This review is a part of MattA75's third rendition of the I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours write-off. The goal is to be paired up with a reviewer who has a different taste in music as yourself and then swap albums and review them. My partner is JiggyJay. And my partner has given me Led Zeppelin's classic album, Led Zeppelin IV.

Before I attempt at writing this review, I want to give a heads up. This review is going to be horrid. Putrid. I'm actually trembling at the thought of writing a semblance of a review for this album. And it's not because I don't like the music. It's actually great, but how do I describe what's coming out of my speakers? I could do some extensive research and give you two or three paragraphs about the history of Led Zeppelin and how this album changed lives, but that would be cheating. Actually, I'm already cheating by writing this long intro, but I'm not sure what else to do. Actually, I'll let you know why I'm scared.

It's not like I'm just ignorant to the historical landscape of rock music. Ok, maybe I am slightly. But that's only because I grew up around R&B music, or at least that's what I latched onto. To make matters worse, fellow Epinions/Shopping.com employees Paul and Randy both basically said that the album could walk on water and they couldn't believe I'd never listened to it before. Great, the album is good and I have to figure out how to say it's good without real knowledge of why it's good, other than I like what I'm hearing. I'm terrible at describing instrumentation too.

What I decided to do is basically go track by track, which is not bad because it's a short album track wise and just give my thoughts on what I like about it. For those that don't like blogger like reviews, I apologize.

The first track is Black Dog and I know I've heard this before. It's the opening music to the Tony Bruno Morning Show which is syndicated via the Fox Sports Radio Network. The main thing that is recognizable to me is the drumming. It's not like it's even the biggest part of the song, but more so that it works so well behind the guitar after every verse. Ask me why the song is called Black Dog and you really got me. Sounds like Robert Plant is singing about a woman to me.

Rock And Roll has a faster pace to it, and this is recognizable too. Maybe this was the one on the Tony Bruno show. But I have heard it on radio station bumper music. It doesn't have a hard rock feel to it at all. It's almost as if it's a throwback to Little Richard or Buddy Holly as I hear some jammin' piano toward the end of the song. The Battle Of Evermore really slows things down. It has a very interesting sound which I have found out is because of an instrument called the mandolin. It gives the song a very folk song like feel. And the lyrics seem very fictional, like some Lord of The Rings type of story.

And next is the so-called greatest song of all-time, Stairway To Heaven. I'm being honest here. I had never heard the song in it's entirety. There's obvious references to this song just about everywhere you go and my favorite one is when Wayne from Wayne's World was denied playing the song in the guitar store. The guitar play by Jimmy Page is beautiful and I did notice what I believe is a flute that to me makes the song even more special. Now this song is like 8 minutes long and it's excellent all the way through.

Misty Mountain Hop sounds like it should be a dance but I think is about guys getting busted with drugs. It's a great follow up to Stairway To Heaven and it opens up with tons of instrumentation. I think there's an organ or piano and then a few different guitars in there. Very upbeat to the point that I wonder if anyone in R&B or Hip Hop has ever tried sampling it. Excellent. Four Sticks is odd and seems to be doing too many things at one time. There are a bunch of things going on here and the instrumentation drowns out the singing, which is the weakest on the album, so maybe that's why it drowns it out.

Going To California, not to be confused with LL Cool J's Goin' Back To Cali is a ballad and has some really beautiful instrumentation. Again, I'm not sure what the lyrics really mean, as there's no hook that says, "I'm goin' back to Cali, nah, I don't think so". And the last song, When The Levee Breaks might just be my favorite on the CD. It starts out with the haunting drums, and then the guitar and you also hear harmonica. It's very bluesy and just something that is crazy coming through your headphones. I don't even care about the singing. Just give me 7 minutes of this. Again, very good.

That wraps up my take on the album, and even though I was scared to death writing this review, and even though there's no way in hell I could've wrapped this album up tightly like it should've been, I didn't completely butcher it. Thanks again to Matt and much props to JiggyJay for giving me the opportunity to listen to this album.

Great Music to Play While: The Levee Is Breaking

Recommended: Yes