The Fillmore Tapes

 So by lucky chance today I have found a copy of the Fillmore Tapes online. I FOUND A COPY OF THE FILLMORE TAPES ONLINE. As in THE Fillmore tapes, of one of THE most famous Led Zeppelin concerts. This record is a rare find and made my day amazing. This accurately depicts Led Zeppelin shortly after their release of their first album and shows them just as they are starting to get big. Page has spectacular guitar parts, and the other instruments shine as usual. The lyrics are classic Led Zeppelin and heavy blues. Robert Plant has a voice that can blow anybody's head off and all of that comes through on these tapes.

Page starts off with White Summer because they did not have a bass at the beginning of the concert. So White Summer is for, pretty much the first time ever played with an electric guitar. Apparently having an electric guitar in his hands got Jimmy excited and he added some hard rocking off script bits. Overall his guitar is awesome as always. He shows himself as a gifted and talented rock god who can not be stopped by anybody. The solos are explosive, and really just blow your head off. You can feel Page reveling in his joy at playing guitar through the music here. The bass shines, especially in Train Kept A Rollin and Can't Quit You Baby and has a lot of memorable fills. The drums of Bonham are awesome, in particular they shine in Pats Delight which was the precursor to Moby Dick.

The lyrics are traditional Led Zeppelin. They play the majority of their first album on this track as well as some heavier 60s blues stuff. This is classic Zeppelin lyrically and really you could not ask for much more. If you want to read more about Zeppelin lyrics go check previous blog posts. Robert Plant has an incredibly strong voice. You can feel the raw power and might in it in the bands rendition of Train Kept a Rollin. Plants voice is unbelievably powerful and when you hear this record it is frankly amazing. He can lead the music on with his voice, when you hear this album you will be amazed at the power. He also of course has his spectacular range, shrieking the high notes and moaning the low. Overall his voice and the lyrics are awesome.

All in all this is an excellent album showing an early Zeppelin who was just starting to make it big. It is really cool to hear the band live at such a crucial turning point in their careers. The guitar is powerful and riff driven. It shows incredible power. The other instruments have their own awesome parts, in particular Bonham's solo in Pat's Delight is amazing. The lyrics are traditional Led Zeppelin, high powered and awesome. Plant has an extremely powerful voice that really comes through on this album and boggles the mind. My sole complaint is that the production quality is mediocre at best. Asides from that this is a awesome album.

OVERALL 9/10

Outrider-Jimmy Page

 Sorry about the bit of absence over the past couple days, I had family stuff. Too mark my return I will be doing a review of a Jimmy Page album. Outrider is a hard powerful blues and hard rock explosion with some heavy metal elements. The majority of the album is hard rock with a blues feel, but there are definitely heavy metal overtones. There is still the classic Page riffing and awesome solos, the other instruments are given a chance to show off a little as well and there are some decent vocals but this is a primarily Jimmy Page oriented album.

The guitar is fantastic. Its harder than a lot of Zeppelin, because of course Page got to do whatever he wanted with this album. There are some nice solos and a lot of really good guitar parts that keep on riffing and exploding and just driving the music on. It is a treat to listen to Page show off whatever type of music he wants. There are some really cool things done with bending string on this album that almost reminiscent of his Yardbirds days. Then there are riffs that are more Zeppelin-like in nature. Page does allow the other instruments to have their own parts though. The drums have a lot of chances to show off on this album, especially on the lead track. Also on the lead track Wasting My Time is a memorable but repetitive bass riff. Overall the guitar dominates the music but allows the other instruments a small share of the glory of this album. This album is harder than most Led Zeppelin and shows off a lot of guitar talent on Page's part.

The vocals are decent, but asides from one track are nothing to rave about, they provide a blues feel that counterbalances the heavyness of Page's guitar. There is a balance because we have high powered distorted fast songs but they are played with blues timing and singers so balance can be attained. The track “The Only One” is like Zeppelin reuniting for a bit as we get to hear Plant, Page and John Bonham's son Jason all on one record. That song sounds like any of many other classic Zeppelin songs and would fit right in in any of the albums from Led Zeps glory days. The lyrics are all classic blues type stuff. Nothing particularly sppeaks to me but they are all just well written mournful blues lyrics.

Overall this is a pretty awesome album balancing blues and heavy metal nicely creating a sound harder than Zeppelin but lighter than a lot of 80s metal. There are awesome riffs and excellent solos and if this album were given more exposure it might become a classic. Personally I really love it and think that anybody who likes 70s and 80s hard rock would love this album. Gritty blues guys who like heavy metal (like me) would particularly like this album as this is to some degree really gritty and heavy blues. There are good guitar parts and decent parts for the other instruments. The vocals are overall pretty good and this album is very much worth to listening to as it shows off one of rocks greatest guitarist Jimmy Page.

OVERALL 8.5/10

Outrider

Houses of the Holy-Led Zeppelin

 So now that its a little later in the day I'm covering more music. And now its Led Zep! I am covering the Zeppelin album that features some of my favorite songs in particular the track Over the Hills and Far Away the first truly 'hard' song that I am learning on guitar. This album marked a new beginning for Zeppelin, featuring a lot of new production techniques to make the music “fatter” and stronger. The guitar work is spectacular as always, the bass actually gets a chance to shine, the drums are awesome as usual and Robert Plant belts out lyrics that boggle the mind in the poetry and power inherent in all of them.

This song explodes out of the speakers with the Zeppelin classic The Song Remains the Same. The guitar parts on this song are basically impossible to replicate on your own. Jimmy Page simply has so much technical skill. That applies for most of the album. There are some insane solos that most guitarists can't even imagine playing unless they've been going at it for 10+ years. Then there are some intense riffs, for example in The Ocean. The wall of sound produced by Page in both his guitar work and actual production techniques boggles the mind (get the pun?). The drums are powerful and loud as usual. On this album the bass gets a few good riffs in in the Song Remains the Same among other songs. Something new to Zeppelin on this album is the addition of keyboards. The 2 main tracks these are heard on are No Quarter and The Rain Song.

Robert Plant's lyrics are amazing. On this album the lyrics are less mystical as on previous albums. The Ocean is a love song dedicated to the fans, Over the Hills and Far Away is another love song. The Song Remains the Same is about a dream that Robert Plant once had. Plant's voice is spectacular as usual and just belts out the lyrics on loud and fast tracks like The Song Remains the Same and the caresses the ears of the listener in slower tracks or slower parts of tracks like in Over the Hills and Far Away or the Rain Song. There is nothing to criticize in Plant's voice, it can honestly do anything.

Overall this is an amazing album featuring great guitar parts and showing off the best voice in rock and roll (except maybe like Freddy Mercury). Zeppelin does it all here, even reggae! Admittedly the reggae songs were not great but still the concept is there (The Crunge and D'yer Mak'r). This is an album that is both loud and soft, it experiments with all sorts of cool sounds that make Led Zeppelin the band that they are. With spectacular solos, amazing drums, bass and even the occasional keyboard the members of Led Zeppelin convey themselves as beautiful rock gods. You get the sense of the twisting and shaking of Plant as he sings and the gyrations of Page's body as he jams away on the guitar. This is an awesome album that I would recommend to anybody.

OVERALL 9.5/10

Houses of the Holy

LED ZEPPELIN 1

LED ZEPPELIN- LED ZEPPELIN I

Well I decided to do a series on the birth of hard rock and metal so I'm basically going to be covering the harder side of the 70's. This album is the first album that really started to feature hard rock. While there are a lot of blues tracks which are really awesome like “You Shook Me” there is also some of the very first ever metal on this album. This would include songs like “Good Times Bad Times” and the legendary “Dazed and Confused”. While not quite metal this is definitely showing the seeds of metal.

This album is really a typical 'first album' in structure. There is a high powered song at the beginning (Good Times Bad Times) that sets the tone for the band. Then there are some brilliant tracks showing off Page's guitar stuff and Plant's vocal range. Bonham provides heavy and strong drumming Jones's bass also shows great skill on his part. I found that the album just has beauty. While it is primarily blues influenced this is like the predecessor to metal and without this there would be no metal.

The lyrics are mostly bluesy but some show some real metal. In particular “Communication Breakdown” the hardest metal around at the time has been covered by a variety of bands such as Wolfmother. Overall the lyrics have a sad sort of feel emanating from them but for the faster songs they are very high in energy. They are very good though and as a whole give a very complete feel. The album just has a very good feel to it.

This album is probably the first hard album. While some of you Extreme Metalheads out there might call it weak you would have no Extreme Metal without these guys (FYI I like extreme). This album has shaped the course of rock and it has great technical skill from Page and range from Plant, Bonham provides powerful drumming and Jones proves his place as one of the very best bassists of all time.

OVERALL 10/10