Led Zeppelin - Presence (Swan Song)

The Song Remains the Same didn't suddenly make Led Zeppelin ludicrous; the film just confirmed for many of the band's critics how much of a caricature they had always been. Zeppelin had the loudest drummer, the busiest bassist, the sloppiest, most indulgent of guitar heroes, the lead singer with the biggest hair and the tightest trousers. They also had the phoniest anti-establishment stance (no interviews, no TV, no identfying marks on album covers, no singles in the UK), the roughest-necked of managers, the most exagerrated stage gimmicks -- "The Bow! The Bow!" -- and the most insensitive and avaracious "understanding" of African-American popular music ever (cf., "The Crunge", "Hats Off To Ray Harper", "The Lemon Song", and this album's "Royal Orleans").

Of course, this is all just another way of saying what a great rock and roll band Zeppelin was -- at least a far as rock and roll is an expression of the male libido. In many ways, Presence -- the only Zep album I still own -- is their purest record. Recorded on the cheap (for them) and on the fly (on tax exile) in Munich following Plant's infamous North African smash-up, the album is definitely a downer. But the band is so unbelievably tight here, and not just on the tunes -- "Achilles Last Stand", "Nobody's Fault But Mine" -- we all know from classic rock radio. Relatively minor works like the staggeringly sleazy "For Your Life" and the jumpy (but cynical) "Hots On For Nowhere" are as muggy with the same regret... or foreboding?... associated with many post-coital experiences, from speechlessly picking clothes up off the floor to being sprawled out in your own drying up, wondering when it will be safe to leave your partner to go stand under the shower.

Factor in some of Jimmy Page's finest work, including what may be his best solo on record on the slow blues "Tea For One", and you may have the best -- i.e., most true to life -- hot weather / hot places of the earth album ever made. By 1976, the year Presence was relased, the flame of Me Generation romance had not died; rather, romance had burned itself, as the cliche goes, to a crisp. And, as an icon of the following decade, Raymond Carver, liked to point out, we not only make our homes within cliches, we travel through them as well, collecting mementos and dispatching missives as we go. All Presence is missing is a postmark.

~ Joe Milazzo