The demise of Led Zeppelin following the untimely alchohol related
death of legendary drummer John Bonham ensured the remaining
members of the band lived out their lives with somewhat fitful
solo careers with comparisons always being made between their
solo material and that of Led Zeppelin. By the end of the 70`s,
Led Zeppelin had lost favour with all the up and coming punk
acts of the day, their patchy album `Presence` from 1976 was
the beginning of the end really for Zep`s dinosaur blues rock,
punk rock had arrived and all of a sudden Jimmy Page seemed
about as cool as a safari suit and a polka dot tie. Punk rock
might have been an unfocused garage noise that gave you a mi-
graine, but it remained in vogue long enough to put a lot of
bluesey rock out of business. Led Zeppelin`s final album be-
fore Bonham`s death was the more pop influenced `In Through
The Out Door`, a weak album compared to Zep`s earlier ones
but it still contained the heartwarming ballad `All My Love`,
a song written and sung by singer Robert Plant following the
death of his toddler, and the disposable but hook laden `Hot
Dog`. Really speaking, the last great Zep album was PHYSICAL
GRAFFITI in 1975, a double album of daring eclectic experimen-
tation. Anything from the acoustic delta blues influenced `Black
Country Woman`, the growling thumping blues of `The Rover`, the
funk of `Custard Pie` or the orchestral eastern mystic of `Kash-
mir`. After 1980 when Zeppelin split, singer Robert Plant proved
to have the most successful career carving out a string of slick
pop rock albums which although pleasant and well produced never
captured the primal blues power of his former band. Guitarist
Jimmy Page post Zep is best known for forming the short lived
power rock group The Firm in 1985 with Free and Bad Company
vocalist Paul Rodgers the singer, and being half of the Cov-
erdale/Page supergroup that turned out a screamer of a blues
heavy rock album in 1993. Bass player John Paul Jones done
everything from being a session musician for the girl led
canadian band Heart to in more recent times being part of
the stoner rock trio THEM CROOKED VULTURES. Plant defi-
nitely done better than the other two in the commercial
success stakes, releasing albums under his own name ob-
viously did help. Plant saved his post-Zep best until 2006
in my opinion, in that year he and his backing band THE
STRANGE SENSATION released a critically well recieved but
totally underated album MIGHTY REARRANGER. Viewed
by some critics as being the best effort by Plant since
Zep`s own Physical Graffiti, the album is flavoured with
an assortment of musical styles, the most obvious being
the african rhythms of the Bendir. Plant`s band on the
album is John Baggot on keyboards and moog bass, Clive
Dreamer on drums and bendir, Justin Adams on electric
guitar, bendir, tehardant, lap steel and bass and Skin
Tyson the same as Adams minus the tehardant. Unof-
ficial guest band member Billy Fuller puts in a stun-
ning effort on double bass, this album is noticably
loaded to the hilt with double bass. Officially there
are 12 songs on MIGHTY REARRANGER, although it
comes with a few customary alternative versions and
/or outtakes that didn`t quite make the cut. My fa-
vorite songs on here is the most Africana beat driven
one of them all, ANOTHER TRIBE, a song which is a very
cynical observation of the uprise of religeous extrem-
ism across the world, the second song SHINE IT ALL
AROUND, which is very much in the Physical Graffiti
mould, the more pastoral ALL THE KINGS HORSES and
the echoey and big chorused THE ENCHANTER, not to-
tally unlike `The Rover` or `Sick Again` off Phys-
ical Graffiti in dynamics and build-up. A great
comeback for Plant after being written off by
many as a washed up flower power rocker and a
one time hard rock legend turned pop crooner.
It's pretty hard to rate a better complete work of an album for musicianship, content, originality and variation, especially over a double LP as Physical Graffiti, this is an album that still holds it's own.
ReplyDeleteOne can only wonder had John survived a little longer what the band had left, watching some of their live performances in particular "the immigrant song" or "Kashmir" you could hardly believe this band could get the sound quality live that they did and the live performances appeared to take it out of them.
Their names would have been so big after LZ, that working on other projects with other people wuld have always been compared to LZ.
As you say Plant was first out of the blocks with his own style, and "the principle of moments " was indeed a good (not great) album which produced a couple of hits ( Big Log etc )
Since LZ the remaining three have seemed a little aimless, but of late Jimmy with the black crows and John Paul's foray into "them crooked vultures show they still hit as hard as they ever did even if they are kind of genre specific and stuck in the time warp.
anyway I won't go on,
ps I've had no net for a couple of months, did ya miss me? ha ha.