Black Country Communion DVD Blu-Ray

[caption id="attachment_1255" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Photo courtesy of Aubrey Stewart"][/caption]

Black Country Communion bassist/singer Glenn Hughes seems to have let some news drop this morning on twitter:

In Milano… Joe and I will give a press conference for 2morrows[sic] show: then we will be in Pre-production for Filming Blu-ray concerts…

Another tweet later said:

Did press conf. alone: Joe is already @ Studio

He later announced Black Country Communion is filming on the tour for October release. What concert they are planning to record, or if they have already taped a show, is unknown at this stage. But, as Hughes put it in a later tweet, "we are building a foundation."

Getting the Led Out

Organizing a trip to New York for Get The Led Out at the Irving Plaza on July 15th with Steve "The Lemon" Sauer.

[caption id="attachment_1301" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Get The Led Out's Jimmy Marchiano "][/caption]

I googled Get the Led Out, and the urban dicationary definition of getting the led out came up:

Getting the Led out basically means that you are rocking out to some Led Zeppelin which is probably the best band ever to grace our Earth.

I'll say.

Interestingly, Steve and I will be Getting the Led Out at the very time we should be finding out what Jimmy Page is up to. Should make for a good couple of days.

Robert Plant DVD Coming

See of Sound is releasing a Robert Plant DVD entitled Robert Plant's Blue Note. It is, by reports, a documentary on his solo career.

Robert Plant's journey through the territories that have most acutely informed and inspired his music is perhaps one of the most multi-faceted of any artist from his generation. His fantastic voyage has essayed the plantations of Mississippi, the deserts and townships of Africa and the settlements of the Appalachians. Featuring rare footage, performance archive, recorded interviews, contributions from his closest collaborators, expert critique from the finest music writers, plus location film, news reports seldom seen photographs and a host of other features.

Available August 23rd, it can be pre-ordered here.

Birthplace of Zeppelin For Sale

In the summer of 1968 Jimmy Page was looking to form a band. One day he and manager Peter Grant ran into singer Terry Reid on Oxford Street in London. Reid was Page’s first choice for singer in the band, but had previously signed on with Mickey Most and was unavailable. Reid, however, knew of someone: “The Wild Man of the Blues from the Black Country,” a tall blonde guy named Robert Plant.

Page and Grant went to Birmingham to watch Plant sing with his band, Hobbstweedle. They were impressed, “It unnerved me just to listen,➀” Page later said. Impressed though they were, Page and Grant also had some concerns. Said Page:

When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise, or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’s been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t been a big name yet.➀

To answer Jimmy’s concerns, Page invited Plant down to his boathouse on the Thames at Pangbourne. There, the two spent a few days listening to records, going over music, and connecting. By the time they were done, Page‘s concerns had disappeared , and Plant was off in search of his old buddy John Bonham to convince him he needs to join the band. The rest is history.

Page sold the Pangbourne boathouse in 1975 for £28,500. It is now on the market with a selling price of £1,100,000. It is a luxurious property with a large mooring, heated indoor swimming pool and three stories.

Grab a singer, a stack of records and £1.1M and start your own band at Pangbourne. It worked once…

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➀Davis, Stephen. Hammer of the GodsNew York: Penguin Group, 1997. pp 50, 51.

Robert Plant and the Montreal Spirit Award

The Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award was created in 2006 and "underlines a popular artist’s extraordinary contribution to the musical world."

The Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award is in bronze, and was inspired by a self-portrait that Miles Davis presented to the Festival in 1988. With this award, created especially on the occasion of its 27th edition, the Festival wishes to showcase quality and musical innovation, as well as the author-composer-performer's undeniable influence on the international pop music scene.

This years winner is Robert Plant, who will be performing to as sold out crowd at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier Place des Arts in downtown Montreal (just off Mordechai Richler old stomping grounds, St. Urbaine St.).

Previous winners of the Spirit Award are:

2006 - Paul Simon
2007 - Bob Dylan
2008 - Leonard Cohen
2009 - Stevie Wonder
2010 - Smokey Robinson

JimmyPage.com Update

It's not much, but today Jimmy Page's website, JimmyPage.com, updated from the coming soon that has been showing for quite a while now.

Before it was a black page with an elegant  picture of the guitarist all in black. Other than the words "Coming Soon," it gave an option to sign up for email  updates. Today, it shows an hour-glass with the  letters XXIII.

The game is on to figure out what the XXIII means already, with the early favourite (of mine) being 23 years since his last solo album, as suggested by Steve Thomson at the FBO mailing list. Other possibilities are that it's a count down (23 days until a music release?) or that something is coming on the 23rd.  Of the latter possibilities, we will see soon enough.

For now, Jimmy Page fans have something. Now for some music.
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Update, looks like it's a countdown as today the number had changed to XXII. Furthermore, the server has image files on it for numerals al the way down to I.

That indicates something should happen on July 15th.

Stay tuned...

Black Country Communion YouTube Contest

Black Country Communion is running a YouTube contest.

Upload a Black Country Communion video to your YouTube channel. To Enter:

1. Qualified entrants must upload a Black Country Communion video on their YouTube channel. Any video related to Black Country Communion is eligible: live footage, interviews, studio footage, fan covers or song samples; as long as it involves the band as a whole- as opposed to featuring only one member- your video will be eligible. The source of the video will not be judged, whether or not you filmed it, or ripped it.

2. Entrants must put the following announcement on the FIRST LINE of their video description:
FREE Download http://bccommunion.com/outsider/youtube

Additional to this announcement, they must post an annotation on the video at any time, that must display the following words:

FREE Download on Video Description

If you have any questions about how to create a Video Annotation, please visit this link:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92710

3. Entrants MUST post their video as a “Video Response” to the Contest Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDqRHSycuHk )

If you have any questions about how to create a Video Response, please visit this link:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=57931

More here.