Presence [Remaster] - Led Zeppelin (CD 1994)

Led Zeppelin's eighth album, Presence, was released in 1976, chronologically toward the end of the career of this great band. The album is remarkable because it revisits the raw, direct feel of their earliest work, and it really captures the essence of what this band was like in a live setting. Special effects are spare and the music is kept to its' elemental best--little if any mellotron, strings or other accompaniment is on this album, and the tracks are for the most part very simply produced. There are only seven tracks on the album, but there is a lot of music here, because it's almost...

Among all of the albums in Led Zeppelin's catalog, I had always believed 1976's Presence was the most underrated. Granted, it is a holding pattern album, rush recorded after Robert Plant's car accident prevented them from touring, which makes the decision to quickly enter the studio either based on an altruistic desire to give their fans something (otherwise known as "we owe it to them!"), or just a means to take their money (as in "they owe it to us!"), all depending on how cynical you view musicians and the music industry. Nevertheless, Presence finds Led Zeppelin just one year removed from.

Awww, yeah. Going to see Swan Song tonight, a cover band that plays around Texas and is amazingly accurate in their recreation of Zeppelin classics. The singer, Rich Pilgrim (who has to be the friendliest guy I ve met in the past ten years), wears a Robert Plant wig and has all of Percy s stage mannerisms down pat. The guitarist has his very own dragon suit (the black outfit Jimmy Page wore on stage that had various occult symbols stitched on) and even uses the theremin and bow as adeptly as the man himself did. The whole band is incredible and is about the next best thing to actually time...

So it goes that after making the epic double album Physical Graffiti (which was their best album) Led Zeppelin wound up going back to basics with the follow up album, 1976's Presence. While this may not have been a conscientious decision, it ultimately resulted in Presence being the most straightforward guitar rock album that Led Zeppelin ever made. The reason for this change in direction was partly due to the fact that Robert Plant had been injured in a serious car accident and thus couldn't move around as much. Also, there was a limited amount of time to record the album so there wasn't...