Tommy v Physical Graffiti

I´v already pointed out in the ´Best of the USA´ thread that, as much as I love Led Zeppelin, they were a Class C artist, but I´m going to further point if out by picking what a lot (of American idiots) say is their greatest album and put it against the 2nd-best double-album by The Who:



vs



One is a conceptual revolutionary double-album of excellent rock music.
The other is a double-album of cock-rock and flatfoot heavy-rock.

 

LOL

Double album loaded with great songs versus a tedious and pretentious "rock opera" about a blind deaf mute sex abuse victim who excels at pinball

No contest unless you're a massive fag

 

Gotta agree with cdogg here. Have always thought Tommy was crap.

 

You've redeemed yourself

 

I guaran-fuckin-tee you that the last time you even heard The Rover, Boogie With Stu, Custard Pie, Down By The Seaside, Black County Woman...etc...was the day you fuckin bought this album .

Forgettable shit.

 

Black Country Woman is the only bad song on the whole album

It's fucking great... I love every one of those songs except Boogie which is still fun

 

We used to do Down By The Seaside in my old band back in the day... we didn't have a good tremolo sound so I ran the guitar through a phaser and cranked the rate up to create a sort of Leslie sound for the lead guitar parts during the chorus

 

I'm not going to slag you off for liking it because after all it's Led Zeppelin, it's a double album, it has a wide range of styles, it sounds acceptable and it came out at their commercial peak.

But in reality they were just about done as a band.
And if you get your objective head on, deep down you'd agree.

All it takes is the first few bars of Custard Pie and anyone who really knows Zeppelin would be "Yep. The magic's gone"
That's Zeppelin reduced to Grand Funk Railroad.

And the lyrics...I mean come on:
"From the houses of the holy, we can watch the white doves go
From the door comes satan's daughter, and it only goes to show, you know
There's an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold
Let me wander in your garden and the seeds of love I'll sow you know"

Hur-hur-hur-hur!!


Four fucking decent songs:
Trampled Underfoot
Kashmir
In My Time Of Dying
Ten Tears Gone

 

Honestly didn't even read past the first couple of sentences... didn't need to... same daft nonsense you said in the Music thread on page whatever

Go play some pinball, you fucking dork

 

As for Tommy, I fuckin knew cdogg was going the rock-opera route cos he's so predictable in these threads.

The actual music of Tommy is usually neglected when it comes to battles about the importance of this rock opera and whether it makes sense or not.
Fuck the story: name me a record that has more original guitar riffs and I'll fuck yo up foreva.
This is Pete Townshend's high point as a composer:
'Go To The Mirror'
'Pinball Wizard'
'Amazing Journey'
'Sparks'
'I'm Free'
'We're Not Gonna Take It'
'See Me Feel Me'

All different, but they all have something in common: built on short, simple, catchy and consequently brilliant riffs.

 

Translation: Mustard has fucked me again.

 

Translation: You're going to go play pinball because you're a fucking nerd

 

Jimmy Page "Yeah, management says we need to make a big splash with the next album."
John Paul Jones "How so?"
JP "Well there are other bands doing qute well at the moment. Black Sabbath have cracked America, Deep Purple are louder than us, Jethro Tull are selling out stadiums quicker than we are and Pink Floyd are selling albums by the warehousefull without releasing singles."
Robert Plant "But I thought that was our thing?"
JP "It was, but we've got competition now."
JPJ "So what's the plan?"
JP "We release a double album, using all the new material and all the cast-offs from our previous albums."
JPJ "That sounds a bit of a cop-out. If the stuff wasn't good enough to go on the other albums, what makes it good enough to go on this album?"
JP "Because it's a double and loads of people are more impressed with size over quality."
John Bonham "Hurr hurr."
JPJ "Look, why don't we just use the really good new stuff and abandon the rest?"
JP "Because we've got to look bigger and better than the competition."
JPJ "So we're going to sacrifice the quality for quantity?"
JB "Hurr hurr."
JP "Well not really, cos the new stuff that's good is really good and we don't want to set the bar too high."
JB "Where's the bar?"
JP "Also, we can draw out some of the songs to unnecessary lengths to pad it out a bit. Planty, can you write some more lyrics for us?"
RP "Can't I just do what I usually do and go 'Ooh yeah', 'Oh darling' and yelp a bit instead?"
JP "Yeah, I think we'll get away with that."
JPJ "But we don't need to pad anything out, we can just put out one really good single album!"
JP "But that's just not the big over-the-top statement that Led Zeppelin needs to make."
JB "Where´s the bar?"

 

yep

 

15 songs

8 or 9 are great
3 or 4 are excellent
1 is a harmlessly fun throwaway
1 is a legitimately lousy song

Translation- the album is fucking great

Seriously this isn't even a contest... I doubt Pete Townshend himself could sit through a listening of the whole Tommy ... it's beyond tedious and its drama is embarrassing

 

I'd never listen to either but anything is better than LZ

 

Conversation recorded circa 1968:

Pete Townshend (PT, holding an album in his hands) : have you seen this?
Roger Daltrey (RD) : what's that, then?
PT: remember Dick Taylor?
John Entwistle (JE) : sure, used to play with The Rolling Stones in the old days ... has some group called Pretty Things
PT: right, The Pretty Things. This is their new album. It's called "S.F. Sorrow"
Keith Moon (KM) : aye?
PT: It's the future is what it is lads
RD: what are you on about, mate?
PT: it's a man's life story set to music! Birth-childhood-coming of age-love-war-aging-death, the whole thing! Look, they've even included a written story inside!
JE: Sounds a bit camp, innit?
RD: aye, like Broadway
KM: aye, what else 'ave you got, a ballet starring 'erman's 'ermits?
(Laughter from JE, RD, KM)
PT (indignant) : I'm bloody serious! We can do bigger and better than this. I've already got a concept worked up... its based on what I've learned from Meher Baba and it's about this kid who's deaf dumb and blind
JE (incredulous) : fuck's sake
PT: listen we need a new direction... we've got no money because Moonie and I keep destroying our instruments to pump up the audience because our songs are mediocre and we needed a gimmick to get noticed so now we have to wreck our stuff every night to keep up and we're drowning in debt
RD (sarcastically) : right so we have the blind deaf mute kid get a gig driving buses and one day he gets assigned to a new bus only it's the MAGIC BUS from that daft song we recorded a few months ago and everybody lives 'appily ever after... oh that's brilliant, Pete, I like it
KM (sarcastic) : oh aye it's brilliant
PT: look, until you lot learn how to write songs, I'm the only one producing original music here. You're welcome to write 10 songs right now and we'll see what sort of album we've got then
(Silence)
PT: as I expected... now here's the idea... The boy is called Tommy
KM: catholic then?
PT (irritated) : fuck off! Now Tommy is born normal, you see but when he's very young he sees his father murder his stepfather and
JE: so the parents divorced then? Not very Catholic, is it?
PT (apoplectic) : IT DOESN'T MATTER RIGHT NOW! His mum tells him he didn't see or hear anything and he must never tell anyone anything... he retreats inward
RD: so is that when he converts from Catholicism to Hinduism or whatnot?
(PT storms off enraged)

 

But you´ve gone down that obvious path that anyone critical of Tommy always does: it´s concept.

You need to hold the middle ground once in awhile, forget the rock-opera nonsense and concentrate on the music.

 

The music is boring ... there might be three mildly decent songs on the whole album

You can't just arbitrarily divorce it from its concept simply because you know the concept is a giant cornball albatross weighing it down and ensuring its comprehensive awfulness

 

Your dismissals of Physical Graffiti are laughably superficial and basically mirror hut's which are ostensibly based on the perceived drug use choices of listeners and Robert Plant's hair

 

No they´re not.
They´re based on the songs, a lot of which are padded-out or filler or just horribly generic rockers.

 

Negative

The songs are superb as I've previously noted and no band with three such unique musicians in it could ever sound "generic"

Foghat is "generic"

Even at their absolute worst, Led Zeppelin is never "generic" because they simply can't be... they are the only band that sounds like them (as illustrated by the many awful bands who tried to sound like them and failed miserably)

For the record I would never use that word to describe the Keith Moon edition of The Who either even though I don't like their songs very much

It's just a poor adjective for these bands

 

I mean Led Zeppelin is a "Class C artist"... what absolutely nonsensical tripe

You need a good tuning up

 

What point you´re missing is that, I love Zeppelin...but Im not one of those over-the-top American pricks who claim they´re as important and relevant as The Beatles.
My rating is based on stuff like Originality, Listenability, Diversity, Resonance...on a basic score out of 5, Led Zeppelin for me, score: 4, 4, 3, 3 = 3.5
That, is a C+ or if Im really pushed, B-.

 

Yeah it's a bunch of stuffy Brit-centric nonsense from a guy that thinks Deep Purple was good

Here's a good rating system for you

Perceptiveness - 0.5
Hearing ability - 1.0
Taste - 0.5
Needs gob utterly smashed in? Yes
Overall grade = F, D-minus if I'm pushing it

Solution: How about a Final one?

 

Originality: 1 point off for not being the purveyors of that 60s-70s hard-rock sound
Listenability: 1 point off for Robert Plant
Diversity: 2 points off for trying but failing, inc. the attempt on Houses Of The Holy
Resonance: Rock-tunes are great, ballads not-so much and almost fake at times.
= 14 points out of 20

Deep Purple, although I prefer, they score lower but also get rated Class C

 

Absolute Drivel ^

 

See? That´s what you´re reduced to when ya got nowhere ta go!

 

There's not more needed

A guy has a daft rating system that somehow places a band that doesn't have ONE genuinely good song in the same level as a band with literally dozens of them

Deep Purple = Imagine Zeppelin with a singer 10 times more annoying at his best than Plant at his worst, imagine they didn't like black American music at all, have no idea how to write songs, have a more precise guitarist with 1/100 the imagination and a bellend keyboardist who thought plugging a B-3 into a Marshall stack was a good idea and you've got it. Absolutely horrid shite. They belong in the dustbin with ELP.

 

All of the above is more or less factually incorrect.