Top 5 versions of "Do You Wanna Dance"

1. Bobby Freeman (original, 1958)



2. The Beach Boys (1965)



3. The Ramones (1977)



4. T. Rex (1975)



5. The Mamas & the Papas (1966)

First impressions: Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin (1969)

I've never been a fan of Led Zeppelin, but some friends of mine keep trying to get me to like them. So I bought their first record and promised to give it a good listen. I'm going to blog my way through at least the first four records this way. These are my first impressions.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin (1969)

1. Good Times Bad Times

Good song. I probably heard this one before. Fucking awesome drums.

2. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You

Wasn't expecting things to slow down so soon. Not a bad song at first, but Jesus, it goes on for about 3 minutes too long.

3. You Shook Me

Fucking unbearable. Listening to this all the way through was torture. That it, until I got to the last 45 seconds of the song, where it just became so ridiculous and self-indulgent and over the top that I started to get a kick out of it. Still hate it, though.

4. Dazed and Confused

Okay, I know this one. This is one of those songs that I'm already sick of because I've heard it a million times, but at the same time I feel like I've never bothered to pay much attention to it, so I'm trying to listen to it now as though I'd never heard it before. It's definitely a cool song and I can imagine how much it would blow my mind if I was hearing it for the first time in 1969. It's such a weird riff, and the whole slow/fast, loud/quiet dynamic thing is effective. That guitar solo is really awful, though. Yeesh.

5. Your Time Is Gonna Come

I don't really have anything to say about this one. It's all right, I guess. It kind of just leaves me completely indifferent.

6. Black Mountain Time

What the hell just happened? Whoa. One song fades into the next. Bongos! Guitar goes crazy around the 1:30 mark. This is a nice little interlude. I can dig it. From what I know of the rest of the band's catalogue, it seems to foreshadow a whole other phase of their career or something.

7. Communication Breakdown

See, this is what I'm talking about. This and "Good Times Bad Times" are my two favourite songs so far, and they're both under 3 minutes. Of those three 6-minute-plus songs on side one, only Dazed and Confused really deserves to stretch out that long. This is straightforward and to the point. And it ends before I get sick of it.

8. I Can't Quit You Baby

The blues. I really hate Jimmy Page's guitar solos on this album. Except for John Bonham's drums, there's not much I like about this song.

9. How Many More Times

Of all the blues riffs on this album, this might be the coolest one. Nice fuzzy guitar sound, too. Even the guitar solo is kind of not as terrible as all the other ones. And then, what the fuck, there's a bolero beat all of a sudden. Then the song's over, except that it's not. It's not even halfway through. Oh, I get it. It's another one of those long indulgent songs. All right, I'm gonna stop making fun of it now. It's actually kinda cool. That reverb on the guitar is awesome. Oh, is this the part where Jimmy Page famously bows his guitar? I guess it must be. The beat that follows this part is pretty amazing, too. Then it stops. Then Robert Plant screams. And now we're back to the cool opening riff. Yeah, this is a cool song. I like it. I'm glad the album ends on a strong note, 'cause the previous song was a real bummer.

That's it for first impressions. I wrote this while listening to it for the first time, with headphones, while sitting on my bed in my underwear in the dark past midnight. I'm going to post this and then go to bed. I'll give the album a few more listens this week and then see if I have anything more to say about it.

Even though I may sound pretty dismissive of some of these songs, I'm going to try to keep and open mind and see if my opinion changes after a few more listens.

Nirvana: In Utero

I recently watched a television special about In Utero on YouTube that a friend of mine posted on Facebook. I hadn't heard or thought much about that album in years, so it was a nice opportunity to revisit those songs and think about both their impact on the musical landscape since then and how well they hold up almost two decades later.

As interesting as it was, I thought most of the commentary by the array of rock critics interviewed wasn't very insightful. They spent too much time speculating about the meaning of the lyrics and not enough time trying to figure out exactly what makes those songs work on a musical level. And while the format of the show was to look at every song individually, for some reason they completely ignored a few of the songs, including probably my favourite on the record, "Milk It."

So I decided to provide my own commentary.

Here's how it's gonna work. I'm going to listen to the whole record and write a few words about each song. I'm not going to overthink things or spend a lot of time trying to come up with brilliant interpretations of these songs. I just want to record my immediate impressions and reactions to these songs.

Serve the Servants

That discordant chord is a totally awesome way to open the album. I've always liked this guitar riff and if I ever played in a Nirvana cover band, this would definitely be one of the songs I would cover. The lyrics seem remarkably straightforward compared to some of the other more collage-y surrealistic nonsense found in later songs on the album. Cobain's voice is also very prominent in the mix, at least during the verses. Going somewhat against what you'd expect, his voice is less audible during the chorus. In fact, now that I think about it, the hook of this song is the verse rather than the chorus. It's much more melodic and catchy.

The guitar solo is also nice. I love how sharp and trebly that guitar is and how you can clearly hear it as an overdub, rather than trying to pretend it was part of the live performance. It's the kind of guitar solos that made this band impossible for my father to enjoy, because from a technical guitar-playing point of view, it's garbage. Which is of course why it's awesome. Also, I think you can hear Kurt Cobain clear his through before he starts singing again.

Scentless Apprentice

The booming drums in the intro of this song are pretty emblematic of the Albini production on this record. When the guitars kicked in, I was surprised by how distant they sound. Very roomy. The bass is also incredibly muddy. I can imagine this was probably part of what the record executives hated about Albini's production. The bridge before each chorus is kind of uncharacteristic of Nirvana. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it just sounds a little bit out of place. Cobain's screaming vocals in the chorus are super hot and distorted, which almost feels like a solution for the lack of presence the guitars have in the mix. It's a good solution, I think. It makes this song one of the harshest and most abrasive on the record, which shows how carefully thought out the song order is in the first half of the record: start with the catchy hook of "Serve the Servants," get ugly with "Scentless Apprentice" and possibly lose some of your audience, then follow it with one of the prettiest songs on the record, "Heart Shaped Box," the hit single.

Heart Shaped Box

This song is a masterpiece. And it's hard to dissociate it from the brilliant music video by Anton Corbjin. The production is really clean, with all the instruments coming through very distinctly. I love the vocal harmonies during the verses. I think Cobain had a real talent for coming up with simple but interesting harmonies and it's something that doesn't often get discussed or recognized about Nirvana. This is the first example of them that we get on this record, but I'll point out some of my other favourite ones as we go along.

One thing I really like about this is how short the guitar solo is. When it launches, it's so epic that you expect it to go on for much longer, but it barely has time to get into a groove before everything suddenly gets really quiet again. It's a great example of restraint.

Rape Me

I think I could stand to never hear this song again. This is the kind of catchy song that would have fit better on Nervermind than on In Utero. It's also the kind of song that probably had the biggest influence on other bands that rode the commercial "alternative" music wave in the wake of Nirvana's success. I don't like it very much. This is the low point of the album for me. The only highlight is those vocal harmonies during the bridge.

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle

Great song. Cool chord progression. Awesome drums (that "thoom-thoom-thoom-paw-thoom" pass in the chorus is classic). Nice quiet/loud dynamic. The lyrics are pretty good, especially the single-line chorus: "I miss the comfort in being sad."

My favourite part of the song is the end of the first verse, when Cobain doesn't turn off the distortion pedal after the loud part and there's all this intrusive screechy feedback. If it wasn't for those few "chug-chug" muted power chords he throws in, I would almost wonder if this wasn't just an accident that they decided to leave in there because it added an interesting and unexpected dynamic to the verse. And what's so great about it is that he doesn't repeat the trick during any of the other verses. I'm a big fan of using this kind of one-off trick that just makes your audience want to listen to the song over and over again to hear that really cool part that never repeats.

The only weak part of the song is probably the guitar solo. Which isn't really a guitar solo so much as a bridgy kind of new riff that they didn't bother to add lyrics to. It's not terrible, but it doesn't really do much for me. I could have just done without it.

Dumb

This is another very Nervermind-sounding song, but unlike "Rape Me," I really like this one. I think the reason it works for me is mostly the chord change into the chorus, which is highlighted by the very pretty cello part. Plus, it's another good example of vocal harmonies. (I wonder if it's Dave Grohl singing the high part or Kurt Cobain.) I also like the contrast between the sadness of the melody and the fact that he's singing about being stupidly happy. Nice little song.

Very Ape

Love this song. Short and sweet. Nice crunchy guitar sound that perfectly fits this almost danceable riff. Cutting the second guitar during the first half of the second verse was such a wise move. It was just about to get annoying and its sudden disappearance is as much a welcome respite as it introduces a sense that something is missing. It illustrates both why it needed to be there in the first place and why it needed to go away. I think it's brilliant, because the conventional thing to do would have been to not include it in the first verse and then add it in the second one, as the traditional way to arrange instrumentation is to build up as the song progresses.

This song also has some of my favourite lyrics on the album: "If you ever need anything, please don't / Hesitate to ask someone else first / I'm too busy acting like I'm not naive / I've seen it all and I was here first"

Milk It

There it is. Best song on the record. I don't even know where to begin explaining everything that is awesome about this song. For one thing, the stop-start dynamic and the way not all the instruments always conform to it, if that makes any sense. The awesome and yet kind of stupid guitar riff. The sheer nonsensical abstraction of the double guitar solo. The way Cobain hesitates or sort of half chuckles before the last time he yells "Test meat." The way he keeps fucking up the lyrics. The absurdity of the line "Ecto-plasma ecto-skeletal." And the way it all ends so abruptly. It's all perfect.

Pennyroyal Tea

This is probably my least favourite song on the record after "Rape Me." I don't know why exactly. It's just kind of boring to me.

Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

All the critics in the TV special were kind of baffled by this song. They all seemed to consider it one of the worst songs on the record. One of them struggled to come up with something insightful to say about it and ended up with: "It's very much a one-line song. It's... 'What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me?' And that's... That's a legitimate question that he's asking in that song." Jesus Christ, if you have nothing to say, just shut the fuck up.

For one thing, this is not a one-line song. The verses are packed with (mostly collaged, semi-nonsensical) lyrics. You don't need to think about this song or come up with some clever interpretation in order to enjoy it. I kind of think of it as an attempt to capture some of the noisier and more chaotic performances that famously ended most Nirvana sets, leading to Cobain trashing his guitar on stage. It's chaotic and ugly and loud. And that's the point.

Tourette's

This sounds like a throwback to Bleach. And that's why it's awesome. I can't understand anything Cobain says in it. I guess I could look it up, but whatever. This is like one final burst of aggression before the album's stellar closing statement.

All Apologies

There couldn't possibly have been a more perfect way to end this album. And, as it turns out, Nirvana's career. It's beautiful, poignant, and sad. And in a strange way, kind of unapologetic, despite its title.

(I'm not going to comment on the secret song, because I feel like it's a stupid gimmick and it shouldn't even be there. I don't really consider it part of the album.)