Get the Led Out

[ricklou]

Madison Square Garden, 1973

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yd0zTf8DLA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW3xDZrlBQs&ob=av2e

Here are two examples of the finest musicianship that you will ever see in the Rock genre.

Jimmy Page's guitar work is phenominal, Plant just rips the vocal. John Bonham truly was one of the best heavy drummers ever. By the way, his son Jason played with the Who during their Super Bowl halftime show.

John Paul Jones technical and production expertise finsihed this loosely tight unit. The second video is Jone's fantasy and it depicts the origins of Halloween as celebrated in England.

Listening to Pages' guitar you can hear the richness of the Gibson's mahogany and maple wood. Page had his Les Paul coil tapped to allow a single coil fender sound or the traditional humbucker. Also one of the pickup covers on this guitar was plated in nickle adding to it's unique sound. A 1958 or 59 Les Paul.

[pmossberg]

Thanks for the flashback Rick.

One of the most awesome live concert experiences I've ever had, Led Zeppelin at MSG in 1975. Complete assault on the senses.

You have to pick up "It Might get Loud". Producers set up a living room on a sound stage and invited Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White and their guitars in for a conversation. Simply wonderful stuff!

[pettycash]

I'm currently leading a session of the Communications merit badge for my son's Boy Scout troop. We discussed the % of verbal vs. non-verbal communications as well as the % of communications generally misunderstood between person-to-person or person-to-group.

To illustrate & trying to be somewhat hip, I asked them to think about the song "Communication Breakdown" by Led Zeppelin. All I got were blank stares in return.

Then I started groveling. I told them "OK, I understand y'all are too young to remember Zep. But isn't that song on Rock Band or Guitar Hero or your parents' iPod? Work with me here."

[pmossberg]

WE think you're hip pettycash!

But lemme get this straight. You want to be hip to a bunch of teenage boys and you pull out a song from 1969. Groveling may not be the right word.

Let's see if Bethany (cadetjordan) knows the song!

When I'm doing an "age check" with younger coworkers, I Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. You can get a LOT of blank stares with that one!

[ricklou]

I think Iron Butteryfly had blanks stares after playing that one

[pettycash]

Feb 21, 2010 23:29:13 GMT -5 pmossberg said:

But lemme get this straight. You want to be hip to a bunch of teenage boys and you pull out a song from 1969. Groveling may not be the right word.

Wellll, maybe I did set my expectations a bit too lofty. Kind of like I do with annual Petty Performance Predictions.

[revilo]

There are few things more humbling for us children of the sixties and seventies than to try to teach merit badges for today's scouts. I have done Citizenship in the Community for several years, and they seem to have no connection to how our government works. I guess they don't have classes in civics or American Government any more in school. When you tell scouts they can't bring electronics to scout camp they look at you like you just ripped their arm off. They can't function without that stuff. I'm glad I grew up in simpler times.

[pmossberg]

We're drifiting from the music aspect of this thread...but speaking of education, did you read about the new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools?

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584758,00.html

U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.

Granted it is still a "proposal." But that the concept got this far is really disturbing.

We are really drifting from our core as a nation. Time to stop the madnesss!

[pmossberg]

Back to Led Zeppelin.

Gibson sells a special re-issue Jimmy Page LesPaul, rewired as Rick describes in the initial post. Of course you'll need to recreate Jimmy's heart, soul and fingers before it'll actually sound like him.

A great guitarist can make a bad guitar sound good. A bad guitarist can make a great guitar sound terrible. Jimmy Page is certainly one of the greats!

[ricklou]

With the live version of Dazed and Confused you can hear Jimmy coil tapping the pickups. That monster of a song clicks out at 27 minutes for the live album.

One thing I have noticed about professional guitarists is that they rarely finger a full bar chord but use staggered fingerings or just parts of a chord. Page was a master of this.

Zep was at the height of their influence in "73" when the Song Remains the same was filmed. Jmmy Page and Zeppelin filled the vacuum left by Jimmy Hendrix's passing. Their style of raw blues influenced rock is truly astonishing and broke through a barrier that has not been seen since.

The mystic darkness of Led's music is almost taboo to certain classes of people in the same way Elvis was recieved when he shook his hips.

The mix of dark and light was incredible as by listening and seeing many of us could slip in and out of the darkness and get away with it in our own minds. This was a problem for young people with their parents during the 50's and 60's but it just became to big to be ignored from a business point of view and it's popularity with young people.

I can imagine with a smile on my face what parents were thinking in the Bible Belt knowing that Elvis was going to marry their daughters or that Chuck Berry was going to steal them during the middle of the night. They just had to look the other way when Led rolled into town as the daughters had already been lost and taken away. But many of those same parents knew what it was and loved every minute of it.

[pmossberg]

Well said Rick. My parents were definitely not in that group that got it.

Do you play? You sure write guitar and music like you do.
I play. I know Tom does too.

[pb1945]

I would have given all my toe nails if I ever could have got Cocaine right just once.

Arthur took over now.

I'm fascinated with gut string classical guiter I can listen for hours.

I'm an Estaban fan too.

Can't play worth a flip now never could really but I can listen. ;D ;D

pb ;D

[songsmith1950]

Led Zep was way before the Pro Tools music system came out. You actually had to play the music and get it right back then without having twenty takes to mix and match from. Those were the days my friends.
Page definately has his Paul wired for everything you can wring out of it. Hummers and singles in and out of phase with one another. So many sounds he can get.
But as one said, you could give Page any guitar and amp and put him in a room and legend would flow through the door.
Same with Hendrix, Stevie Ray, Gary Moore, Eric Johnson, Clapton, and a few dozen others.

[pettycash]

Back to my hopes of being relevant with kids while name-dropping Zeppelin, I'm reminded of a great quip by Dennis Miller. He was doing one of his signature fake news segments.

He said "Mick Mars of Motley Crue underwent hip replacement surgery today. Wait...think about that...I think that's the 1st time the words 'Motley Crue' and 'hip' have been used in the same sentence in 20 years."

[ricklou]

Motley Crue ....you know some geezin is happening when it's time to get a new hip. Time sure does fly.

To anwer your question Pauyl. I do play but have not been serious with it for a long time. I have a 1988 Fender Strat Plus and a Marshall JCM 2000 Triple Lead that rocks. Mostly I use a small VOX transistor/tube amp that is killer and it sounds better than the Marshall at lower volume at least.. It has an output jack that allows the amp to be loaded into an external cabinate in this case a Peavy 4X12.

Tom is right on about how things are done with recording now as opposed to years ago. Alot has changed. The Songman is much more knowlegable than I with recording techniques but the difference is obvious from then to now. I beleive that record company also control alot of the content but it is still there in more obsure forms than what was happening 30 or 40 years ago.

To be sure the great players will always shine and we can always enjoy them.