Dave Gets Physical With Physical Graffiti!

First of all, I respect and revere the LP.

I love the album format: it’s the perfect length for a listening session: 40 - 44 minutes.

It’s enough time for an artist to develop a theme, but the whole thing fits into the typical human attention span. I also like the idea of Side A and Side B and how producers and artists can curate the song order so there’s momentum at the beginning of each side of a record (or tape).

I almost exclusively listen to albums– I rarely put on a particular playlist or let that smooth-talking Spotify AI DJ control my audio experience. An album feels like a journey with an artist at a particular time and place; there's coherence and there's control.

Albums often have a definitive timbre– the murky, muddy sound of Exile on Main Street, the shimmering, fuzzy reverb-drenched wall of guitar on Loveless, the post-modern new-wave Americana of Damn the Torpedoes . . . I like enveloping myself in a particular tone and time, and I often get obsessed with a particular album for a month or so and listen to it daily.

Last year, I couldn’t stop listening to Pink Floyd’s Animals; this summer, I went through the Rush catalog and got obsessed with Fly By Night– which mainly sounds like AC/DC if they went prog-rock, with a couple of songs that are reminiscent of The Allman Brothers.

A weird Rush album.

Right now, I am mainly listening to Zamrock, specifically the W.I.T.C.H. album Lazy Bones!!

Highly recommended.

I am listening to Zamrock because of Zman. He introduced me to it on our road trip to Boston. And, moving forward, I am always listening to Zman . . . because of Zamrock!

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I love Whitney’s creative mission to pare down double and triple albums into the regular LP format. Double albums are too long for one listening session– they are a commitment– and I often pass on listening to them and choose something shorter. Honestly, I often forget how many great songs are on double and triple albums because I rarely listen to them– aside from Exile on Main Street and Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic (which is just barely a double album).

I guess the moral here is something I am not great at. Sometimes you have to “kill your darlings” in the name of expedience and practicality– and so people enjoy and listen to your masterpiece. As Hamlet says to his mom, sometimes you have to “be cruel to be kind."

It’s a ruthless endeavor, paring down some bloated behemoth of an album into something that is more in line with the human attention span, and while Whitney might cause some controversy with his song selections, I want to say very explicitly that I truly admire his vision and I am fully on board with this project.

That being said, he fucked up his first attempt. Botched it.

He tackled George Harrison’s triple LP All Things Must Pass, and while he did a passable job paring down this extremely lengthy work, he left off my favorite song: “Beware of Darkness.”

Egregious.

You need the darkness to balance out the lightness! The yin, the yang, all that shit. If you’re going to have “My Sweet Lord” and “What is Life,” then you need a counterpoint to those songs. Mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage, equal scale delight and dole. All that.

No worries, though, I came up with an easy fix. I copied his playlist and added “Beware of Darkness.”

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I also think the name of my playlist is much classier than his on-the-nose and rather clunky “All Things Must Pass as a Single LP.”

Not very catchy.

Here’s my (much improved) revision of his absolute travesty. With a much classier title.

I’ve talked the talk, and now I’m going to walk the walk.

You might be thinking: Dave’s an asshole, criticizing and stealing Whitney’s hard work, and then adding one song and claiming it as his own.

Or you might admire my moxy. You might be thinking: Dave’s a killer! Or perhaps you’re just thinking: Dave’s a mess! All of these are fair thoughts about Dave.

Obviously, to earn your respect back, I had to pare down a double album all by myself, without Whit's initial guidance. So I did just that. I took a crack at it, and now you can judge my artistic sensibility. I'm putting myself out there.

I wanted to do an album I love, but one I rarely listen to because of the length. I decided on Physical Graffiti.

I fucking love Led Zeppelin. Killer riffs, alternate tunings, mud shark mayhem, hotel room hijinks, wailing vocals, plenty of artistic theft, and the creation of a mystical dark subterranean musical universe that rivals no other band. Hammer of the Gods.

But my go-to album Zeppelin album is Houses of the Holy. I can’t explain how much I love entering the sun-drenched, swirling, and layered weirdness of that world. And it’s 41 minutes long.

Physical Graffiti is double this. 82 minutes for those of you who are math-averse (and for those of you who are math-rock averse, do NOT listen to Tera Melos).

So I gave Physical Graffiti a couple of listens and made some hard decisions. This thing needs to be cut down to size.

Here we go . . .

Custard Pie – carnal with a killer riff. Got to have it.

The Rover – alternating between funky and epic. Fantastic.

In My Time of Dying – psychedelic slide guitar, fucking sweet.

Houses of the Holy – catchy and wonderful. No brainer.

Trampled Under Foot – Zep does Stevie Wonder, most excellently.

Kashmir — NOPE! YUCK! A boring, bloated faux-Middle Eastern dirge. Repetitive, obnoxious, ponderous. This thing is more appropriate in the film Spinal Tap than on a Zeppelin album. The lyrics are mystical bullshit, promising nirvana but delivering nothing. And I truly hate how Robert Plant delivers them. This song is right out, the tribe has spoken . . . Kashmir, you are fired, voted off the island. No soup for you. Take a seat on the bench, you did NOT make the starting line-up. Even THINKING about this song annoys me. This song should be put in a supermax prison and only allowed to interact with Jethro Tull's "Aqualung." I wish I could use the "Eternal Sunshine" brain eraser to erase the so-called "melody" of this song from my brain. Droning, obsequious, bombastic, turgid, insipid . . . there are no words. Fuck this song.

In the Light – this is how you do an epic 8-minute song. Builds up to something magnificent. It’s in the movie!

Bron-Yr-Aur – lovely and intricate acoustic instrumental piece evoking the cottage where many of the songs were recorded. Short and perfect.

Down by the Seaside – serene and then surprising, catchy and hazy, sounds like it belongs on Houses of the Holy. Enough said.

Ten Years Gone – love this melancholy darkness. Ten years man!

Night Flight – this song rocks. Rescued from the Zeppelin IV sessions. Meet me in the middle of the night. Killer.

The Wanton Song –sinister and ferocious guitar, inscrutable wailing lyrics, spot-on drum fills, this song crushes it.

Boogie with Stu – a bit of a goofy throwaway number, but because it lightens the mood after the fury and ferocity of “The Wanton Song” and also because it features The Rolling Stones' piano player Ian “Stu” Stewart, this song is both sonically necessary and symbolic of the time period and must remain in this spot.

Black Country Woman – a great reminder of what Zeppelin is all about, a transcendental, otherworldly rendering of the blues, this song seems to channel some ancient emotions . . . and only Robert Plant could pull this off, without sounding like he was culturally appropriating black culture. Impressive and authentic.

Sick Again – a perfect ending to this debauchery. A gritty, sleazy rock tune about teenage groupies that also turns reflective and a bit woeful.

Whew. This was NOT easy. But I managed to pare Physical Graffiti down from 82 minutes to 76 minutes. It was hard work, and I may not be cut out for this.

Good luck, Whit. 

I’ll be offering encouragement . . . and plenty of criticism when you fuck up, as you continue on your mission for the rock gods.