best LED ZEPPELIN album side

if debut side 1 had “communication breakdown” on it, it would be the easy winner

it’s wedged weirdly in side 2, should’ve followed “good times” for a knockout 1-2 punch. they learned that lesson on untitled with the black dog-rock n roll opening

sub-poll!

TS: Babe I'm Gonna Leave You vs. Since I've Been Loving You

first side of first album easy

the punch of good times bad times is enhanced by fact that it's the first track on their first album. talk about a statement

Surprised that a lot of people prefer Side B. To me Side A is perfect. Maybe the Sandy Denny duet puts some people off, but I love Sandy Denny, so..

― o. nate, Sunday, May 5, 2024 12:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, that's a wild LZ take if i've ever heard one.

Side B of IV. I never quiet experienced Stairway as ubiquitous overplayed behemoth, and never really developed strong feelings about it. I just kinda like it okay when it's on. Otherwise the opening twofer on Side A would be pretty hard to top. With the later albums I just struggle to match the titles up with songs I can remember.

LED ZEPPELIN III side two

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 5, 2024 8:39 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

― ivy., Sunday, 5 May 2024 13:16 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Surprised that a lot of people prefer Side B. To me Side A is perfect. Maybe the Sandy Denny duet puts some people off, but I love Sandy Denny, so..

― o. nate, Sunday, May 5, 2024 12:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Love Battle of Evermore and Stairway. Black Dog has just never been one of my favorites.

The Presence contrarians seems oddly quiet on this thread.

I'm on the record upthread. Presence rules, 2nd album shits the bed, everything else is in the middle.

This is actually harder than I thought it would be. I'm leaning to Side A of II.

"The Song Remains the Same" - "The Rain Song" - "No Quarter" - "The Ocean" would be the greatest album side by any band ever.

LED ZEPPELIN III side two

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 5, 2024 8:39 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

― ivy., Sunday, 5 May 2024 13:16 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

― Bernard Quidbins (NickB), Monday, May 6, 2024 6:28 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

More like people are still tired of Stairway

I've been listening to this song since 1976 and I'm still not sick of it. I got a new pair of headphones for Xmas, it was the first song I put on to test them out.

As I've said here before, the final 12 minutes of their final album are pretty much my favourite thing they ever did. And they flatshare with the awesome Carouselambra so my choice is inevitable.

Houses of the Holy side one is a strong second place tho

LED ZEPPELIN III side two

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 5, 2024 8:39 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

― ivy., Sunday, 5 May 2024 13:16 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

― Bernard Quidbins (NickB), Monday, May 6, 2024 6:28 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

― budo jeru, Monday, May 6, 2024 5:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

But also:

As I've said here before, the final 12 minutes of their final album are pretty much my favourite thing they ever did. And they flatshare with the awesome Carouselambra so my choice is inevitable.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Monday, May 6, 2024 5:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

When I was a teen in my first flush of Zep-love it would have been one of the sides of II

BBC disc 1?

It seems obvious, but IV Side One. Four very obvious and overplayed Zep classics, yes, but the sequencing gives that side a really cool arc. It starts of boisterous, cools down, then just rockets towards the heavens.

PG 3

It can’t be anything other than Physical Graffiti side A for me but Presence side A is near the top and I hope it gets at least a few votes

I've been listening to this song since 1976 and I'm still not sick of it. I got a new pair of headphones for Xmas, it was the first song I put on to test them out.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

i grew up in the era that gave birth to the wayne's world "no stairway" guitar shop bit and yeah, i did get sick of it. i listened to classic radio and stairway, stairway, stairway. i think it was the reunion concert that let me hear stairway with "beginner's mind" again. i don't listen to it often, but i'm not sick of it, i don't think.

yeah I was born too late, I never got overexposed

Dancing days, over the hills, whole lot ta love way more overplayed radio zeppelin ime

zep fits this question (greatest album side) more than any other band i can think of. it just feels like a 70s format, the aor dj throwing on a whole album side, artists seemed to be thinking about album sides as a unit, the flow and variety needed to keep a side interesting, the buildup to the side end statement.

the kansas city classic rock station i grew up on in the 80s would do an annual "album side weekend" playing one album side an hour, counting down the top 50, or maybe the top 100 on thanksgiving weekend (starting with alice's restaurant). i don't remember if it was voted on by the listeners or not, i think it was. in the early 80s the top was always side 2 of sgt pepper's which i thought was a bit improbable, and a few years later it was edged out by side 1 of zoso which felt more correct. the other perennial top 10 album sides included both halves of dark side and who's next, side one of hotel california and sticky fingers and goodbye yellow brick road, side two of abbey road and days of future passed, and something by jimi probably. i think there were more zep album sides in the top 100 than any other band, it's the ideal format for this band apart from the live show, 3-5 zep songs is like a heavy pub meal, burger fries and two pints of dark beer, thudding in your stomach and leaving you satiated.

i'll rep for side one of zoso, sure. black dog is the greatest funk-rock song, full stop, greater than trampled (too fast) or any of the more guitary funkadelic stompers (not sexy enough) or anything else i can think of (i'm probably forgetting a sly song with enough guitar to match it). rock and roll picks up the pace and volume while spinning into a retro 50s mode, giving lennon a run for the scream-like-little-richard money. sidling from the retro 50s feel into retro english folk, evermore is a favorite, not just for sandy denny's incredible gravitas - she's the joan baez i always wanted when i was a young dylan/ochs folk fan looking for cool female folk records - but it seems more intense than any other folk song from the era i can think of. then stairway takes you from folk-prog back to a big rock statement while keeping the ominous feel of evermore...

i'm of course embarrassed to rock out to stairway in front of my wife and child, i know it's totally a corny song in some ways, but when i hear it now i hear the echoes of a bunch of "songs with many rooms" i love it seems to have ancestral lineage with, prog things like musical box by genesis or and you and i by yes, and later stuff like pavement's hexx and radiohead's paranoid android.

i'm sure nowadays i listen to houses and pg more than zoso. iii is great but each side has a hard skip (loving you and bron-y-aur). but zoso is the platonic 'best' for me, awkward as it is to admit.

A+ post

i listened to classic radio

I think we may be close to identifying the problem.

I think we may be close to identifying the problem.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

lol my tendency to leave words out? yeah classic rock radio lol

classic rock radio = dud

hey bey bobo when you honk that way

the way you honk my bobo, i'm gonna fall right out of bed

terrific post, mig

but surely Plant is aiming for Macca more than Lennon on R&R? (i actually mistook it for an uncharacteristically badass Wings song the first time I heard it.)

lol my tendency to leave words out? yeah classic rock radio lol

No, I got what you meant. I meant the radio was the problem.

i mean, the late '80s weren't a great time to be alive. but i gotta say, classic rock radio's worst crime, worse than the constant repetition of "stairway", worse than the morning zoo constantly playing the beatles' "birthday" and todd rundgren's "bang on the drum all day" (you know how old i was when i learned todd rundgren had songs that _didn't_ sound like "bang on the drum all day"?), worse than hearing "lola" and "walk on the wild side" eleventy-billion times... nah, worst off was the way classic rock radio ALWAYS PLAYED "Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)" IMMEDIATELY after Heartbreaker. Like in the context of the album it works, but by treating the two as one song, you're diminishing the impact of the dramatic cold ending. If you've got _all of rock history_ to play with, why lock yourself into coupling zep's sleaze-blooz opus with a mediocre pop song? And if you're gonna allocate the time to doing that, why not just play "Since I've Been Loving You", which is greater than either of them separately or combined? I specifically burned a CD-R of "II" that excluded "Living Loving Maid" so that "Heartbreaker" slams right into "Ramble On".

Counterpoint: I also heard Rush and cool Robert Plant solo singles.

AOR in the 70s was a damn wonderland.

Yeah Maid is some cutting floor shit and was one they all agreed to leave off the crop circles box

xp yeah I caught the tail end of it, when various New Wavers (U2, Talking Heads, Pretenders, Clash, Elvis C) were still being inducted into the canon, in retrospect it was the New British Invasion that made this format recoil and become conservative (imo).

like I remember those "whole album side" type of things

I love Living Loving Maid :( It's swinging, tough, and fun.

xxp Yeah, the only medium hip enough to recognize the value of those artists was literal college radio, ime.

Half my answer is that this side alone feels complete enough and with variance to make it work alone as an E.P. or so. The other half of my answer is that this album was one of the three Led Zep albums I had (still have, never bought more) on vinyl, and that this side in particular I would play over and over.

And so, my answer is the first side of III.

aw yea

it kills me the i can't vote for a side of HotH because you'd think there's a solid LP side on that but no.

in terms of best bang for your LZ dollar, side 2 of PG should be the gold standard (not voting for it btw).

Yeah, that was my "head" vote - three absolute monster tracks, yet all doing very different things. Only possible downside is overexposure to Kashmir, but it is one of Plant's best performances.

the gradual increase in love for iii always makes me smile, it's the revolver of their catalog (which makes zoso their pepper's i guess). you never heard immigrant song on the classic rock station in the 80s it was too metal, too weird; now it's their second-most streamed track.

kashmir... makes me a bit sad how the strings and vocals dominate the proceedings compared to the guitars which are doing this cool minimalist thing with a great grungy tone, i love the demo version from the houses of the holy era. i mean i get what jones and plant are going for but jimmy and bonzo just groove so much harder without the frills and frippery added later

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpTQwIRXq3s

pg is has all these driving forceful songs that just seem to push forward in one direction, then you have side c which breathes a lot more and has more zoso/houses type things clustered together. kashmir -> in the light is one of the very very few segueways on a 60s/70s era double album from side b big finish to side c fresh start that really works.

I get totally lost in disc 2 of PG, in a very good way

That Kashmir demo always sounds like Shellac to me.

kinda reminds me of the XYZ demos tbh

Someone else can tell me whether Tangerine --> Celebration Day works or not.

I think you mean Friends? And yes

fuck it i'm just gonna pirate the box set now

No, Friends --> Celebration Day is what we have now. I'm talking about some more cassette re-arranging.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

#ALBINI4PGS3

trying to verify this internet trend

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

LED ZEPPELIN II side two 7

wut

So:

LZ IV = 26
PG = 10

Yet, the results of the albums portion of LZ artist poll was:

PG = 266pts
IV = 237pts

ILM GONNA CRAWL — Led Zeppelin poll RESULTS THREAD

Some people be frontin'.

I could see where that might be a by-product of this poll's idea--voting for sides--combined with the difference between a single and a double. With the Rolling Stones, I could see individual sides of Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed winning this kind of poll, but Exile winning a ballot-type poll. Maybe doubles are experienced more...holisitically? I don't know.

You guys really like four sticks huh

didn't vote for that side, but four sticks is the second-best song on it

I love Four Sticks because even Led Zeppelin didn't really know how to play it. They took stabs at it when they rarely played it live, Bonham had a frustrating time getting it down, but on the record, it sounds perfect.

Also, the song is officially known as untitled sticks.

“four sticks” is cool, does it even have more than one chord?

I don’t really like plants vocals during the “punch on the nose” part of California

Four Sticks is the heart of the album

"Four Sticks"/"Misty Mountain Hop" had more to do with my vote than even "When the Levee Breaks."

https://www.icegif.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/icegif-11.gif