Dear Nathaniel,
Hello my angel, it was nice going to see you today and your new flowers look absolutely lovely. I'm so happy that I'm able to do this to talk to you, it makes things just a bit better when I'm writing. Our cats are all being quite amusing really and whenever they're playful I just think about how nice it would have been for you to play with them.
Tonight we're listening to Led Zeppelin's only double album Physical Graffiti. Although given Led Zeppelin's penchant for long concerts; I spent two and a half hours last night listening to a great 1973 bootleg recording, it's not the longest Led Zeppelin experience. I'm really enjoying this rediscovery of Led Zeppelin's music with you, it has been awhile since I've listened through all of their albums and bootlegs and watched the DVD's.
It's easy to forget just how much you enjoy the music of a certain band and In My Time of Dying is a perfect example of that. Listening to this song now it just brings back all of those great feelings that I associate with Led Zeppelin and really enjoying their music. While that is present on all their albums I can feel it more now that I've spent so much time listening to the band in the past few days. It's a small obsession based on a huge passion of mine and it makes me feel so good. I think I'll probably end up listening to Presence tonight after this and then of course again tomorrow with you. I might listen to another bootleg show as well.
This album wasn't originally intended to be a double album but when they went to studio they found that the songs they had recorded were too long to fit on a single album, and being incredibly satisfied with the quality of the songs they decided to make it a double album and release some other songs that had yet to make the cut from previous albums since they had enough great songs to fill out the remainder of the needed time.
One thing I find interesting is Houses of the Holy's inclusion of the album, the band had recorded and mixed it to Led Zeppelin standard but felt it didn't fit on it's namesake album. I think it takes a lot to eventually make that decision of removing the title track from an album and it shows an incredible devotion to the concept of the album and how an album should feel.
Led Zeppelin also experiment a bit more with funk on Trampled Under Foot and it just pumps you full of energy, which you really need for Kashmir. Kashmir is a really special song and along with In the Light is probably the high point of the album, but I suppose it depends on your favourite Led Zeppelin style. Kashmir's sound is incredibly far ahead of its time in a way that I find slightly disappointing. It features essentially a constant barrage of sound which is great for short passages in an album, but now generally most songs are recorded like this and I for one really like bands to have the confidence to have things go silent for even a split second, it's really hard to describe.
It's so amazingly lucky that this did end up being a double album or many of the tracks might not have received the extra attention and studio work to be acceptable to be released. I love the interesting sound to Down by the Seaside which should have been on Led Zeppelin IV. I don't think it would have fit on that album which is why I assume it wasn't included in favour of one of the other songs that made it onto the album.
Ten Years Gone is a great example of the silence I was talking about, Led Zeppelin are confident enough in their musical ability and timing to let the record go silent at times. This is especially admirable live with various timings since it shows a great deal of chemistry within a band to be able to pull it off well and Led Zeppelin were one of those bands that were basically able to achieve whatever they wanted musically, in part due to how well they play together.
The song Black Country Woman was recorded in the backyard of Mick Jagger's mansion at the time. It has a great outdoor sound that I find quite familiar when thinking of lo-fi black metal bands. Of course the sound is acoustic and quite far away from metal but it has that certain feeling.
I love you my angel. I hope you enjoyed the first double album we've listened to so far. It might only be a little bit longer than some CD albums released nowadays but it's still quite a long slog when being used to 30-40 minute albums. I miss you so much, every day. Goodnight Nathaniel.
Love from Dad.
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