Day 39: Led Zeppelin - Coda

Dear Nathaniel,

I love you my little angel, I hope you know just how much. Tonight we're listening to the last Led Zeppelin studio album released after the band had disbanded following the death of John Bonham. Coda is the shortest Led Zeppelin album, due to the lack of material given that most of the songs that had previously been unreleased were featured on Physical Graffiti.

Given the massive effort Jimmy Page has taken since the release of Coda in remastering all of Led Zeppelin's catalogue this album sounds infinitely better remastered than it did when first released which was the version of this album I had been familiar with previously. Because of the remasters Coda becomes very much a good Led Zeppelin album, in my eyes even better than In Through the Out Door.

Coda also has the distinction of featuring live performances on a studio album with previously unreleased cover of We're Gonna Groove and then a live version of I Can't Quit You Baby which is the only song featured on two Led Zeppelin albums (the first and the last). Of course the live feel has been edited out of the recordings giving them more of an energetic studio feel, but it's still very noticeable on I Can't Quit You Baby.

The second side of Coda is undoubtedly the strongest of the album and if not a fitting end to the greatest band of all time, at least an adequate one. It includes a drum solo by John Bonham and three albums cut from In Through The Out Door. The In Through the Out Door rejects are much better examples of Led Zeppelin sound than the songs that made it onto the album.

While Led Zeppelin were incredibly instrumental in defining the sound of their own era their like was never to be seen again. This style of hard rock essentially died with John Bonham and it's such a huge shame because even as heavier bands have come along they were never able to recapture the stripped down yet complex sound of Led Zeppelin.

Of course Led Zeppelin has still been able to influence a lot of great music but nothing has ever come close to surpassing them. I'm not sure exactly where to go tomorrow. I know I can't exactly be playing something similar to Led Zeppelin because it won't compare well at all. We might explore some more progressive rock or jump straight into punk, or better yet play the music that inspired Led Zeppelin, blues. Maybe we'll look at jazz a bit more and then ease ourselves into Jazz Fusion, that would probably be the best way to go about it.

I hope you're okay with that Nathaniel, and I hope you've really enjoyed listening to what is essentially Led Zeppelin's full discography, missing a few b-sides and bonus tracks from Coda, but it can't really be helped. We might have to go revisit the band at some point in the future. I love you Nathaniel, good night.

Love from Dad.