Thursday, November 1, 2018

Led Zeppelin - Swan Song - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1980)

This is the last of my stray tracks albums for Led Zeppelin. For some reason, there don't seem to be as many quality stray tracks in the second half of their career, since there's just this one album for their last six years compared to four stray tracks albums for their first six years.

The last stray tracks album (covering 1971 to 1973) was almost entirely covers songs. But this time around it's mostly originals. Only three of the songs are covers ("Don't Start Me Talkin' - Fattening Frogs for Snakes," "Mystery Train," and "Money (That's What I Want)." Four of the songs are from the official rarities compilation "Coda" and the rest are still unreleased.

I know I've complained about this before, but I have to do it again: it's a shame about all the bonus tracks the band has released over the years, because so many of them are just slight variations of already released songs, and yet they still have never released some really nice songs at all. The first song here, "Swan Song," is a great example. They should have put that on their "Coda" rarities album, and then given it the title "Swan Song" instead, since that's a perfect title for the last album the band puts out.

There's one original song I've only included here as a bonus track. It goes by the name "She Left" and "Take Me Home." There are two reasons it only got bonus track status. One is because it is related to the released "The Wanton Song," though it is significantly different. But the bigger one is that the vocals are frustratingly quiet, loud enough so it can't be appreciated as an instrumental, but too quiet to really hear the singing.

01 Swan Song [Midnight Moonlight] [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
02 Mojo [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
03 Don't Start Me Talkin' - Fattening Frogs for Snakes (Led Zeppelin)
04 Bonzo's Montreux [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
05 Mystery Train (Led Zeppelin)
06 It'll Be Me (Led Zeppelin)
07 Darlene (Led Zeppelin)
08 Ozone Baby (Led Zeppelin)
09 Wearing and Tearing (Led Zeppelin)
10 Fire [Say You're Gonna Leave Me] (Led Zeppelin)
11 Money [That's What I Want] (Led Zeppelin)

She Left [Take Me Home] [Early Version of The Wanton Song] (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693865/LEDZPPLN1974-1980_SwnSong_atse.zip.html

Thanks to Peter at the Albums I Wish Existed blog for the cover art.

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