I am a big Led Zeppelin fan, I was an even bigger fan back in the 1970s.
This album is almost perfect, fantastic cover art, great songs, but - and it is a huge but - there are two tracks I really don't like.
They are The Crunge and D'yer Mak'er both of which I tend to avoid playing if at all possible.
Anyway, when Zeppelin were recording Physical Graffiti, they decided to put it out as a double album because the new stuff they had recorded was too long for a single vinyl album.
To do this they took songs that had been recorded for previous albums and used them to bulk the album out. There were three songs that had been recorded for Houses Of The Holy but rejected at that time.
Those songs were The Rover, Black Country Woman and Houses Of The Holy itself.
So, now that we are not limited by vinyl and tape I put together a better, in my opinion, version of the Houses Of The Holy album, using songs that were rejected initially.
I played around with the options and this is my final track listing;
1. "The Song Remains the Same"
2. "The Rain Song"
3. "Over the Hills and Far Away"
4. "Houses of the Holy"
5. "Dancing Days"
6. "The Rover"
7. "No Quarter"
8. "The Ocean"
I tried moving the track listing around in all sorts of ways but in the end just felt that a straight replacement was the most effective option because the dynamic of the album stays mostly the same except that tracks 4, 5 and 6 have a similar feel and make a nice solid block of riffery in the middle.
I think that it really works and it ROCKS, to go a bit Tommy Vance.
If you are a Zep fan and you have these tracks, give it a go and let me know what you think.
