Get the Led Out - Tralf Music Hall Buffalo November 22

I’ve seen Get the Led Out: The American Led Zeppelin six times now. Yet at their third time at the Tralf in Buffalo on November 22, they managed to throw in a number of surprises. Of the sets opening numbers, I had heard them do one of the first five before.

Starting with Good Times Bad Times, Andrew Lipke providing harmony vocals to Paul Sinclair’s lead, Paul Hammond killing the solo, it was a great opening. Follow that with How Many More Times, Hammond and Lipke each working the violin bows to recreate Page’s middle section. Houses of the Holy, a great fun rocker, The Ocean, the one song I’d heard them do before, followed by Ten Years Gone. Now that’s an opening five.

They weren’t done. however, and after finishing the first set with Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, Ramble On, Dazed and Confused, complete with Paul Hammond lit violin bow solo, and then the acoustic set of Going to California, Battle of Evermore and Hey Hey What Can I Do. Battle of Evermore, featuring Diana DeSantis in the Sandy Denny part, is always a Get the Led Out Highlight.

They opened set two with one last surprise, Achilles Last Stand, before finally letting keyboard player Lipke put down his guitar and play keys on Thank You. Moby Dick, was followed by a couple of underrated, but great, fun songs, Fool in the Rain and Hot’s on for Nowhere. Kashmir finished out the set before an encore of Misty Mountain Hop, Stairway to Heaven and Whole Lotta Love.

Get the Led Out is a seven piece band, and there are no passengers. Everybody is a great player, everybody has their moments. Sinclair is spot on vocalist, pitch perfect on things like Babe I’m Gonna Leave You and Kashmir. Drummer Adam Ferraioli impresses every-time with Moby Dick. Bassist Billy Childs is rock solid, but a song like How Many More Times allowed him a chance to shine as well. And you have to hear Jimmy Marchiano playing the Stairway to Heaven solo to understand how good a solo it is. He nails it, he nails all his parts, every time.

Their third time in Buffalo, The Tralf changed their seating from “Led Zeppelin dinner theatre” to concert style, taking out a number of tables and putting in their place a hundred-and-fifty or so seats. Reports of a city buried deep in snow, four feet in some sections of Buffalo, didn’t deter the fans, and the Tralf was about 90% full. They came for a Led Zeppelin fix, and Get the Led Out didn’t disappoint. But then no surprise there, they never do.

Wow!

Fifty-thousand words, Dave Lewis' first interview with Jimmy Page, a thorough review of lullaby and... the Ceaseless Roar and a close examination of the remastering of the first three Led Zeppelin albums, including what it means to remaster an album.

Just, Wow!

Limited Edition John Bonham Cover - order now

Dave Lewis released the 38th issue of his Led Zeppelin magazine/fan-zine, Tight But Loose a few weeks ago, and it's a beauty. Featuring a Ross Halfin picture of Jimmy Page on the cover (there is also a limited edition John Bonham cover, right) and an insert picture of Page onstage in 1980. But far more significantly, for the first time since Dave began covering Led Zeppelin back in the late 70's, he sat down with Jimmy Page for a formal interview. Here's Lewis:

... it's perfectly logical that a specialist Led Zeppelin magazine would seek to interview the band members.

John Paul Jones has been very forthcoming in that department, but it has not been so easy in the case of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Robert remains elusive but the quest for Jimmy is about to reach fruition.

... I've been lucky enough to have had a fair few informal chats with Jimmy over the years - stretching back to 1980 and the Over Europe tour...

Up until now though, I have never conducted a formal one-on-one interview - and yes, I'm nervous.

What follows is an excellent interview conducted by someone who has been "reading interviews with Jimmy Page for over 45 years," and has a file called "Questions I'd love to ask Jimmy Page." In other words, he was prepared, and gave us a very strong Jimmy Page interview that wasn't simply more of the same.

If that was all, I'd advise you to click over to TightButLoose.co.uk and order issue 38. But there's more, including an in depth look at Robert Plant's lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar and an excellent section on the Led Zeppelin remasters, including an article that looks at all the previous remasters since the digital age and another that explains exactly what it means to remaster an album.

Tight But Loose 38 is simply too good not to get, or not to buy for the Led Zeppelin fan on your Christmas list - think of how excited they would be to find that sticking out of their stocking on the 25th. While your there, get a 2015 subscription to Tight But Loose, it's well worth it.

For more, I discussed Tight But Loose Issue 38 on the Ramble on Radio Podcast number 79. You can subscribe to Ramble On Radio on iTunes. Please, if your at iTunes, stop by and leave a review, even if you aren't downloading from iTunes. You can also listen on Spreaker. If you have a Spreaker account, please follow Ramble on Radio - 100 followers means I can apply to get Ramble On Radio on IHeartRadio. As well, watch the podcast on YouTube, embedded below or can be listened to or downloaded at Podbean.



-->

James Dylan: Artist

Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience singer James Dylan is, by day, an artist. Last year at this time, James offered a pencil drawing of Robert Plant. This year, he turned his hand to John Bonham. 

These pencil drawing look incredibly like photographs, and lend credence to the idea that James is as good an artist, if not better, than singer. No small praise that.

Cost of the pictures is $95 for a 9 x 13 print signed by Dylan or $65 for a 6.5 x 10 signed print (plus shipping) and can be ordered from JamesDylanOfficial.com. There appears to be Robert Plant prints still available too.

Last year the original pencil drawing was also made available for $2,000 (plus S & H). No word on whether the original is available this time.

Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page

I came home from New York with my Jimmy Page pictorial autobiography,Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page, and my wife picked it up. It's a big book, and heavy, but beautifully laid out with high quality paper and exquisite pictures throughout. She started nosing through the book, and next thing she is asking questions about Page, looking him up in Wikipedia to see his marital history and does he have kids. You need to understand, she usually rolls her eyes at my Led Zeppelin habit, and has never shown any interest in anything Led Zeppelin related. But here she was keeping me from my Jimmy Page book.

It's not a cheap book, retailing for $70+ up here in Canada, I bought it for $50 at Jimmy Page's Q&A in New York last week. But it's not a book you'll ever look at and think, "why did spend so much on this?" It's a beautiful book, it really is. It weighs about as much as a Datsun, the lettering on the cover is gold inlay and the paper photographic quality. It may be a bit steep for a book, but it's good value for the money.

But the real magic happens when you open it up. Page one, 10 or 12-year old Jimmy Page as a choir boy, and the caption "it might get loud." It did. The last page is a now famous shot of Page by his friend Ross Halfin, grey haired and holding his guitar in front of him. "It might get louder."

In between choir boy and mature gentleman, between loud and louder, is more than 500 pages of pictures, telling the story of the musical life of Jimmy Page. Playing his guitar outside his school, his earliest bands, his session days. And look at the pose on his schoolboy picture, or on his knees playing for Neil Christian and the Crusaders. He had those Jimmy Page moves long before anyone called him "Jimmy F-in Page." Onward to the Yardbirds, then Led Zeppelin. Onstage, backstage, leaping through the air and tuning his guitars behind and amp, massive crowd in the background. All minimally captioned, walking you through the story, but letting the pictures do the yeoman's work, the captioned merely filling in the details.

Open Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page to any page, and you'll find a picture to enjoy. And if you don't happen to like any of the pictures on that page, try the next one, it's sure to have something. So many of the pictures are excellent, so many interesting. There's very few you won't study a bit, absorb the story it tells. Page reportedly spent a lot of time tracking down pictures and it shows. If you're a Led Zeppelin fan, you'll have seen many of them, but never in this detail, not in this quality. And there are plenty others that you've never seen, won't see outside of this book.

If there's one thing missing, considering he does refer to it as an autobiography, it's any pictures of Page when he's not, in one way or another, at work. There's no pictures of any of his children (or his granddaughter for that matter) and only one of any of his wives, a fairly well known shot of he and Charlotte Martin exiting a helicopter backstage at Knebworth in 1979. This book is strictly about Jimmy Page, musician.

Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page, the pictorial autobiography of the Led Zeppelin guitarist is, simply put, an excellent book.


-->

Robert Plant and Richard Branson Split the Cheque

Actually, it appears, and logic dictates, they didn't split the cheque. It's one of those cases of a media gang-pile without any facts at their disposal. If you blog on a specific subject for long enough, i.e. Led Zeppelin, you see these things once in a while. Stories that make no real sense, or that are flat out wrong, but get picked up and run with by reporters who don't know enough about the subject matter to smell the fishy bits. My personal favourite involves a six month old quote by Dave Grohl saying he'd drum with Led Zeppelin, that got turned into a full reunion tour, with Dave Grohl at the drums.

This week it was the story of Richard Branson offering £500-million for a tour. Page, Jones and Plant could split the money, and hire whatever drummer they wanted at scale.  Page and Jones, reported an inside source, jumped at the chance/money, but Plant ripped up the cheque in front of Branson. So much for Jason Bonham making a sideman's wage (serious question: would Dave Grohl play for scale?)

But the story has its holes, not the least of which, musician's don't walk into a room with a promoter who's about to make a £500-million offer without knowing that in advance. It would be ridiculous for Led Zeppelin's three surviving members to meet as a group with anyone who does this kind of promoting, unless they had discussed it in advance and were interested. Seriously, do you think they like getting questions about this sort of thing every single interview? Do you think they don't know that these sorts of things are never really secret? And why, after years of saying no, would Page and Jones agree to anything without Robert being on board first?

But beyond that, Robert Plant, and I have been known to be critical of Plant at times, is simply not that rude. The idea of a serious offer being treated that way is too strange. Plant is, all the guys in Zeppelin always have been, pros. They don't rip up cheques in front of the person making an offer. That's for amateurs, or unnamed sources and a-holes. Plant doesn't tend towards either, by all accounts.

It was Plant too, who was first to deny this. "Rubbish," came the wordy response to this story from Plant's publicist. Today, Richard Branson added his response to the record:

I’ve been left dazed and confused by a story doing the rounds this week about us apparently offering Led Zeppelin £500 million to reform and carry out a tour. As much as I love the band, there is absolutely no truth to the story.

There were even claims that Virgin Atlantic was about to rename one of our planes and include a stairway to heaven in honour of the band. However nice an idea, this is also completely untrue. After a week of seeing worryingly inaccurate reports in various publications regarding Virgin, it was sad but not particularly surprising to see yet another fabricated story.

I spoke to Robert Plant about the story, which he also confirmed is complete rubbish from his side too. Robert told me he is very proud of his history and the band’s past, and has always had great respect and love for his work throughout his career. However, he really believes he must move on with his life and career today.

Making up this story is very disrespectful to how wonderful his solo career with the Sensational Space Shifters is going. He is setting out on a sold out tour today and they released a brilliant album last year.

Fellow band members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones also have many exciting projects in the works and should be respected in their own right. I’m proud of how so many artists from my generation, whether it is Led Zeppelin, Mike Oldfield or Peter Gabriel, are still being so creative and inventive. They have all moved on into exciting new phases, while still celebrating their incredible pasts.

As Robert told me: “Look Richard, I just do things because I love them and I want to do more new things that I love.” I couldn’t agree more.

The story had its legs, but it should die now, to be resurrected, mark my words, in six months time with a small variation. But unless a reliable, named source, say Jimmy Page or John Paul Jones, confirms the story, consider it absurd and move on.


-->

Review: Robert Plant The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin by Dave Thompson

It came up last Christmas, one of my guests asked the question that comes up too often: "What the hell is wrong with Robert Plant? Why won't he do a Led Zeppelin reunion?" It seems so easy, just sing the old songs, make a big pile of money and everybody gets to go away happy. So why won't he do it? It doesn't help that Plant tends to answer the question with a series of non-sequiturs: I don't want to be singing cabaret; I want to move forward with new material - even as he spreads the old liberally through his set lists &tc.

In his new book, Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelinby Dave Thompson looks at Plant and examines the man through the lens of his history, and the effect it has on Plant today. There are two major events in the Plant narrative, the death of his son Karac in 1977 and the death of his best friend from youth, whom he brought into Led Zeppelin, John Bonham.

On Karac Thompson writes:

His (Plant's) lifestyle, he knew, had already placed his marriage under incredible strain—the months he spent away touring, leaving Maureen to raise two children on her own. Now there was just one, and Plant could not help but wonder whether things might have been different if he had been at home.

and on John Bonham:

It was John Bonham who sat next to him on the hastily arranged flight back to London, and then for the drive up to the farm. There the boy was buried, at a funeral where Bonham was the only one of the singer’s bandmates or management to even bother attending... Now, the very person who had stood alongside him throughout that terrible night, providing much of the glue with which he repaired his shattered psyche, had himself been taken away.

Those two quotes represent, as much as anything does, the thesis of The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin. Those two events, presented as they are above, explain so much about Plant's decisions, including the one not to re-unite Led Zeppelin in any long-term way. Thompson delves into what makes Plant tick far more deeply than into what Plant does or says, using the former to explain the latter. It's a good thing that he does such a good job of examining Plant the person, because he gets far too many of his facts wrong.

Details like what year Page and Plant played Glastonbury, what they played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction or the heretofore unheard claim that Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja actually rehearsed with Plant, Page and John Bonham before turning down the job of bassist in Led Zeppelin and John Paul Jones was brought on board. Furthermore some of his opinion statements, such as the tone of Zeppelin's songs come from Plant's lyrics or that the last five albums in Plant's career - Dreamland to lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar - are the best set of five he has done, including say Led Zeppelin II through Physical Graffiti, are laughable.

But Thompson isn't after the facts of the case, so much as explaining Plant through the lens of those facts. The fact he got a date wrong here, a song wrong there doesn't do unrepairable damage to the book. Neither does the obvious fact that Thompson's trying, for reasons unknown, to tear down the mythology of Led Zeppelin and raise the myth of Robert Plant in it's place.

In fact, Thompson's conversational writing style, of which I have been a fan for a long time, makes The Voice that Sailed the Zeppelin a thoroughly enjoyable read. I did not always agree with Thompson, and he gets some of the basics wrong, but Robert Plant: The Voice That Sailed the Zeppelin by Dave Thompson is one of my favourite of the Led Zeppelin books out there. It's well worth the read.

Remasters: Round Two

Today see's the release of the Led Zeppelin IVand Houses Of The Holyremasters, complete with bonus material, here in North America. The remastered albums have been available as Mastered for iTunes for some time now, so I will reserve comment on their quality besides saying, the iTunes versions are excellent. Otherwise, if you have a chance to hear the CD or LP versions, there's no reason to believe they won't also be top notch (and certainly I felt Led Zeppelin, II and III all were).

The bonus material, available on the Deluxe Editions, however, gives us fodder for real discussion. Unlike the third album, which had Keys to the Highway/Trouble in Mind, there is nothing new in the bonus material, nor is there any live material like we saw on the first album. Both IV and Houses of the Holy's bonus discs are presented as the complete album, with alternate versions, alternate mixes and instrumental versions of the songs.

In February 1971, Jimmy Page and engineer Andy Johns travelled to Los Angeles, master tapes for the fourth album handcuffed to Page (note: kidding), to master the album that would become what many consider Led Zeppelin's most astonishing moment. He took the tapes to Sunset Sound Studios, where the state of the art studio was booked for mastering of the tapes. Job done, he returned to London and settled into Island Studios with his bandmates to play the new album: the sound was a disappointing mess. No one seems sure what happened, but it appears the equipment at Island couldn't handle the more sophisticated mastering done at Sunset Sound, and Page returned to the Island Studio to re-master the songs yet again. Of the eight songs on the final album, seven of them were from the London mixes. Only When The Levee Breaks survived from the California mixes.

Of the bonus material on Led Zeppelin IV,the alternate mix of Stairway to Heaven from the Sunset Sound Studios session, and When the Levee Breaks from the London remixing appear. Other alternate mixes from unknown sources are Four Sticks, Rock and Roll and Misty Mountain Hop. Misty Mountain Hop shines the most, with a John Bonham count-in and a much more live sound, the song comes alive in a way it never really did before. When the Levee Breaks is also noticeably different, although not for the better. While Four Sticks sounds more live, wetter in audio geek parlance, Levee is much drier, that famed drum sound somewhat diminished in the mixing. They made the right choice going with the Sunset Sound Studio mix on this song. If we were hearing that mix, that drum sound for the first time here, now, it would be all that anyone would be talking about.

Rock and Roll and Stairway to Heaven on the other hand, have barely noticeable differences. The guitar is a little down in the mix here, the voice up there. Yes, the recorders are definitely louder, but not so much that most people would notice if they didn't know. On the other hand, Black Dog (Basic Track with Guitar Overdubs) is an alternate take, and while the differences are subtle, at least until the ah-ha's when a Plant adds a harmony vocal. It doesn't work actually, sounds too much like that guy beside you at the concert singing along with the band, but you can hear them trying something. Besides, Plant's ad-lib on the outro is outstanding.

Instrumental mixes of Going to California and Battle of Evermore are interesting, but the repetitive nature of those songs means it's not something you would listen to more than a few times. While not something you might throw on in the car on your way home from work, throwing the LP on the turntable with a good whiskeywould make for an enjoyable hour on a Friday night.

On Houses Of The HolyLed Zeppelin’s songwriting really grew. Instead of writing pop songs, they were composing music in a rock vein. This becomes evident on the instrumental versions on the Deluxe Edition on this release. The Song Remains the Same is an interesting song unto itself without vocals. And while Over The Hills and Far Away still has it’s repetition, the “guitar mix backing track” is enjoyable. The guitar solo being a little higher in the mix is an added bonus. No Quarter is, again, a complete composition sans vocals, working perfectly as an instrumental composition. What you quickly hear is that Robert Plant was not necessary to either No Quarter or The Song Remains the Same, but manages to put together a performance that adds to the whole of the piece (although a reasonable argument could be made that The Song Remains the Same is a better song as an instrumental than with his speeded up chipmunk vocal added as on the album).

The Rain Song (mix minus piano) baffles me slightly, but only because I can’t detect the difference between the original and this one. The Crunge (rough mix - keys up), Dancing Days (Rough Mix with Vocal) and The Ocean (Working Mix) are the same. Detecting what may be different (no count in on The Ocean for example) could be a game unto itself. So while there’s nothing exciting in the remaining bonus tracks (and no D’Yer Mak’er at all), added in with the three instrumentals you get an idea of what this album could have been like. And in fact, Jimmy Page’s original idea was to start it off with The Song Remains the Same as an instrumental (in fact, it was originally called Overture) that connected to The Rain Song.

What you get from the Houses Of The Holy bonus disk is that it could have been a better album. So far, of all the bonus disks, this may be the only one I play on a regular basis instead of the original album.