Customer Reviews

Physical Graffiti (2CD)

5 star:		(201)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Despite its diversity, it's a mess of an album. Most of the songs are annoying, silly things. Despite that, there is some good music, jimmy page is always worth hearing on guitar. He has some fine moments with 'the rover', 'ten years gone by' 'in my time of dying'. 'kashmir' is overrated as a tune, but the sound is good. Nice acoustic guitar cameo, 'bron yr aur'. Then you have muck like 'down by the seaside' and 'boogie with stu' and 'custard pie'. Uneven in quality, taken from studio work from 1972 and 1974, showing that the boys are running out of ideas. They only made 3 more albums,which are poor. Still, I salute them for all the enjoyment their music has given me. Thank you

Musically speaking, this album is incredible. John Bonham is on fire. There are a few songs here that I do really enjoy. Trampled Under Foot, Kashmir, Ten Years Gone, and Down By The Seaside. Lot's of standard Zeppelin rockers like House of The Holy, Custard Pie, and the Wanton Song(great title, if nothing else). The problem is, though, that these songs bear a very striking similarity to all of their previous upbeat rockers. As usual, the lyrics are silly and secondary to the music. The thing about the album is that while your average garage band could never come up with something on this level, I don't really enjoy the album. In My Time Of Dying is the best example of this. An 11 minute jam which may be both Jimmy Page's and John Bonham's best ever work. The only problem is the song is awful. It's probably the least enjoyable song on the album.

I must admit that I'd like Zep a little better if not for Plant's vocals. Screeching is not singing.

The unsung hero of this group was JP Jones. Underreated as a musician and composer and never given his just due.

PG is probably my favorite Zeppelin recording, but it's not in the classic category by any means.

Listen to me. If you're thinking about buying physical graffiti, I won't discourage you, but I'm an expert zeppelin and can tell you that these people really don't know what they're talking about.

First, let me tell you that I am a devout zeppelin fan; I own every single one of their albums and know more about them then 99% of the fans out there. I can honestly say that Physical Graffiti is highly overrated.

At this point in their career, Zep was going into the "addiction" phase; it took them 18 months to put this album out compared to the usual 9 months for others. To compensate, the band made it appear that they had created 2x as many songs. But oh contrare! The Rover, Houses of the Holy, Bron-Yr-Ar, The Wanton Song, Boogie With Stu and Night Flight were all "left-overs" from previous albums that they never used. (Night Flight wasn't even their song; the Rolling Stones wrote it!)

Kashmir, one of the only reasons to buy this album, was written before they got into the studio, so that leaves a few good songs left--Ten Years Gone (which sounds like Page and Plant material), Trampled Underfoot (which was ripped off from Stevie Wonder), and In The Light (which they wrecked; the studio version sounds much better).

You may argue that the album was successful because it sold 10 million copies. True, however, by that time, Zep had made such a name for themselves that the fans would have bought almost anything. And because it was a "straightforward" rock and roll album, it was exactly what the fans wanted.

Their next album displayed a band grossly plagued by addiction, however, because of their name, Zep went platinum before the it even came out in stores. However, their problems were so deep that it has only sold another million in the past 23 years that it has been on sale.

So, that's how it is, and if you want to buy this album, go for it because I'm not trying to stop you. All that I'm saying is that Zep was beginning to grow wary because of addiction problems at the time, and put a lousy album out as a result.

I never heard the majority of the songs on this double album (except for the classics like Kashmir and Ten Years Gone, etc) and I was super impressed! I am in LOVE with Sick Again and Boogie With Stu. All the tracks on this album are good, and have a really great high energy feel! The guitar work in this is phenomanal, really bluesy feeling, and the drumming like always is spot on and really heavy! Plant's vocals are great, althought they can get pretty whiny at times (in a good way though), the lyrics are interesting. Jones has some great bass lines here, and the keyboards in some of the songs are just awesome!
I'm in love with this album! BUY IT!

Com Se Come sa would be the best way to describe this Led Zeppelin CD. The drumming as usual is strong and Jimmy Page has some nice guitar runs. However, Robert Plant's voice and the length of some of these songs just try my patience. In My Time Of Dying bleeds for over eleven minutes of grunting and screaming guitars. The tone varies a little at the beginning which is somewhat creative. However, this song should be about five or six minutes at best. Kashmir is another song that at eight and a half minutes really is annoying as well. Just don't like Plant's tone at all with the ooh yeah hee yeah's here as well as as his caterwailing on the more tolerable Trampled Under Foot.

High Points on this recording include Houses of The Holy, Down By The Seaside, Night Flight, and The Wanton Song. Great riffs on that last tune and some good variations in the melody as well. Night Flight features some cool drumming by Bonham.

Boogie With Stu and Black Country Woman are decent numbers but not first rate material. The music is cool but the lyrics are kind of pedestrian. At least these songs add a little variety to this disc.

Throw in the cool cover design and I'll round up this recording to three stars.

Ponderous, repetitious, and overly long (should have been one LP instead of two when originally released), "Physical Graffiti" even had to have the title song swiped from the previous (and far superior) album "House of the Holy" added to this morass to make it more palatable.The well was running dry for Plant and Page when this album was spawned, and it was to be downhill into medicority after this.Led Zeppelin made some great albums, but this isn't one of them.

If you like Tunes other than Stairway and Whole Lotta Love by LZ, then by all means, get this album. For me though, Plant's voice really got on my nerves during songs like Black country woman. You expect a man singing about a woman would be a little bit more mannish. Plant is extremely talented as a vocalist and lyricist and composer and even a decent musician. However, his voice is not for everybody. Though This has great vocals for Plant, if you don't like his voice, don't bother. It's full of that same voice that irritates some and causes others to be lovestruck and awestruck. It has a nice acoustic instrumental called BRON-YR-AUR.

The only problem is that no matter how nice it is, it's the only thing on the album that was short and not drug out. If I had to play devil's advocate, I'd say that this was just way to self indulgent. In my time of dying gave way to a few great jamming parts, but man- it could have easily been cut in half.

I like Zepplin but as somebody whose just not a huge fan, I really wouldn't buy this album twice. If it were shorter and more to the point and had lower less frenzied vocals, I'd love the music of Kashmir and Trampled under foot and Down by the seaside. But if it had those things, it wouldn't be LZ so what can I say. This album just isn't for non-fans. It represents Zepplin in a perfect way though. The folk- the blues- the rock- the eastern flavors- it's all in there and mixed up. Just like Zepplin. For any fan, just not for me.

Plant's voice was shot by this time, but all in all, not bad.

Physical Graffiti (1975.) Led Zeppelin's sixth album.

By 1975, Led Zeppelin had already proven themselves to be gods of rock and roll. What the Beatles were to the sixties, Led Zeppelin was to the seventies. The band had already released five albums, each one of which being excellent. Already they had experimented with a number of sounds, sometimes with excellent results, sometimes with, well, less than stellar results. The band released its sixth album, entitled Physical Graffiti, in 1975. How do Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones measure up this time around? Read on for my review of the album.

This is Led Zeppelin's most lengthy album, and the only one of their studio albums that is long enough to merit a two compact disc release. Many people compare Led Zeppelin to the Beatles, and perhaps this album is one of the greatest parallels between the two bands - it is VERY similar to the Beatles' self-titled "White" album in a number of ways. The first disc features seven hard-rocking instant classics that have since become Led Zepplin fan favorites. Is it humanly possible NOT to enjoy the classic hard rock stylings of Custard Pie and the Rover? Perhaps one of the most interesting songs of all is In My Time Of Dying, a song that Bob Dylan originally recorded on his 1962 self-titled debut album. The band brings new life into an already excellent song - something they proved they could do beautifully on their own debut album. Houses Of The Holy gives us more of that blues-flavored hard rock that the band served up so heavily in the old days, and does a damn good job of it. Trampled Under Foot is one of the band's most memorable rockers of all, mostly due to its catchy beat and instrument stylings. But the most memorable track of all on the album, is by far, the legendary Kashmir. The band's combination of hard rock with a somewhat middle-eastern sound makes for a damn fine tune. The first disc was nothing but masterpieces, no questions asked. Sadly, the second disc isn't fortunate enough to be so lucky. The second disc has many excellent songs, but there are also many of them that fall below the band's usual standard. This is one of the interesting parallels with the Beatles' self-titled album - they are both dual-disc, "hit or miss" albums that would have been better off being a single-disc album of nothing but masterpieces than the dual-disc mixture of masterpieces and fillers. Still, even though many of those songs fall below Led Zeppelin's usual standard, they are still VERY good when compared with other bands of any era. This is NOT a bad album by any means - in fact, it's very good - just not Zeppelin's best.

Like the other Led Zeppelin albums (as of July 19, 2004), the version of the album that is readily available in stores is the most recent remastered version. Sadly though, due to Zeppelin's massive popularity, many stores will jack up the price of their albums. Fortunately, the band offers an alternative to wasting too much money - the Complete Studio Recordings box set. I urge you to buy this set and NOT to buy the albums separately - otherwise you're going to get ripped off - in particular on this album, because it is dual-disc.

Physical Graffiti isn't quite the masterpiece that some Zeppelin fans hold it out to be, but it is still a damn fine album (there is no such thing as a bad Led Zeppelin studio album.) If you're new to the band, DO NOT buy a hits compilation - none of them can do the band justice. Also, don't start with this album. While good, it's bound to give you the wrong impression about the band. As a final verdict, I would have to recommend this album only to die-hard fans of the band due to the dual-disc nature jacking the price up. New fans, I suggest either shelling out the cash and getting the Complete Studio Recordings box set, or starting with the band's untitled fourth album. To put it simply, Physical Graffiti IS a damn good album, it's just not the best starting place.