Making my way through the forthcoming big biography of Led Zeppelin and was reminded of this snippet of Jon Brion from @soundopinions articulating the difference between songs and performance pieces and he's dead on about Zeppelin.
The Zep biography makes clear that from the first moments as a band Led Zeppelin sounded like Led Zeppelin. The songs were almost immaterial to the effect, but the effects are powerful. There's no albums I loved more in 6th grade than Zep I + II because of that.
Still love Zeppelin for those performances. I've been listening to the albums as I read the biography and the performances really are amazing, but take the songs away from the band and there's not much pleasure left.
The other maybe underrated part of Zeppelin is that the production on their albums perfectly matches the performances. All that time that Page and JPJ spent as session musicians paid off in what wound up on the recordings.
Most overrated Zeppelin album: IV. Most underrated album: In Through the Out Door. Best album: Houses of the Holy. Worst album: Presence. (Coda doesn't count.)
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