Poll--The Weakest Link: Led Zeppelin's 'Led Zeppelin IV' Round 4 (Levee is Champion)

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  • DewieCox
    DewieCox Posts: 11,432
    When the Levee Breaks
    Stairway should win this and it’s not a ripoff unless 95% of other songs are.
  • tempo_n_groove
    tempo_n_groove Posts: 41,579
    When the Levee Breaks
    Voting against Stairway is criminal...
  • F Me In The Brain
    F Me In The Brain this knows everybody from other commets Posts: 31,866
    Stairway To Heaven
    Listened to both again this morning and I am on very solid ground with my voting choice.
    The love he receives is the love that is saved
  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,665
    Stairway To Heaven
    DewieCox said:
    Stairway should win this and it’s not a ripoff unless 95% of other songs are.
    This is way off topic but since the subject came up, here's a thought provoking quote about so-called plagiarism in music:


    "All of this explains why people like to call Dylan a plagiarist. In terms of commercial modern music he is, and the advent of Google has given people all sorts of opportunity to fire cheap shots. He cribbed this lyric from a French poet, this one from Japanese gangster books, this one from a nineteenth century hymn. Surely he did, and this is not so much irrelevant as it is a non sequitur in folk music. The irony here is that what most of the world means today with the term "folk music" is simply wrong. What the term means today is a singer-songwriter playing an acoustic guitar, and this is irony, because Dylan himself was a prototype of the modern singer-songwriter. In modern terms, the term "cover" is a sort of insult, a mere cover band not offering "original" material. In real folk music, there is no original material. The arrogance of claiming to write a song shows a lack of respect for who we are and where we came from. It ignores history freighted in traditional music. To know folk music means something far more than mastering a canon; the point is to inhabit it like an evolving ecosystem."

    -Richard Manning
    It Runs in the Family, pages 129-130
     

    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni

  • dankind
    dankind Posts: 20,841
    edited February 2019
    Stairway To Heaven
    I don't know, man. There's this weird part toward the end of "Stairway to Heaven" in which it sounds like a stray cat in heat got into the studio and sort of took over vocal duties until Robert Plant comes back and delivers the last line of the song.

    "When the Levee Breaks" doesn't have that.

    Harmonica>stray cat in heat
    Post edited by dankind on
    I SAW PEARL JAM
  • ed243421
    ed243421 Posts: 7,741
    Stairway To Heaven
    Black cat?
    The whole world will be different soon... - EV
    RED ROCKS 6-19-95
    AUGUSTA 9-26-96
    MANSFIELD 9-15-98
    BOSTON 9-29-04
    BOSTON 5-25-06
    MANSFIELD 6-30-08
    EV SOLO BOSTON 8-01-08
    BOSTON 5-17-10
    EV SOLO BOSTON 6-16-11
    PJ20 9-3-11
    PJ20 9-4-11
    WRIGLEY 7-19-13
    WORCESTER 10-15-13
    WORCESTER 10-16-13
    HARTFORD 10-25-13









  • dankind
    dankind Posts: 20,841
    Stairway To Heaven
    From an Adam Horovitz chapter of the Beastie Boys Book.

    I get there and Yauch has a tape deck up on the counter in the kitchen. Not a cassette deck, but a quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape deck. I didn’t even know he had one. He’d pulled the tape out of the machine and wound it around a mic stand and a wooden chair close to the reel-to-reel.… He had the intro drumbeat to Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” going around and around his kitchen. The sound and the visual were so magical to me. It was like he was on some Doug Henning shit. He said that he recorded the intro part of the record onto the tape, and then edited just that intro part, and wanted it to keep going around and around like what a DJ would do with breakbeats.… He told me that he’d heard about Hendrix and Sly Stone doing tape loops and he wanted to try it.

    There's also a cool illo to go along with it in the book to show the reader what Horovitz saw going on in Yauch's kitchen, too.

    This is just one example of many that illuminate Yauch's experimental genius in the book. Running the 808 beat backward for "Paul Revere" is another. If you haven't read it yet, do so. It's way better than Hammer of the Gods. I promise.
    I SAW PEARL JAM
  • ed243421
    ed243421 Posts: 7,741
    Stairway To Heaven

    The whole world will be different soon... - EV
    RED ROCKS 6-19-95
    AUGUSTA 9-26-96
    MANSFIELD 9-15-98
    BOSTON 9-29-04
    BOSTON 5-25-06
    MANSFIELD 6-30-08
    EV SOLO BOSTON 8-01-08
    BOSTON 5-17-10
    EV SOLO BOSTON 6-16-11
    PJ20 9-3-11
    PJ20 9-4-11
    WRIGLEY 7-19-13
    WORCESTER 10-15-13
    WORCESTER 10-16-13
    HARTFORD 10-25-13









  • PJ_Soul
    PJ_Soul Vancouver, BC Posts: 50,754
    Stairway To Heaven
    The people seem to have made the correct decision. :) WTLB is definitely the best song on that album. Screw you Scruffy. =)
    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
  • tbergs
    tbergs Posts: 10,451
    Stairway To Heaven
    Stairway is a masterpiece of a song. It's a bit of a slow burn at the beginning, but the way it ends is epic. I just like the consistent rock of Levee and that drum beat.
    It's a hopeless situation...
  • MedozK
    MedozK Tennessee Posts: 9,212
    Stairway To Heaven
    Always love these final polls... so hard to pick because both are epic songs.
  • mcgruff10
    mcgruff10 New Jersey Posts: 29,140
    edited February 2019
    When the Levee Breaks
    PJ_Soul said:
    The people seem to have made the correct decision. :) WTLB is definitely the best song on that album. Screw you Scruffy. =)
    Lol. Don’t hate me because I am right.  ;)
    I'll ride the wave where it takes me......
  • PJ_Soul
    PJ_Soul Vancouver, BC Posts: 50,754
    Stairway To Heaven
    mcgruff10 said:
    PJ_Soul said:
    The people seem to have made the correct decision. :) WTLB is definitely the best song on that album. Screw you Scruffy. =)
    Lol. Don’t hate me because I am right.  ;)

    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
  • cutz
    cutz Posts: 12,291
    edited February 2019
    When the Levee Breaks
    I can't lie to myself. Yes, STH is way overplayed, but when i got this Album around 1977/78 STH was the best song on this Album. Hell, its one of the best songs in Rock history. I can't recall the last time i've heard the whole song, but STH is the best song on IV.  Now, can some admit they are lying to themselves by voting against STH>LOL!!

    Really no wrong votes for this album, though, so you really can't go wrong.

    Enjoyed this Album choice. 
  • njnancy
    njnancy Posts: 5,096
    Stairway To Heaven
    There's a lady who knows all that glitters is...silver. 

    Stairway has won so many number one polls in the media over the years that it is time to let the Levee win the gold. 
  • hauntingfamiliar
    hauntingfamiliar Wilmington, NC Posts: 10,389
    Stairway To Heaven
    F Me In The Brain said:
    Soul Grind!
    Love it 
    ;)
  • HesCalledDyer
    HesCalledDyer Maryland Posts: 16,498
    When the Levee Breaks
    When we did this for the Pearl Jam albums, I made a playlist of all the songs that won.  I plan on doing that again with this series.  It's like a mixtape of collective minds.
    Star Lake 00 / Pittsburgh 03 / State College 03 / Bristow 03 / Cleveland 06 / Camden II 06 / DC 08 / Pittsburgh 13 / Baltimore 13 / Charlottesville 13 / Cincinnati 14 / St. Paul 14 / Hampton 16 / Wrigley I 16 / Wrigley II 16 / Baltimore 20 / Camden 22 / Baltimore 24 / Raleigh I 25 / Raleigh II 25 / Pittsburgh I 25
  • jeffbr
    jeffbr Seattle Posts: 7,177
    When the Levee Breaks
    cutz said:
    I can't lie to myself. Yes, STH is way overplayed, but when i got this Album around 1977/78 STH was the best song on this Album. Hell, its one of the best songs in Rock history. I can't recall the last time i've heard the whole song, but STH is the best song on IV.  Now, can some admit they are lying to themselves by voting against STH>LOL!!

    Really no wrong votes for this album, though, so you really can't go wrong.

    Enjoyed this Album choice. 
    Well said. There's a good, goddamned reason StH was overplayed. That's because it is one of the most iconic rock songs of all time. I know it is hip to pan songs that were "overplayed", but just because radio decided to play a song doesn't negate it's greatness. It is an issue completely tangential to the question in the poll, which is about a song's "weakness". Overplay has nothing to do with weakness or strength, only popularity. Levee is great, and I can't argue against any song on this album, as I think it is one of the most perfect albums. But to disregard StH because of "overplay" is nonsensical if we're considering a song's weakness. 
    "I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
  • PJ_Soul
    PJ_Soul Vancouver, BC Posts: 50,754
    edited February 2019
    Stairway To Heaven

    HesCalledDyer said:
    When we did this for the Pearl Jam albums, I made a playlist of all the songs that won.  I plan on doing that again with this series.  It's like a mixtape of collective minds.
    Good idea! Post it to Spotify please. ;)
    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
  • PJ_Soul
    PJ_Soul Vancouver, BC Posts: 50,754
    edited February 2019
    Stairway To Heaven
    jeffbr said:
    cutz said:
    I can't lie to myself. Yes, STH is way overplayed, but when i got this Album around 1977/78 STH was the best song on this Album. Hell, its one of the best songs in Rock history. I can't recall the last time i've heard the whole song, but STH is the best song on IV.  Now, can some admit they are lying to themselves by voting against STH>LOL!!

    Really no wrong votes for this album, though, so you really can't go wrong.

    Enjoyed this Album choice. 
    Well said. There's a good, goddamned reason StH was overplayed. That's because it is one of the most iconic rock songs of all time. I know it is hip to pan songs that were "overplayed", but just because radio decided to play a song doesn't negate it's greatness. It is an issue completely tangential to the question in the poll, which is about a song's "weakness". Overplay has nothing to do with weakness or strength, only popularity. Levee is great, and I can't argue against any song on this album, as I think it is one of the most perfect albums. But to disregard StH because of "overplay" is nonsensical if we're considering a song's weakness. 
    It's a fantastic song. I don't really want to listen to it anymore (not to be hip, lol, nor because I don't think it's a masterpiece, but because it really did just come to bore me a little bit because of the ridiculous number of times in my life I've heard it), but that doesn't make it any less fantastic. But sorry, aren't our "weakest links" the ones we don't want to listen to? Or are we supposed to be making choices based on, like, a "professional" view of the songs, without bringing what we actually want to listen to least into it? If so, then yeah, STH should win this album.... But I didn't think that was what we were doing!
    Post edited by PJ_Soul on
    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
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