a first listen of when the levy breaks by led zeppelin
so with this being my very first led zeppelin record i have done a little bit of background
reading into this band it turns out this band is very much inspired by blues music and is a
constant source of inspiration for them um it's no different with this track this is a
de facto cover of uh previous iterations of this song uh when the levee breaks
which is a constant in blues music it turns out that musicians seem to do takes on the same song
again and again and as a fan of hip-hop and the art of sampling music i'm all for using older
versions or genres of music to inspire your new records um i've heard so much about led
zeppelin so i'm super excited to hear this song so let's get into the music okay here we go
wow
turn it off
whoa okay i usually give my super initial takes um that groove is unreal man um and it's i think
so much of it is to do with those drums those drums are like a force of nature man um the way
that they've been tuned the way that they've been playing it's really like this driving the
driving force of this beat um and i'm not sure what that instrument is i think it's a guitar
that's just been tuned really differently to like sound like a harmonica or maybe it is a harmonica
whatever it is it's like um adds this really mournful atmosphere to to this instrumentation
to this instrumental it almost like mimics someone who's crying or someone who's like wailing almost
it's a really really cool effect um awesome awesome intro man wow
wow
wow what a voice what a voice i have certainly not heard this kind of
vocals on a uh rock track before let's let's back this up a bit
is have no place
okay i'm gonna stop there real quick the the atmosphere and music
of this song literally had me forget that there's lyrics um
i don't know what that instrument is they may have tuned this guitar to sound like a harmonica
or maybe it is a harmonica whatever it is i've never heard anything like it um it literally had
me like in another space for a second um it seems like these lyrics are sort of describing like a
flood that's coming like when the levy breaks i guess that's talking about a dam and uh this
guy is kind of like um his delivery is uh again so mournful it's like him and the um harmonica guitar
together almost sound like uh people wailing wailing at the fact that this flood is coming
um really cool man the atmosphere is unreal here we go let's back up a bit
it's got what it takes oh my god
okay it seems like we're going to another section now yeah if i was just to like sort of give my
take on the themes or like the story of this uh song so far it seems like a man who's like sort of
really mournfully singing about an event that's about to happen like he's like mourning the loss
of all his possessions like the mino levy is about to weep he's making him weep and moan
it's about to take away his homes you know he's having to move away because of what is about to
happen and it's like all building to this i guess really climactic moment that's about to happen
um what a [ __ ] instrumental let's go back a little bit
trying to go
chicago
man these these drums right here man now for all of the great incredible things that are going on
in the music of this song really the star of the show are the drums for me the groove that is
creating is unreal with every crash of the symbol every hit of the higher i don't know what the
i think that's a tom that he's hitting the power he's getting out of his instrument whoever this
guy is who is um drumming here i believe his name was john bonham when i looked up the band
members to me i can see a real connection between um i've been listening to a lot of nirvana's music
recently on the channel between growls playing and john's playing um i heard uh war pigs um earlier
in one of my videos and that style of drumming was much more i say jazzy than this is this is like
just like i don't know it's power drumming thing i don't know what the word is i think this is
a band which makes hard rock is this what hard rock drumming is whatever it is for me again
of all the brilliant things that are going on the star of the show is these drums man it's
really the driving force of the track let's go let's take it back a little bit
listen to that
oh my god
oh my lord
okay it seems like we're about to go into another section of the song now um
man i've never heard harmonica and guitar combined for any song like this before
um the image that i sort of have in my mind of this song so far
is this earlier section was about this man who is kind of maybe giving a warning to
what is about to happen you know he's mourning or getting ready for the fact that he's about to lose
everything in this in this flood that's coming and then this sort of musical breakdown that we
just had sort of was the breaking of the dam the levee is finally broken and all the waters come
and washed everything away that's kind of the image that was conjured up in my mind from the
music and it's all because of the music and the way that the vocalist is singing um crazy man i've
literally never heard a song like this before this is um some cool [ __ ] man back up a little bit
no
i'm
every time that instrument comes in i'm going to call it a harmonica maybe people will correct me
every time it comes in it just like it's such an incredible addition to whatever he's saying again
it's adds this feeling of loss of mourning of like this release of emotion of what's happening
and it seems as if after the flood now this this this guy is saying about how he needs to move on
because everything is now gone and um no no no amount of praying or crying will do many good so
um crazy story being told and it's not just being told through the lyrics it's the way he's singing
the instrumentation brilliantly done let's go back a little bit oh
i'm
oh my god those drums man
whew
ah
wow okay the way that they've built up to this final release this is now like
really the guy has sort of lost control of himself and he's almost like wailing now
he's really like balling um into this incredible release uh again it
just looks like it's all just sort of uh him vocalizing now just for almost random noises but
wow they've they've really built up to this climax incredibly well
i can't
so like this is the section of like him like completely losing his mind he's lost
everything now and he's lost his mind too he's just just sort of going on a ramble
now like that's kind of the story in my head that's being told here going down
oh my god
oh
oh my god
that song literally had me forget i was doing a reaction for several parts of that song um
i literally was just uh even forgot about the lyrics for a bit i just stopped paying attention
to everything there was just so much going on uh you had layers and layers of these guitars
this harmonica on top of it kind of weaving in and out of the guitar you had this guy vocalizing
as if he was wailing they added all these sound effects to his voice too to kind of make it
reverberate and then again i'll say it once again the star of the show is really the drums for me
um every crash of his symbol was like huge waves through the instrumentation um
the blues are clearly like a huge huge inspiration for this band i can see it really with this this
song um a lot of blues lyrics are inspired by los as the you know as the title or
the genre's title may infer um the way he sang it but i think the elements that made this
track sort of something new not just a blues cover song but like a whole new genre almost
was that guitar riff and those drums for me those two elements made it something completely new and
i feel as if maybe you know i've not heard the original song perhaps it is a brilliant song but
sometimes you know a track will provide a spark and what comes out of that is this inferno of
noise something completely different and what they've done here for me is do what so much of
hip-hop has done is take pieces of another genre of music and sort of take it to this new level
and create something wholly different and i've got to commend led zeppelin for doing this um
i've literally never heard anything like this brilliant song man brilliant song