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Is Deep Purple in the same league with Led Zeppelin?

Is Deep Purple in the same league with Led Zeppelin?

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    706
#301
ficelles said:
If you listen to the album Fireball, half of it sounds like it was recorded in professional studios and half like it was done with a mono cassette recorder in someone's shed. In fact, some of that album was recorded in a country house not far from where I am right now, in an era where mobile recording equipment was not exactly state of the art.
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And remember, Machine Head was recorded using The Rolling Stones mobile unit, while the band was barricaded in a hallway of the closed for the season Grand Hotel. Not exactly studio quality settings, yet it sounds pretty damn good to me.
 
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#302
tbz said:
That all being said, it’s possible he was dealing with limitations due to budget, and poor equipment quality. Since his later albums tend to sound much crisper/cleaner.
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Certainly, his recordings got less bad as time went on and technology evolved, but compare any one year of his recordings to recordings done by other engineers in the same year.

There’s a consistent theme regardless of what recording equipment was being used.

It’s not good.
 
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#307
rogerbmiller said:
David Coverdale and Jimmy Page teamed up in Coverdale/Page so there was a kinship there if nothing else:

Coverdale–Page - Wikipedia
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For which Plant hilariously coined the name David Coverversion for the man lol

Coverdale was great on his own stuff. You Fool No One? Perfect voice and great singing (with Glenn Hughes, another great bassist and singer). But he sounded like crap trying to cover Ian Gillan.
 
#310
Low8 said:
I love Deep Purple... they put out a number of killer tunes, for sure. But in my opinion, they aren't in the same league as Led Zeppelin... nah.

I believe Black Sabbath comes in waaaaaay behind both bands. I get how they spawned the metal genre... I see that importance... but more importantly they just don't have the big catalog of great, recognizable songs that puts them in the same league as the massive mega-bands. The majority of Sabbath's stuff is very basic and riff-based... too simple for me to put them up there amongst the greats.

YMMV. Flame on. I got big shoulders. :D
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Sabbath and Deep Purple weren’t nearly as (long term) radio friendly as Zep.
 
#312
Gluvhand said:
Disagree. Highway Star, Woman From Tokyo, Smoke On The Water are on daily on most classic rock radio stations I’ve heard.
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Depends on the Station Manager.

In my hometown there’s two classic rock stations and they play Purple about as often as they play Zappa- once a year during the A-Z marathon. They both play sabbath at least three times a day and the only Cream song either plays is White Room. One station has a more ‘66-‘78 bent (and ludicrously heavy on Aerosmith, Who, & CCR) while the other is ‘74-‘88 (GnR every hour)

There’s a third station we get on hilltops when the weather allows it from a county over which plays Primus’ cover of NIB at least once every three days, but plays one of the three Purple songs about once every two weeks, and plays Cream songs other than White Room daily.

Down your ways I caught a college station playing GWAR, Minor Threat, and Wire in the car with my dad. Pretty cool.
 
#313
Gluvhand said:
Disagree. Highway Star, Woman From Tokyo, Smoke On The Water are on daily on most classic rock radio stations I’ve heard.
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Long term, Zepplin still reigns. Deep Purple has a few solid rock classics but, they ain’t crossover like an Over The Hills & Far Away, or even a Ramble On, Goin’ to California. The stuff chicks’ll tolerate.

Granted, FM stations could gather mass gatherings of guitarists of all stripes for Smoke On the Water.
 
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#314
MattZilla said:
Depends on the Station Manager.

In my hometown there’s two classic rock stations and they play Purple about as often as they play Zappa- once a year during the A-Z marathon. They both play sabbath at least three times a day and the only Cream song either plays is White Room. One station has a more ‘66-‘78 bent (and ludicrously heavy on Aerosmith, Who, & CCR) while the other is ‘74-‘88 (GnR every hour)

There’s a third station we get on hilltops when the weather allows it from a county over which plays Primus’ cover of NIB at least once every three days, but plays one of the three Purple songs about once every two weeks, and plays Cream songs other than White Room daily.

Down your ways I caught a college station playing GWAR, Minor Threat, and Wire in the car with my dad. Pretty cool.
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Either WSOU (Seton Hall) WCWP (CW Post) I’d wager.
 
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#316
P. Aaron said:
Sabbath and Deep Purple weren’t nearly as (long term) radio friendly as Zep.
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Disagree. Granted it's been a few years since I've listened to a old time radio station but I remember all three of those bands in a non stop rotation. It's a major reason I stopped listening to local radio stations. Sprinkle in some Roth era VH and some Journey, maybe some Doobie Bros and you have basically every Midwestern rock station.
 
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#318
mikewalker said:
:D As rock pantheon hierarchies go... around these parts - the tiers mostly look like

Beatles-Who-Stones
Zeppelin-Purple-Sabbath
Hendrix-Floyd-Queen-Yes-Doors
GrandFunk-AC/DC-ZZtop-CheapTrick-Aerosmith
etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc-etc

​
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I object to the idea that Jethro Tull, etc. are relegated to etc.

In the UK, Grand Fun and Cheap Trick would be relegated to the "who" section in the sense of "who are they" and ZZ Top and Aerosmith to the "bands that Americans like". You'd also need to get Queen in there in the top two tiers and promote Floyd to level 2. And much as I like Yes, they'd have to be demoted.

Edit: I missed Queen in there!
 
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#320
MattZilla said:
Depends on the Station Manager.

In my hometown there’s two classic rock stations and they play Purple about as often as they play Zappa- once a year during the A-Z marathon. They both play sabbath at least three times a day and the only Cream song either plays is White Room. One station has a more ‘66-‘78 bent (and ludicrously heavy on Aerosmith, Who, & CCR) while the other is ‘74-‘88 (GnR every hour)
Click to expand...

In the UK I think I've heard Zappa played on the radio about twice when Alan 'Fluff' Freeman ran the late-night weekend rock show (post pub, pretty much perfect), and you were much more likely to hear Iron Butterfly or Van der Graaf Generator, or even Budgie and they were well behind Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Sabbath, Cream, etc. to pick a series of examples with a 1960s-late 70s heyday. And that was about the only place you'd ever hear Aerosmith other than the Run DMC collaboration.

I can't stand GnR, but that is partly based on having lived in a house with a fire escape door (advanced carboard, basically) between me and the next door house and the neighbour had only two albums, both by GnR and a loud stereo. It turned out that their stereo wasn't as loud a my bass amp jammed up against the door with Hawkwind playing on a thirty-second loop for three hours. Obviously I didn't stay there for the whole three hours.

Edit: Frank Zappa once offered to help my wife out as she thought she was homeless (she's one of those renegade colonials so this was in the USA) when in fact she'd just returned from backpacking and was locked out. Here people wouldn't have known who Zappa was if he was trying to help them. "You have a strange 1970s moustache, leave me alone!".
 
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