RE: The Firm

["Rudy" <pinkrudy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The firm sounds very 80's. a lot of 80s music is great.

Your right about jimmy and the flanger or chorus or univibe.. whatever
that wavy sound is. He uses it a lot. But.. I like it. Gilmour used it a
lot also.

In the hammersmith video jimi does his white summer solo hehe.

I have a vid of jimmy at the greek with the crows. It rocks. It's the
closet to zeppelin ive heard aside from led zepagain of course. Although
jimmy lost some speed and accuracy.

Um.. the firm was ok.

Rudy

-----Original Message-----
From: owners-zeppelin@xxxxxxxx [mailto:owners-zeppelin@xxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Steve Thomson
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 12:56 PM
To: zeppelin@xxxxxxxx
Subject: The Firm

> The firm was um fine.

The Firm was very much a different style for Page.
Instead of the "guitar army" approach, it was just
Page with a guitar (and too much chorus/flanging at
times). The only real problem I had with his guitar
work in the Firm was the quality of the solos. They
were fairly uninspired and repetitive. Sometimes
rehashing runs he's done for years in the Black Dog
solo live, for example. I think he was somewhat
trapped in the whole guitar here must do amazing solo
for every song and it didn't work. He's done some
great solos both in Zeppelin and a few since (his
guest spot on Plant's Now and Zen is classic Page and
his live cover of Jeff Beck's version of Shapes of
Things with the Black Crowes was better than Beck's
version of Truth). 

In fact, I think that expectations were way too high
not only for Jimmy the guitar hero, but for the band
in general. I remember when word first got out about
Page forming a new band with Paul Rodgers. It sounded
like a good match. Unfortunately, the band was saddled
with a somewhat lumbering rhythm section. It's weird,
both Chris Slade and Tony Franklin are good musicians,
but together they were nowhere near the rhythm section
that backed Free, Bad. Co or especially Zeppelin.
Mainly I don't think at that point Jimmy had that
single-minded determination to create the kind of
musical force he did with Zeppelin the beginning. To
be frank, I think the guy was just getting his act
together after years of heavy drug abuse and just
wanted back into the game. I remember in an interview
he said something about just wanting to get out there
and "have a dance" again. 

In that sense, I think the Firm worked. It wasn't Led
Zeppelin Mark II but it was infinitely more listenable
than, say "Doo Doo A Do Do" or "Kallalou Kallalou". I
just wrote in another message about being a big Plant
fan in the 80's but Shaken 'N Stirred was an exception
to the otherwise tremendous work Plant did in that
decade. 

Really, it keeps coming back to the same point. Page
and Plant have both suffered from mediocre rhythm
sections in their solo careers. There were certainly
other problems, but this is central. 


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