the work displayed on this record. there are times that you can hear him figuring things out as he's playing them, or you can hear him try and fudge a mistake. but i find this to be part of the reality of music, part of what makes playing music different from recording music, being able to hear someone's mind working, and how that fits with the six other minds that are also working at the same time. nuts. i read something that said that Live/Dead was some of the best improvised music ever recorded, and i don't disagree with that.

NEW NEWS

it's been a while for sure, but here's another one for the books.
not knowing much of Procol Harum besides A Whiter Shade of Pale, this album seemed really interesting. and it is. it begins fitting to what seems to be the 'theme', with some sounds from the dock of the bay. and everything that follows is so different but very much the same. each song has a separate feel from the rest; Juicy John Pink, for instance, is a grungy blues number, but the following song Wreck Of The Hesperus is lead by a piano that is a sure precursor to Elton John or Bully Joel. but they don't sound at all out of place being back to back on this record. i always like to see a band making music that is different from itself and still create a certain overall sound. this isn't a band that's blowing my mind or anything, but it's a well done album. and you know i like the cover art.

A FEW DAYS pt 4

Led Zeppelin IV has a million names, including a series of symbols. it features a cover that i've always liked, and i only recently realized that the picture on the wall is actually a painting (even though it looks exactly like one). they decided not to include any kind of linear notes because they were getting hound dogged about the third album. but i like album art that has no information. i feel like i've had a weird relationship with this record; Black Dog has always reminded me of CIAgents, i had always associated Stairway to Heaven with my mom playing it, Rock and Roll used to be in a car commercial and some of the songs i felt like i'd never even heard before. these songs basically represent the acoustic and electric styles that were explored in the previous albums: a sort of mystical, European folk sound and blues based hard rock. The Battle of Evermore is a good example of the former, featuring the girl from Fairpoint Convention, and Four Sticks could be a example of the latter. there are also probably a hundred different time signatures on this record. some of it was recorded using a mobile studio that was owned by The Rolling Stones, which was basically a studio in a huge van. It's actually one of the best selling albums ever, in which, similar to something like Dark Side of the Moon, i give a lot of credit to the world at that time for. there's some pretty freaky material on this record.
and also, i don't believe in the satanic message thing anymore.

A FEW DAYS pt 3

This album is something pretty new for me. i'm not very familiar with a lot of the songs that are on this, i feel like they all sort of sounded the same for a while. but it also just seemed to have a weird feel to it, and maybe because one of the only songs i remember listening to was Hats Off to (Roy) Harper. but listening to it in context to the previous album and being more familiar with the next album, makes me think a sort of different way about it. Jimmy Page wrote the songs on II while he was on the road in midst of a tour, and he wrote these songs in a cottage in Wales that had no electricity. knowing this, it sort of makes sense with the way this record turned out. there's really only one song that sounds like the blues, and the others sound like freak out farm songs. as the first two albums sort of tested the limits of the standard blues sound, these songs do the same with folk music. Jimmy Page was apparently really into John Fahey and Bert Jansch. some songs are obvious nods, like Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, but some are more underlying. Gallows Pole, for example is a shuffly rock song until a fast picked banjo enters nearly halfway through. and then it completely changes the mindset from something that could be played at an arena and something that could be played in a barn. it's an interesting contrast, and i don't think that it was a conscious decision on their part to change things in a drastic way, but it seems to be something important. i think the sound started to become more visual at this point, which i definitely think is true of the music they were yet to make.

A FEW DAYS pt 2

So, in a straight comparison between the first album, Led Zeppelin II is something very different. there's still a connection to history - either literally with the cover of the album, or with the obvious and heavy influence of the early blues. but this album shows much more of the future than the past. in the first song alone, there's a few middle minutes that mostly contain spacey sounds and Robert Plant doing moans. something that obviously wasn't constructed or recorded live. and not that it was necessarily something very new to do in the studio, but it seems really clever. and the music is also starting to sound less like classic blues, and more like something that's getting turned in different kinds of directions. Thank You has some synthesizer work that's sounding as mystical as ever. Moby Dick has a pretty outrageous drum solo. and Heartbreaker has a guitar solo shredded from the heavens. not to mention the countless amounts of real 'riff rock' riffs. the songs are mainly pretty beefy; decently sized, loud, sexual references, et cetera. it was actually recorded and mixed at different studios not only in England but also in the United States and Canada while they were on tour most of the year. writing and recording an album and touring at the same time: crazy.

A FEW DAYS pt 1

So for the next four days i'm going to do the first four, untitled Led Zeppelin albums. starting with the debut, Led Zeppelin.
So i guess the story that sort of goes with this album is that Jimmy Page was the only one left in The Yardbirds, and had to do a Scandinavian tour, so he somehow recruited these members and did the tour as The New Yardbirds, playing mostly these songs, then came back, changed the name and recorded this album out of his pocket. apparently it didn't take long to actualy record, and the songs are mostly live takes. Jimmy Page was also apparently the first one to record with ambient microphones, so he wasn't just sticking a mic right up on the amp, but he had one twenty feet away from the amp as well. so there's a lot of tracks leaking into other tracks and things like that. which i guess isn't so very apparent, but it does make sense. something that i never used to be into was the contrast between the rock songs and the acoustic songs, but i've recently started to gain appreciation for the acoustic ones. the rocking ones are in some respects, very 1969 and almost even very 1979, where the acoustic ones like Black Mountain Side are very 1500s. some of the album is from the future, and some is from 400 years ago. and honestly, Jimmy Page is crazy.

NEW NEWS

I've never really gotten too into much Creedence Clearwater Revival. i remember playing Bad Moon Rising out of my dorm room window when i was a freshman, but i mean, that's not saying much. i think the only album of theirs that i've even listened to in it's entirety is Cosmo's Factory, and i think that was even a little different then the kind of songs they were doing in 1968. so Bayou Country seemed like something a little more essential. i think one of the reasons i can't get into them for so long is John Fogerty's voice. i mean, it's certainly fitting for this band, and it's not bad by any means, but i can only handle a certain amount of it. and part of what i like about this album is that there are more extended musical numbers. something like Graveyard Train or Keep On Chooglin' where the blues are bursting at the seams. Proud Mary is the classic hit off of this album, just rollin' on the river. i guess it's the kind of music that they're mixing together, but they pretty much fooled me into thinking that they were from Louisiana or something, but really they're from California. there's a lot of Southern influence; gospel, blues, soul and the like. but i dig that style.

Something I Like

This album used to be a time vault to 1991. when i first got into this, it reminded me so much of being a little kid, living in our old house and hearing my parents play it whenever they were cleaning or something. it was like that for a little while and then it sort of became it's own thing to me. as a whole, i find it to be a pretty incredible feat of music. it's unmatchable when there are four of the most well renowned songwriters of the time on the same record. similar to The Band record, this carries a certain American tradition-both of times of old and of the period in which it was made. a song like Almost Cut My Hair is geared towards the counterculture and those kinds of values, where Our House is almost the complete opposite: settling down, having a house and a family and responsibilities. 4+20 is a fingerpicked, almost traditional style folk song and Everybody I Love You is more current, a soloed rock song. but these attributes meld together throughout the album which is what makes it such a master work. Helpless is easily one of Neil Young's best songs, with such shameless and vivid melancholy that is very classic Neil. and obviously getting into the harmonies is something completely on it's own. most of the harmonic singing is still only done by Crosby, Stills and Nash, but it's supernatural. this is another easy candidate for one of my favorites of all time.

TIME VAULT: FALL 2006

I can't really say that i like any of the other Destroyer albums, nor do i necessarily like The New Pornographers, but this album is really very good. it's one of the ones that comes with a pretty heavy feeling of a certain time. this time it simultaneously reminds me of a former Philadelphia apartment of mine as well as a car drive to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving. that's what comes to mind visually at least. but yeah, i've tried in the past, to listen to other Destroyer albums since i've always liked this one so much, but they're not really the same. there's even a newer one from a year or so ago which is also not as good. i don't know, i think that there's some kind of cohesive feeling through all of these songs (and i don't just mean something that i feel on a personal level, but rather a connection between the songs to themselves) this album is a pretty interesting thing lyrically, with lines like 'You disrupt the world's disorder just by virtue of your grace, 'Endangered Ape, a couple years in Solitary never really hurt anyone', 'I gave my cargo to the sea/i gave the water what it always wanted to be', as well as multiple references to a priest and multiple women and relationships. i feel like i can't really keep up with what's trying to be said, so i always just kind of take that for what it is. but musically this record is incredible. it has crummy distortion and a grand piano. there's a balance between something done in a very lo-fi way and something done in a theater. it's a strange kind of pop music that is recognizable in European Oils or Your Blues, though there's something in pretty much any song that's catchy enough to stay with you for a while. one of the best is the nine and a half minute opening song, which also encompasses the overall ambiance by telling some kind of knightly tale in a sort of backwards way but also staying musically impressive. this one comes out of the vaults annually as well.