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Shuffle of the week #30

This is an ode to the shuffle. How better to get a good insight in your digitized album collection than by a classic shuffle? Finally discover the albums you never got into, finally throw the ones away you will never get into and worship those classics that never grow old again. The Shuffle of this week:

1. The Yardbirds – The Nazz Are Blue (Roger The Engineer, 1966) [singlepic id=236 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Blues rock that sounds like something in between of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and later projects that originated in mysterious ways  from this group, like Cream and Blind Faith. The name of the album refers to audio engineer Roger Cameron, who is drawn on the album cover by rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja. According to certain rumors, Dreja would have refused an offer by Jimmy Page to become Led Zeppelin’s bass player because he wanted to pursue a career as a photographer.

2. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Keep On Chooglin’ (Bayou Country, 1969) [singlepic id=277 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Closing song from the first album of Creedence’s 1969-trilogy. Including several guitar solos by John Fogerty, this southern rock does in fact not differ much from the previous song. This song, together with opening track ‘Born on the Bayou’, is one of the album’s highlights. Not as strong as a whole compared to its successors though.

3. Marvin Gaye – What’s Happening Brother (What’s Going On, 1971) [singlepic id=141 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Staying in the same period with the velvet soul from Marvin Gaye. Second song of this great album, about a returned Vietnam veteran (based on Gaye’s brother Frankie). While he asks himself whether his baseball team would win or not, I ask myself why this is still Marvin’s only album in my collection.

4. Broken Social Scene – Cranley’s Gonna Make It (Feel Good Lost, 2001) [singlepic id=276 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Debut album from this Canadian indie band. Got it áfter having discovered them through the second and better known album You Forgot It in People, and therefore I was of course surprised by its almost completely instrumental /ambient sound. Time to give it another shot.

5. Kyuss – Caterpillar March (Blues for the Red Sun, 1992) [singlepic id=278 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Another instrumental, with the music written by the band’s drummer Brant Bjork. A rather short song, this one, while Bjork’s other songs ‘Green Machine’ and ’50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up)’ are two of this albums’ highlights.

6. Velvet Underground – Some Kinda Love (The Velvet Underground, 1969) [singlepic id=274 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Perhaps the least song from a genius album. Put on your red pyjama’s and find out all other things about this album. Don’t forget to put jelly on your shoulder.

                  7. The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band – Sisters! Brothers! Small Boats of Fire Are Falling from the Sky! (Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward, 2001) [singlepic id=280 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Title says it all, I guess. Music For Walking Through The Woods On An Autumn Day.

 

8. Queen – Radio Ga Ga (Live at Wembley ’86, 1992) [singlepic id=279 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Roger Taylor’s most famous composition, from Queen’s eleventh album The Works. Together with John Deacon’s ‘I Want to Break Free’, it was one of the two huge hits on this album. However, today we are reliving a legendary concert in the history of live music, during the summer of 1986. Nobody could have imagined at that time what kind of monsters the title of this song would spit out many years later.

9. Beach Boys – We Got Love (The Beach Boys in Concert, 1973) [singlepic id=136 w=80 h=50 float=left]

Another portion of live music, proving that even a shuffle offers you the necessary continuity now and then while exploring rock music’s archives. The previous time I ran into this live album, it concerned its opening track. That song was added to their studio album Holland, because it would otherwise lack a potential hit. Other songs suffered from this adjustment… among others this one. That way this was the first album the song would ever appear on.

10. 13th Floor Elevators – Dust (Easter Everywhere, 1967) [singlepic id=275 w=80 h=50 float=left]

A familiar song, from a great album I just listened for weeks. A serene song when compared to some others on the album, written by singer Rocky Erickson and Tommy Hall, whose electric jug defines this album.

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“Call me the Hunter, that’s how I got my fame”: Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin)

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Year: 1969

Genre: Blues Rock, Hard Rock

Preceded by: –

Followed by: Led Zeppelin II (1969)

Related to: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced, Blue Cheer – Vincebus Eruptum

 

 

It’s January 1969 and The Beatles are digging their way through the Get Back-sessions. During a little break they are talking about a new album that Jimmy Page has produced.   ‘Wasn’t he the one who was in the Yardbirds?’, asks George Harrison. The Yardbirds was the favorite band of Jimi Hendrix when he brought together blues rock, psychedelic rock and hard rock on his 1967 debut with the Experience. Two years later, Page has his own band, releasing their own album. ‘With a kid called John Bonham on drums. He is unbelievable.’, according to the rattling Fab Four.

Later that year, this new band called Led Zeppelin would release their classic hard rock album Led Zeppelin II, which would knock The Beatles’ Abbey Road  from #1. But what about their bluesy debut album? And what about this band in general?

The Yardbirds were falling apart in 1968 with Jeff Beck forming his own band (The Jeff Beck Group) and bass player Chris Dreja becoming a photographer. However, they still had some contractual obligations for a tour in Scandinavia. So remaining member Jimmy Page decided to bring in singer Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham, two members from Band of Joy, and complete the tour as The New Yardbirds. Some guy called John Paul Jones contacted the band himself to become the new bass player. They performed in Denmark for the first time together and completed the tour successfully.

Shortly after the tour, the band began to record their first album, consisting of songs they had played during  their live gigs. It was recorded in a very short time period, with Page covering all the costs. But Dreja forced the new band to change its name, as they were only allowed to use ‘The New Yardbirds’ for their final tour. This is how Led Zeppelin was born, choosing an image of the famous burning Hindenburg (the former pride of nazi Germany), a ‘lead zeppelin’, for the album cover. The album would contain a heavy blues rock sound (including some covers of traditional American blues songs), combined with some extreme guitar-driven and riff-based hard rock sound, just like Hendrix did two years earlier.

Sure thing is that the traditional blues is better represented on this album, most notably with the Willie Dixon covers ‘You Shook Me’ and ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’. The first one has a typical slowly lingering blues beat, with a very cool instrumental part in the middle of the song where a screaming Plant is continually echoing Page’s guitar sounds. The song caused a dispute with Page’s former buddy Jeff Beck, as he had recorded the same song some months before. The other Dixon song is also a typical blues rock song, with a jazzy drum and bass combo, filled up by a plonking Page. A little less bluesy is the ballad ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’ (about an unfaithful girl), which is instead characterized by a beautiful organ intro by Jones and a sing-along chorus.

The hard rock songs on the album are easily to distinguish by their higher pace. One of them is the fantastic opener ‘Good Times Bad Times’. I still consider this one of the best opening songs ever: the intro with the guitar and cymbals combo, the bass loop in the bridge, the guitar solo, the rocking kick-drum: from the very start of this debut you can hear what kind of geniuses those instrumentalists actually are. This is even taken one level higher on my favorite Zep track and one of my all-time rock favorites overall: ‘Dazed and Confused’. There’s the thrilling bass intro, the absolute superb drumming from Bonzo, the haunting middle part where Plant’s voice serves as a fourth instrument, and then… a huge instrumental explosion with Bonzo’s drumming seeming to chase Page’s solo like a mad dog, an absolute rock masterpiece. Especially those kind of songs show that Led Zeppelin probably was the best group of rock instrumentalists ever having played together. A last song of this kind is ‘Communication Breakdown’, a very uptempo song with again a fast drum and bass section, it even reminds you of a punk song.

The three other songs can not really be placed in one or another category. Sure, closing song ‘How Many More Times’ kinda sounds like a blues song, but it’s best known for the fantastic bolero rhythm, which pushes the song along in a very bombastic way, another favorite. ‘Black Mountain Side’ to the contrary is a kind of strange song on a Zep record. It’s an instrumental, with Page on a steel-string guitar and a guest appearance on tabla to give the song its eastern character. Those sounds will return in several songs on later albums. The same goes for ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’, which is as mystic as some famous songs on for example Zep’s fourth album. It’s basically a duet between Plant’s voice and Page’s acoustic guitar, but the strange balance between calmness and anger makes this song a real gem.

After Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin would continue to make high quality and very successful albums, incorporating folk en Celtic music influences, becoming the absolute number one rock act of the seventies. The band disbanded in 1980 following the death of Bonham and was described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as being ‘as influential in the seventies as The Beatles were in the prior decade’. So if you still haven’t heard a song of those guys, start with one of those first two albums because they will kick you in the face like an angry gnu.

Top Tracks:
1. Dazed and Confused
2. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
3. How Many More Times