Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?_encoding=UTF8&field-artist=Led%20Zeppelin&search-alias=music

Damn, beat me to it!

Anyway, each one of the first three comes in it's own "SuperDeluxe" edition.

£92 each! And *that's* only because Amazon likes you...

Damn

At least they are offering all the actual music content as nonexclusive to the big boxes (2-disc CDs for about $20, as well as downloads and vinyl at other price points).

My only gripe is that, isn't the 'Complete Studio Recordings' box from 94 supposed to be, in Pagey's mind, as he was the one who mastered it, the best Zeppelin money could buy? I love Zep, but this spread of different offerings at different price points doesn't inspire confidence. Now only if there was a PONO edition ...

i want a LZ branded pono player with all this stuff pre-loaded.

clearly thats the only way to feel these new remasters.

xpost ! damn ...

You wouldn't believe the advances made in Page's ears over the last two decades.

What are these unreleased studio outtakes

then I will be very, very surprised

any news on what the bonus tracks are yet? I see there's a live show with Zep I (which is my favourite era for Zep bootlegs tbh)

If I had to guess, I'd guess the bonus tracks are mostly of the outtake variety - jams, snippets, alternate takes. At least, those are what circulate on the boot circuit. I'm not sure Zep left behind a lot of finished stuff or unreleased songs, if any.

jams
jorts
cargo shorts

A couple of months ago, Plant mentioned an unreleased song with Jones singing lead that might be part of these.

LZII bonus disc:

Whole Lotta Love [Rough Mix with Vocal]
What Is And What Should Never Be [Rough Mix with Vocal]
Thank You [Backing Track]
Heartbreaker [Rough Mix with Vocal]
Livin, Lovin Maid [Backing Track]
Ramble On [Rough Mix with Vocal]
Moby Dick [Drum Track]
La La Intro/Outro [Rough Mix]

Moby Dick [Drum Track]

*skip*

LZIII bonus disc:

The Immigrant Song
Friends
Celebration Day
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Bathroom Sound (instrumental Out On The Tiles)
Gallows Pole
That’s The Way
Jennings Farm Blues ("an instrumental forerunner of 'Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp'")
Keys To The Highway/Trouble In Mind

If all they could find was backing tracks or rough mixes, they should've instead used live material for the bonus discs.

And what the fuck with no "Hey Hey What Can I Do" on the LZIII set?

haha seriously

i guess the bootleggers already licked the bowl clean

Doesn't mean those things can't still be released. Most of the bonus stuff on the 90s/00s Who reissues had been bootlegged for years.

The Stan Ricker remixes on that mother ship thing were a lot better hope he did these

the olympia show was rebroadcast in dec 2007. super classic, jazzed to see it out. that said the ii and iii bonus tracks look super boring. there are dozens of zep soundboard tapes and who cares if they're already circulating- live zep from this era def. trumps karaoke studio outtakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14GYov0EdyQ

rough mixes

fucking lol

fi Hoffman boards gwan ham over this obviously....

apparently they were "supervised" by Jimmy Page which is a nice way of saying that he's taking credit for someone else's work (again!) apparently it's done by John Davis

http://www.thisismetropolis.com/mastering/engineers/john-davis

he did celebration day - also de la soul and ministry of sound back in the day - he's got a diverse C.V.

aaanyway, here some inside dope from the insidest weirdo audiophile board in the net

A note on the sound and mastering of these, for those who are just coming in to this discussion:

If we can agree, at least for the sake of argument for the moment, that the already available iTunes and Qobuz downloads are the same source mastering that will be used for the CDs and LPs, then I think we can say with a high degree of confidence that these new remasters are not "brickwalled" or compressed, and have very minimal digital limiting.

Facts:

(1) There is no audible distortion from digital clipping. In other words, no distortion beyond what we're already used to from the master tape.

(2) The dynamic range, as measured by a DR meter, averages 2dB lower than the 1980s Daiment/Sidore CDs. A few tracks are 3dB less, some are only 1dB less, and a few even have the same DR rating as the Diament/Sidore versions.

(3) "Brickwalling" or systematic compression would produce DR numbers much lower than what these remasters are showing. And as we learned from the epic Ian Shepherd "Can you use a DR meter on vinyl" thread, even moderate digital limiting - where the loudest peaks are attenuated using algorithms that don't produce audible "clipping" distortion - would tend to reduce DR by 3 or 4dB, rather than 2dB.

(4) Applying almost any form of EQ to a flat transfer will almost always reduce DR by 1 or 2dB. Barry Diament has said he applied almost no EQ to the tapes he got in the '80s (and that he wishes he'd applied a bit more), while John Davis has said he did apply some EQ here. So EQ clearly explains part of the average 2dB reduction in DR.

(5) There definitely has been some digital limiting in these new remasters, but as the above indicates, it's been minimal. In addition to sounding good, the waveforms of these tracks confirm this: Many of the iTunes tracks appear to have between one and perhaps a dozen individual samples/peaks that initially appear to be clipped. But zoom in, and it becomes clear that they are just peaks that have been gently "rounded off" by digital limiting and happen to peak at 0.0. If this were pervasive it could be a problem. But a handful of individual samples that have been limited is not going to be audible, let alone bothersome.

One final note: The only track that's really full of these kinds of limited peaks is "Custard Pie" - and, not coincidentally, it's the only track with a large DR difference between the Diament CD and the new remasters: DR16 vs DR11. But Custard Pie always has sounded like crap, and DR-wise it's an outlier: In addition to Diament's original being 5dB higher in DR than the remaster version, it's also 3-5dB higher in DR than all the other tracks on Diament's own version of Physical Graffiti . Clearly there was something amiss in the original mastering of this track (not by Diament, but by the original recording/mastering engineer). So John Davis has cranked up the limiter on this one track, and I have to say, it's the first proper-sounding version of this song I've heard. And a DR of 11 for a rock track is still quite dynamic.

Bottom line: Minimal digital limiting, some judicious EQ, no overall compression, no "brickwalling." Sound great - go get 'em! :)

Sorry but i still can't figure out if these will sound any different from the box set that came out 10 years ago.

I grew up with the cassettes from the 90s and not sure if anything will sound as good as those

Nothing will sound as good as hearing them on the FM radio in my long-dead '73 Pontiac Grand Prix.

It's Led Zeppelin. It pretty much always sounds good.

apparently they were "supervised" by Jimmy Page which is a nice way of saying that he's taking credit for someone else's work (again!) apparently it's done by John Davis

^no fucking way. Im shocked. Shocked!

It was actually mastered by Jake Holmes.

Or maybe the record company just figured "Supervised by Jimmy Page" was a better marketing angle than "mastered by some guy."

Sorry "mastered by the guy who did a de la soul record"

Presumably, the final product is approved by one/some/all of the band members, Page among them. "Supervised by" is a better marketing angle than "rubber-stamped by."

My understanding is that Jimmy wanted to do it, and the other guys said, "sure, have fun." So he went through the archives and made the choices and the other guys said merely yes or no.

True, he definitely had a hand in the track selection. But how much he "supervised" the mastering, idk.

Maybe not supervised, but I'd guess he weighed in heavily all through the process.

I'm sure whatever it is it's part of Led Zeppelin's ongoing conspiracy to deliberately fuck over lesser-known artists as much as possible.

No artists should master themselves anyway, they don't know wtf they are doing

not many artists would have any idea how to operate mastering equipment or what the stuff even is, it's a whole different discipline from recording. if Jimmy Page "supervised" the mastering, the most it means is he was in the mastering studio during the week or so it took to master the final mixes and said "yes" or "no, it sounds too ___________" until they were done

I heard he just played the albums in a stairwell then recorded that.

More showings of Zed Zep Played Here doc

Florida Film Festival April 7,12
http://www.floridafilmfestival.com/program/films/led-zeppelin-played-here

Cinedelphia Film Festival in Philadelphia Sunday, April 20
http://www.cinedelphiafilmfestival.com/led-zeppelin-played-here/

Nashville Film Festival April 22, April 25
https://www.nashvillefilmfestival.org/news/music-films-music-city-lineup/

Chicago International Movies & Music Festival Friday, May 2
http://cimmfest.org/cimmfest-2014-initial-line-up-announcement/

College Park Arts Exchange (near UofMD, free admission) Friday, May 9
http://cpae.org/node/503

DC Record Fair - Artisphere in Arlington, VA Sunday, June 1
http://www.artisphere.com/calendar/event-details/Film-New-Media/LED-ZEPPELIN-PLAYED-HERE.aspx

A long, detailed documentary film about LZ would be really welcome right about now

How much money would it take for Page and Plant to open up, I wonder

Cameo by John Paul Jones wife

It's sad that the brief moments in the doc with Edge and Jack White is all the footage we're going to get of Jimmy talking recording and playing

It's not footage but this had some decent discussion of recording and playing: http://www.guitarworld.com/new-book-light-shade-conversations-jimmy-page-coming-october-23

first proper sunny day of the year here - "rain song" sounded like the best thing ever today

oh man someone was talking about Immigrant Song on a podcast and I spent the entirety of yesterday trawling through zeppelin -- pinnacle was driving around town with the windows down, zeppelin blasting like a crusty classic rock motherfucker

Got the Barney Hoskyns book yesterday. Am halfway through. Super fun read.

Finished the great Hoskyns book and...it's sad. Plant comes out as the victor in the end - creatively and emotionally. Page is lost in the past, JPJ was the "wise one" through it all, keeping himself professional and aloof and Bonzo...was an asshole when fucked up and just a brilliant lug drummer when not. Have heard Page stories from someone who got to hang with him like 10 years ago and they confirmed the whole "But I'm a ROCK STAR" observations in this. Still - the best Zep book I've read so far.