In 1982 Led Zeppelin were so remote from the culture I found them on a memory shelf between tuckshop pies and Benny Hill. I noted the idea of previously unreleased material from different times as a compilation rather than a best-of but taking the time and trouble to listen was beyond my interest. Oddly for a PostPunquePoseur, I had more interest in the top 40 than anything that had stood so resolutely outside of it. But they were still too close to consider this album for its archeological value. Greg had a copy and when I went home for the Uni holidays that year he told me about it with varying enthusiasm. He was more interested in the Robert Plant solo album which I'd heard only patchily and seemed like a treading of water.
The last time I was in Townsville (1984) I gave a lot of my records to Greg who tutted over the Zeppelin ones and said that I was rejecting the most important thing that any musician or listener could encounter: ideas. I hoped he would enjoy all that Zep and Queen and 10CC. In the late 80s I allowed some stylistic outcasts back in and bought second hand copies of everything up to Physical Graffiti. My flatmates thought along the same lines and we had nights of great guilty pleasure which rendered easily over a very short time with the guilt vaporising with being noticed. It was a good household for a while (as most can be before that inevitably starts to fray) mixing a little Zep in with whatever passed for indy then felt like fun.
Cut to first job of my current career (librarian) and I completed the LZ collection on vinyl. This is because I had yet to upgrade my system from the cruddy three-in-one thing I bought in a furniture shop. (I call it cruddy but after a year and a bit of borrowing friends' ghetto blasters to have music in the house the cheap stereo sounded like audiophilia.) So I added Presence and In Through the Out Door. Both had good tunes. It never occurred to me to seek out Coda. That year I started buying anything new on CD and taping them at friends' places. I also got the CD of Physical Graffiti. Over the next year I added an amp, a more substantial cassette deck and hooked them up to my old 60s speakers and things got better.
Cut to my third contract job at the academic library which allowed me the first livable salary of my life. I bought a CD player at the local Cashies and put the first disc in which was, in fact, Led Zeppelin's remasters double disc. I skipped to Whole Lotta Love to test the remote control and couldn't believe how huge, powerful and clean it sounded. I went through every CD I'd stocked (about ten) with a sense of sheer luxury. And, yes, if something as raunchy as Zeppelin sounded great how would the more complex signal of a symphony orchestra with a piano soloist sound? Every Classical vinyl I ever had ended up hitting a distortion pedal whenever a alto singer or piano got high their range. The answer was a blissful perfect. Every payday ended with a detour to the big cheap record shop and a bundle of CDs. It wasn't long before I started replacing my vinyl with optical and soon enough that included LZ. The first was Physical Graffiti as the 80s digitisation was from a tired and hissy old vinyl master. The 90s master which Page himself oversaw was filled with light and dark and detail and canyons of bass. So I completed the set again, including Coda.
I just read a bit about it and thought I might as well get a copy.
We're Gonna Groove is from the first burst of energy as the band toured America until America fell at its feet and they could fill stadia wither they went. It's a big booming rocker with a msucular first album scream. At about two and a half minutes it's a perfect dose of unheard Zep. You wouldn't know it was live but when you do your jaw might drop. Then if you wiki it you'll find out that it is rich with post overdubs. Still good tough rock, though.
Poor Tom comes across very third album with 12 string, slide and cantering drums. Reminds me a lot of the Stones' version of Prodigal Son. Great track sequencing as it plays lower to the ground but keeps up the pace and vibe.
I Can't Quit You Baby is a mixing desk recording of the Willie Dixon number from the first album. Live but clean. Very strong but not entirely different from the album.
Walter's Walk is a bass and Bonzo heavy strider with a guitar riff that Page would recycle for the enigmatic intro to Tea for One on Presence. Pretty good really.
Ozone Baby bounces with the mix of jolly major key riff and hard rock that the new wave bands had perfected. It's ok but sounds try hard.
Darlene sounds like the band trying the American equivalent of Ozone Baby with a piano part that Toto would have been proud of. Not for me.
Bonzo's Montreaux is a heavily advanced present to the samplers of the soon to be worldwide hip hop culture as it's nothing but Bonzo drumming. Beautifully recorded with a pleasantly even stereo field and come real character. Great tribute as it doesn't sound as tiresome as the solo in Moby Dick which a younger and more feisty Bonzo. I can actually listen to it all the way through.
Wearing and Tearing again plays with the retro chord structure that bands from The Damned to Blondie were making their own but as Led Zeppelin. It's pretty great, actually, a big rock classic. If this and Ozone Baby (and, hell, Darlene) had been on Out Door instead of South Bound Saurez, Fool in the Rain, Hot Dog and I'm Gonna Crawl they would have really gone out on a big one.
If I played it regularly I skipped. I can attest that if I'd heard this in 1982 when it was released and when I was stonily unforgiving I would never have bought a copy. Hearing this felt no different to me than finally hearing things like Pet Sounds, Who's Next or Dark Side of the Moon decades after their release dates; it was listening to the music of a former generation and great here and there but overall time capsule stuff. It was a contractual burden for the band and also served to combat bootlegging.
I was never a fan of bootlegging because of the multigenerational destruction on the audio quality of the music. This was a problem of the analogue era and could be eradicated if a digitisation was made as close as possible to the source. A school friend lent me a copy of a LZ live bootleg and I couldn't get through it one time. But there were collectors aplenty who got to hear toad call versions of these songs with a strong sense of privilege. The internet made a lot of it audible through ghastly media like real audio so you could hear Swansong or the early version of In The Light. Then comes the current crop of remasters. For the record (nyuck nyuck) I have bought these as they have been released as legit downloads with the bonus tracks as high resolution audio. This time the music sounds as I wanted it to; a full sound stage and landscapes of dark and light and colour performed with force. The intimacy has brought both welcome and provided further distance as I once again hail and farewell this monster of imposing will.
Shall I get the new remaster of this when it appears? Sure, why not? Not, can't wait. Just why not?
PS - If I seem to be posting these in a strange order you should know that the album notes will be sequenced in the order I heard them but posted in reverse so that when you, gentle reader, eventually see them all it will read that way from the top of the page to the last post. All listening done as prompts has been done with either the recent hi-res remasters or where those haven't yet been released, the very strong 90s CDs. Digital doesn't just mean mp3 and I don't do vinyl anymore.
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