January 24, 2021:
I found Led Zeppelin through a mistaken price sticker on Physical Graffiti at Fed Mart in Kearny Mesa.
Naturally I'd heard "Stairway to Heaven" ten million times. And Houses of the Holy had played at high school parties. But, I didn't feel that I understood the band, or knew their personality, until I dropped the needle on the copy of Physical Graffiti I'd picked up for $1.01.
It was so strong. It was so tough and hard and uncompromising. And yet also deft. What struck me more than anything else was the way the beautiful guitar work was adapted to each of the songs. For example the solo on "The Rover" is unlike any other rock and roll guitar solo I can think of, the way that solo concludes.
Today it strikes me that that album has a solidly homogenous sound despite being recorded all over the place. The origin recordings are from multiple studios, multiple houses, multiple locations, multiple years, with a remote truck, different recording consoles, different rooms. Sometimes no rooms at all — "Black Country Woman" was recorded outside on the lawn. But, the final result has an overall consistency in sound, leading me to wonder whether albums like Exile on Main Street, which was recorded with a mobile truck on a Helios console, owe as much to the desk at Sunset Sound where it was mixed as to its initial recordings.