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7 Comments

  1. Mike Powers
    March 4, 2016 @ 10:34 pm

    I think the Presence album is Zeppelin’s best. It’s a forgotten album. Just like the first album it was recorded in a short time frame. The critic refers to side two as filler tracks. I disagree. The entire album flows together. To this day it is my favorite rock album and favorite Zeppelin album. I lived outside of NYC when this album was released. It received a huge amount of airplay. It saw more airplay than Physical Graffiti.

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  2. Led (yeah I used it) Kirill
    June 13, 2016 @ 5:59 pm

    love love this album!

    …maybe my favorite Zep from start to finish. Holds up very well on repeated listens.

    At least twice a year I love to play the CD until I get sick of it. But its a tough one to get sick of. Its like being a chocoholic: cant get enough.

    I also grew up in a suburb of NYC and a lot of the songs from it were played on the radio, especially “achilles” and “nobodys fault”….also “candy store” & “royal Orleans” were played, just not as much.

    “for your life” is a song about the dangers of coke. find the lyrics on line. its all there as well as near the beginning of the song “c-c-coka-coka-k-kaine….” “try and fry it”

    “heard a cry for mercy in the city of the damned.”

    “fall on the ground…” ” ‘hello ground’ ”

    “faking it for your life” “do it if you wanna” call and response. good angel vs bad angel suggestions (being temped) for & against doing it. The guitar is wonderful: Twangorama!

    There is some kind of growl when he says “paying through the nose”….””crystal” is also mentioned somewhere.

    “Tea for One” has many GREAT guitar phrases/licks providing aural coloring throughout. You think its a bit slow because all of the other songs rock or swing but this is fantastic mid-1970s Led Zep blues….but with a bit of a psi-fi vibe to it. Don’t listen to it only once. I never noticed right away all of its good points. But once I got into it, I really enjoyed. Its not like the earlier slow blues songs, based off of more standard blues cords & sounds. More abstract and “modern” feeling to it. Like listening to british blues in a late 20th century Scandinavian living room :)

    ….a great vibe arrives when Plant signs…”to sing a song to you”…then bonhamn’s thud thud on the bass drum, guitar and bass lock into a low end groove & swagger….”this one is for we two”….”many hours slip into day”…”a minute seems like a lifetime…baby, when I feel this way”…. simply perfect.

    ….also some of the better songs are long and repetitious because you want to hang out and socialize to them. And after you are talking and hanging out, the song is still playing. Its very cool how the best grooves are repeated, and these sequences of sound, like in Kashmir, where the original riff & groove comes & then go away and then comes around again, especially in “Achilles Last Stand”and “Nobodys Fault”. These are some of Zeps most original grooves and playing so you really don’t mind if they go on long. More of a good thing :)

    Its called “Presence” for a reason: Its an album with a lot of vibe to it. Just a really cool CD to soak up. Its a glorious version of Zep being a garage band and jamming out….

    enjoy

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    • Gav
      May 10, 2017 @ 8:29 am

      Best Sep L.P…Like musical form of crack…can’t get enough

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      • Gav
        May 10, 2017 @ 8:57 am

        I meant Best Zep (obviously )

        Reply

  3. Bill Tolles
    June 5, 2017 @ 4:14 pm

    One I went thru my 2nd Zep phase it was 1985. I had went thru the first Zep phase in ’82 when I went out and bought ‘CODA’. Loved that record, and subsequently bought IV. Thats about all the Zep I had. I was going thru a HARDCORE WHO phase, and primarily listened to ONLY them when I was so inclined to ‘ROCK OUT’. Well, about that time I was hanging with a friend of a friend WHO was the BIGGEST ZEP fan I’d ever met!! He had this HUGE ZEP poster on his wall in his apartment. And like EVERY ZEP record including boots. So, we would go over after work the summer of ’85 and hang. Of course the tea would come out and then the music. ZEP!! He had a decent sound system and because his pad was in the basement, he could CRANK IT most nights!
    So, after going over to his house about 3 days a week and hanging for around 3-4 hours, and at least two of those hours being non stop ZEP, I was so hooked! For awhile (like a lot of dudes who rocked ZEP) I couldn’t get enough of ZEP II, and ‘Whole Lotta Love’. I listened to that EVERY day for at least a month. Anyhoo, so looking thru his LP’s one night I see ‘PRESENCE’. And I’m like “hey, whats this one?” And he goes “yeah, that album is ok…” I said ‘whatya mean..ok?” He goes ‘Well, it ZEP but it’s just not one I listen to that much”. So, I says “Can I borrow it?” And he goes “Bro, you know I never let anyone borrow my ZEP albums!” So, I was pretty downhearted. So, he goes well…’Shit, I guess you can borrow it, but man, IF YOU PUT ONE SCRATCH ON IT, I’ll KILL YA!!”
    I said, “Dude, gimme some respect man..” If you ever come check out my records, you’ll see NO SCRATCHES!!’ Se he let me borrow it.
    I listened to it a day or so later, by myself. I had some tea and put it on. WOW WOWOWOWOW!!!!
    Holy Shit!! I was blown away!! What I loved was it sounded so raw compared to other ZEP records. Almost a live one cut and we’re through type vibe. I know there was probably overdubs, but it didn’t sound like very many. Thats what I first loved about PRESENCE was the mix. It too is my favorite ZEP record. ‘Physical Graffitti’ maybe ZEP’s swan song, but PRESENCE is their opus.

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  4. Robert Anthony Sugrue
    May 11, 2020 @ 4:38 pm

    To me this is by far my favorite Zeppelin album in just 44:19 seconds it takes you from hard rock to great rockabilly to fantastic blues. Some of Jimmy Pages greatest work (some people would like to hit me with comment like that) true Zeppelin can appreciate this record.

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  5. Terry Gayhart
    October 18, 2020 @ 1:36 pm

    I love this album. It is the one I keep coming back to first. I just learned that it was was unplanned and done in 20 days. An amazing feat. This one sounds like a 3 piece band doing what they do best. Plant was using his voice more like an instrument more in this album than any other. Again, ILOVETHISALBUM!!!!

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