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  • SONGVIEWS - Led Zeppelin - The Immigrant Song

    The hammer of the Gods will drive our ships to new lands!
    To fight the horde, to sing and cry: Valhalla I am coming!

    The 70s started out on a fine note with this release from Led Zeppelin. Let me tell you how it came into my life.

    Back when my evil step-father was courting my mother, he bought her a gift: a brand new record player/stereo set-up. To give her something to play on it, he purchased one 45, which just so happened to be THE IMMIGRANT SONG. If I'm not mistaken, the B side was HEY HEY WHAT CAN I DO.

    This man had never heard of Zeppelin, nor The Immigrant Song - he just arbitrarily selected a 45 from the racks. Absolutely pure coincidence! Of course, my mother hadn't heard of Zep either, and her record collection was soon to be padded with Engelbert Humperdinck, The Mitch Miller Band, and the like. Don't get me wrong, my mother LOVED rock music; she was a huge fan of The Doors, CCR, and later on, even Blondie! But at the time when she received The Immigrant Song, she had little use for its monstrously aggressive nature. The first time it was spun on her new stereo, she covered her ears and screamed. I don't think she ever played it again.

    We kids, however, took to it like fish to water. It was the first stereo in the house, and the first actual hard copy song we'd ever held on vinyl. We all saved our pennies passionately in order to buy one of those small portable turntables in a suitcase things, and disappeared into the basement to play this much maligned bit of music. As kids, we had already begun working - delivering flyers, babysitting, and the like, so we always had a few bucks in our pockets to buy (after hearing The Immigrant Song a thousand times over) well... RECORDS!

    But let's stay with this original. TIS (The Immigrant Song) was a bone chilling foray into hard rock and the siren voice of Robert Plant. Of course, the little record players didn't give you much depth on the bass, but it was there. It was in your mind, if not your ears.

    When the grown-ups were out of the house, it was possible to play the record on the bigger stereo in the living room, and we worked up a real sweat to the "Hammer of the Gods" that became the true identity of Led Zeppelin. We played TIS over and over again, just to hear the opening thunder roll, complemented by the high-range cries of Plant.

    As the years advanced, headphones came into my life and TIS became a true experience of bass-awakening. I knew music from the radio, but this was in my own house, and could be played over and over and over again (and it surely was!)

    Without further ado, I give you the studio recording of TIS and a seriously awesome LIVE composite version that will set the little hairs on the back of your neck on edge!

    Bass rules the world, and The Immigrant Song shows us why!






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