Stairway is (IMHO) legitimately one of Zep’s best. But so overplayed my ears don’t take it in any more unless I can listen to a bootleg (not the stock recording) that was recorded under optimal conditions. I don’t happen to have such a recording. I have to sort of recall hearing it circa 1977 to get a sense of the quality.
Baba O’Reilly is similarly a quite nice Who track, and stands up well. Probably helps that I don’t have a teevee set (is it CSI that is deploying it as their theme music?)
Comfy Numb isn’t even in the top 50 of Floyd trax. Heck it doesn’t even fare well among Floyd tracks that start with a “C”. { Careful with that Axe; Cirrus Minor; Cymbaline; Childhood’s End; Chapter 24; Corporal Clegg; Comfortably Numb; Crying Song }. I don’t hit the “next track” button or anything but I’m surprised it gets such a following.
a) Stairway to Heaven
b) Baba O’Reilly
c) Comfortably Numb
Oddly enough when I heard the SRTS version of Stairway, the one with the bass much higher in the solo, I realized that the production of Stairway is one of its high points (except perhaps at the very very end.)
What’s up with More and “C” songs, wow. Cirrus Minor also accomplishes what it sets out to do the same was CN does (strung out music.) If the rest of the album was like that it’d be up there with The Wall.
It’s an album with some nice high points but too many tracks that are just weird mutterings and some plunking of chords, or go-nowhere rhythmical fragments (Up the Khyber, Party Theme, More Blues, Quicksilver, Spanish Theme). Could probably win trivia contests with that list on “PF selections least likely to be played on the radio”…
It’s a soundtrack and I guess they needed more material to add up to a whole album so they threw in random bits of audio from the movie that had working titles for PF to perform as background mood audio, and pretended they were more than that.
Of course you’re right about CN being “words by Roger, music by Dave”. According to Roger, the song recounts his encounter with a “Dr. Feelgood” before a performance. That’s what I meant by it being “his” song.
Heh. Pete mentioned that exact video in a recent blog post:
I’ve listened to all of the above on youtube. Nope. This beat them all, instrumentally, beatwise, etc: http://youtube.com/watch?v=TqPy2CgT73Q … I loves me some Doobie Brothers.
Commentary: The Who song is a great song. The other two are great for me mostly because of the memories I associate with them. Aah, college days.
PS - The American Idol person who did “Baba” didn’t do a bad job since considering the show makes them cut the songs down to about 90 seconds. It was a bad song choice, 'considering that limitation, but let’s not be prejudiced against a performer just because they’re on a TV show.
