Led Zeppelin Soon to Announce '07 Concert on DVD

[Kristy]

[78/84 guy]

Can we do one of those with Krusty under it ?!

[78/84 guy]

I'm not sure what people around here hate worse. Zeppelin breaking up and then doing a few gigs, or Kristy quitting the Army and coming back ? I what my vote is for.

[Terry]

I dunno...I bought this thing Wednesday (two cds I'll never play, in order to get a DVD, swell deal ) and have watched it in increments.

What really strikes me the most is the whole "Wizard Of Oz" production quality of the damned thing. It's like they took and used as many camera angles possible in order to confuse your brain into believing you are seeing something truly magnificent, all the while making you wonder who the guy was beyond the curtain running things. And it certainly ain't the drummer. Jason Bonham's thudding noise simply doesn't have the lilt and swing of his father, and some of the tunes really suffer for all of his bashing and plodding. I found myself waiting for drum fills that never arrived, and feeling disoriented (let alone disappointed) at the same time.

And what is up with the ectoplasmic sludge covering Page's guitar on some of these tracks? Crap, I could have done a better mixing job myself using my cheap-assed Peavey modeling amp. (At least I can dial up the effects for Live At The Albert Hall 1970 easily enough.)

Honestly, this thing seems to be so much smoke and mirrors more than anything else. I felt the same way when I first viewed and heard the results five years ago, and the extensive repackaging/modifications made here have not changed my opinion all that much.

As a grand, final summation statement in testimony of a once great band, I truly feel the effort was unnecessary. People already had their boxed sets and DVDs, along with their memories. To me, this was an anticlimactic exercise, an ego-driven non-entity and about as worthwhile as putting lipstick on a pig.

As Bob Dylan once slyly noted, "Nothing was delivered."

You know, I have a lot of respect for what chef has said on various topics over the years, regardless of whatever the percentages of levels of agreement were.

I got a dvd bootleg of the 2007 show within a few months of the performance as a bonus disc thrown in by someone I was trading with, basically a cut-and-paste of various cell phone shots that had been posted on youtube with audio that was rough in spots but overall listenable.

I think I'm just gonna stick with that.

It's always been a bone of contention with me that Zeppelin tends to tweak official live releases post-performance. Yeah, virtually everybody else has done it too, but...it's like, when I wanna watch Knebworth 1979 I usually throw in my full-length dvd boot of the second show taken direct from the video screen and soundboard feeds than bother with the tampered stuff that ended up on the 2003 dvd release. Same goes for 1975 Earl's Court. Zeppelin were shit-hot from 1969 to 1971 live. After that, they were spotty. Rather than put stuff out as-is, they diddle around with the performances far beyond adding some extra reverb to compensate for a dry live sound...they actually snip out individual bits of various songs and assemble them together to create a performance that never existed.

It's bullshit of the highest order, when the reality would be just as compelling to see/listen to.

Also, chef having mentioned the frequent cut shots from the multiple cameras reminds me of watching Shine A Light and wondering why in the fuck Scorsese found it necessary to have 18 (or whatever absurd amount it was) different cameras on the Strolling Bones and yet fail to use any one angle for more than ten consecutive seconds at one time. I guess the notion is that a bunch of ADD editing will mask the fact that there really wasn't much going on.

Fuck it. I'll save my money and stick with my freebie LZ 2007 bootleg. It's like Zeppelin are only brave enough to release live stuff they can enhance after the fact, but when it comes to gigs like Live Aid or Seattle 1977 where the results were less than Hammer Of The Gods spectacular (or some such drivel), the band's collective nutsacks shrivel up.

[chefcraig]

The thing is Terry, I believe the video treatment is being used to cover up the howlingly awful mistakes that take place in just about every song included. For instance, take "Nobody's Fault But Mine", which is an utter disaster. Page fumbles repeatedly with whatever effects pedal he is using, and seems to lose control of it altogether during the intro when he and Plant perform in unison. When Plant takes his harp solo, the inexplicable takes place: The band loses the plot entirely! At one point, Page simply STOPS PLAYING, exchanging confused looks with Jones, who ALSO STOPS PLAYING. The group stumbles through this part of the song, at the end of which Plant sings the title in such a sheepish manner that you gather the impression it's his way of offering up an apology. And Page's solo section fares not much better, as he seems to have completely forgotten his lines, and Jason Bonham's drumming has little if anything to do with the original take.

Yet you get all of this sped-up, interwoven video plastered into your retinas, so that if you aren't really paying attention to the soundtrack, you'll believe you saw something Earth-shattering. And as you astutely pointed out, it is absolute bullshit.

I'll stick with my vinyl boots from pre-1973. Yeah, the sound quality leaves a bit to be desired, yet at least what I'm hearing displays a certain level of honesty and integrity, minus the chicanery of video. (Which in fact, not only killed the radio star, yet pretty much destroyed music altogether.)

[Terry]

The thing of it is...I do like Led Zeppelin. Sometimes it's as if (and Led Zeppelin are far from being the only vastly successful rock group guilty of this) the members of Zeppelin actually start to believe all of the rock press media hype and superfan homages directed their way...then they start having to cut corners and fudge the results in order to live up to a legend that was based in part on bullshit to begin with.
In addition, it gets kind of pathetic watching aging acts trying to get it up and compete with or even try and live up to the standards they were once capable of...and listening to desperate fans try and convince themselves and others the group is just as good as they ever were...I mean, I can understand the rationale given the relative talent levels of today's acts: that longing for a degree of authenticity and competence that just really isn't there in contemporary rock music and having to look backwards or hang onto whatever scraps of ability these rock star geezers have managed to not piss away in a self-indulgent haze of success...
I mean, case in point for anyone who thinks Led Zeppelin in the 1970s must have been THE greatest live experience ever - go get yourself a copy of Seattle 1977...shit, just get the audio alone and try and sit and listen to nearly 3 hours of self-indulgent, drugged-out twaddle...like, if I were at that show zonked out on Quaaludes, I can't imagine having the physical strength to stay awake 3 minutes into John Paul Jones tinkering around on a piano for 15 minutes during No Quarter...sometimes these legends don't really bear up to closer scrutiny...

[Kristy]

Sometimes it's as if (and Led Zeppelin are far from being the only vastly successful rock group guilty of this) the members of Zeppelin actually start to believe all of the rock press media hype and superfan homages directed their way...then they start having to cut corners and fudge the results in order to live up to a legend that was based in part on bullshit to begin with.

Ha!

It's no new news coming from me on how much I detest this band. Zeppelin weren't so much a band (as people believe them to be) as they were a business model of what not to do in the long run. Page may be regarded as being some sort of "guitar god" when to me, his real talent was being the limey version of bad David Geffen. Page not only knew how to draw up the blueprints of blatant plagiarism, but the way in which to sell the Zep myth that they were somehow bigger than they actually were. I won't reilterate just how terrible their albums were recorded here (so much of that dead horse I can beat) but that Page made his money feeding his fanbase of strict diet of that bullshit. All of his self serving shamanic acts, his ridiculous astrology dragon pants, ventures into Satanism, his heroin dabbling, Plant's inane Hobbit-esque 'Hammer Of the Gods' lyrics, was the only original platform of shameless self-promotion they ever had. Problem was Page couldn't keep it up for long, sacrificing the music for the myth and the hardcore Zep fans suffered.

I've seen (and unfortunately heard) their live playing and much of it is sloppy, unrehearsed muck. You can put some of that blame on technical reasons such as the archaic stage monitoring/sound of the day but truth is, Zep had no live chemistry interaction between unlike other power quartets of that era such as The Who. Page's guitar fuck ups were covered up largely by Bonhams bombastic drumming, even his solo playing was derivative repetition. It seem with your reviewing of this new live DVD, not much of that has changed. It comes as no surprise why Plant wants to distance himself from this Zep apologue opting to do his best to get his dick wet on female Americana singers more than half his age.

[Terry]

Part of the initial attraction I had to Zeppelin had to do with when I got into them. I was in my mid-teens when Hammer of the Gods came out, so obviously I was too young to have ever seen them play live. Also, this was an age when live bootlegs weren't as readily available as they were now, so basically if one wanted to hear Led Zeppelin play live The Song Remains The Same was it. Although even a teenager could figure out that the film had many instances of the soundtrack not synching up with the footage, I was still young enough to believe that bands put out live recordings that were accurate representations of what the concerts were actually like.
I was also young enough back in the mid-1980s to even find some of Page's dabblings with occult sorcery to be a "cool, far out" rock star-type thing to have done...along with all of Bonham's drinking and the excessive cocaine and heroin use of various members of the band. There was something about getting into Zeppelin in the early to mid 1980s...where the band weren't played non-stop on MTV (outside of the odd showing of TSRTS) and not even played THAT much on radio outside of the usual overplayed FM tracks...and prior to Live Aid there was seemingly no chance of the band getting back together and seemingly less chance of even hearing any of those live shows...basically, one had to use their imagination.
With the 80s coming to a close, I saw Zeppelin bootlegs (and, indeed, bootlegs of all kinds) becoming more readily available and affordable (I mean, in the early to mid 1980s you'd run into the odd indie record store offering to sell the 1977 tour Destroyer album on vinyl for upwards of $100 - too fucking much), and as these live shows surfaced it became clear that Zeppelin were not a consistently great band live as their career wound on. It did also become clear that as the history and sources of Zeppelin's influences were uncovered that the band did outright nick quite a bit of stuff...that for those ignorant of such things Zeppelin might have seemed so inspirational and original...but the reality was...not so much.
However, I do enjoy the band. It has been quite a long time since I've approached anything resembling a Zeppelin acolyte, although I don't quite wish them the level of ill-will Kristy does.
I do think Plant has a point and is right to resist any sort of a long-term reunion billed under the name Led Zeppelin, where the aim is to slavishly attempt to re-create the "Led Zeppelin Experience" for a cash-grab...unlike Page who clearly wants this to happen.

[Kristy]

...along with all of Bonham's drinking and the excessive cocaine and heroin use of various members of the band.

It was the drugs that fucked them over in the end. There was nothing "cool" about Zeppelin except that they were every young boy's wet dream (and for some on this forum, they still are). I cannot stand their music and never will and what's really sad about them is how their myth is outliving what they performed.

[VAiN]

I cannot stand their music and never will

Yeah, we get it.

[Kristy]

I doubt it.

[chefcraig]

I think it had more to do with karma than anything else. You simply can NOT go through life beating your chest and telling everyone how great you are, while having a bunch of thugs go about beating up people that feel differently about your perceived status. And staying stoically wasted while all of this is going on is nothing short of pure, idiotic and myopic selfishness. People are paying hard-earned cash to see you perform, and there you are, so buzzed out to Neptune that you can barely hold a guitar, let alone play the motherfucking thing.

Oh sure, you might look cool in pictures featured in the pages of Circus or CREEM magazine, but at the same time you were pretty much shooting whatever legend or legacy you were trying to establish firmly in the foot. And it gets to the point that eventually, guys like me, that formerly drooled all over your knickers are having serious issues about the pointlessness of having spent a life full of devotion toward such a bunch of (now revealed) obvious wankers.

[Kristy]

Yeah, thuggery, "fish rape", backstage beatings. Such a lovely band Zep were.

[Terry]

It was the drugs that fucked them over in the end. There was nothing "cool" about Zeppelin except that they were every young boy's wet dream (and for some on this forum, they still are). I cannot stand their music and never will and what's really sad about them is how their myth is outliving what they performed.

I'd certainly agree that as far as the image went, it only seemed cool when looked upon with the cluelessness of youth.

By many accounts, John Bonham seemed like little more than a drunken thug and a complete asshole (I mean, what kind of a dickhead beats up a woman?), Page came across as a smack-addled fruitcake warlock wanna-be who liked to bugger little girls and Plant appeared to enjoy the same jailbait tastes...preaching some Lord Of the Rings hippy-dippy drivel while snorting up half of Peru and feeling up teenaged girls and groupies who were too enthralled with backstage access and the myths of rock stardom to know any better.

And yet there are plenty of middled-aged men who have the arrested mentality of teenagers and STILL point to this behavior as indicative or representing some sort of glory era of rock music.

Drugs and alcohol did fuck up Zeppelin in the end. Same with Hendrix. Same with Joplin. Same with Jimbo Lizard. Same with Elvis. And the list goes on and on...Keith Moon...and yet in the minds of many the fact that these people were brought down by drug/alcohol use somehow equates them with a sense of legendary greatness rather than being seen as a weakness or flaw...

I mean, take a good look at Eddie Van Halen and where he's at today and honestly say his decades-long addictions to alcohol and drugs did him any favors.

[envy_me]

What is fish rape? I refuse to google it.