Review from Luis Rey (Led Zeppelin Author) Monday 26 of May was going to be a fateful day for me. I was spending a few days in Barcelona and I knew that the release of the LZ DVD was going to catch me out of London... but I supposed I could wait.. After all I thought I knew most of the stuff and there would be not much to surprise me. Was I going to be proven wrong! Paying a routine visit to the FNAC (a marvellous French-cultured invention with branches in Barcelona) I was just set to find some DVD's when something very familiar in the background started to catch my attention right at the entrance ... "it couldn't be, it's too early..." But yes, no mistake: Those faint sound traces of "We're Gonna Groove" floating in the air were not the Coda version (even if part of the vocals I suspect they are). As I came closer to the source my anticipation grew and suddenly there in front of me, in three dimensional 36 inch widescreen plasma surround digital stereo glory was Led Zeppelin playing live in January 1970... Now, this is serious stuff. We have seen bootleg copies of many concerts (including parts of this one), we have seen wonderful 69 TV specials, amateur cine-film and we have seen The Song Remains The Same, which is marvellous but still it is not this kind of Early Led Zeppelin (capital letters). And still nothing quite with this quality of sound and image... and performance. Early Led Zeppelin in all its performing glory is much more than serious stuff. It's the stuff of Legends. Let me give a bit of personal background: I grew up fantasizing with this stuff. In my youth, we could only get a rough or bad picture of 'live' Led Zeppelin in the press and had to fantasize about the rest. I remember vividly B&W pictures of the Albert Hall drama, Plant 'crumbling on-stage' the journalist would say... Page barely visible behind a curtain of hair. Thirty three years later, all my fantasies come alive in a plasma digital widescreen. It is as if I have never seen any bootleg video before or as if I have never seen a picture or movie footage of Led Zeppelin. So many people asked me in those ages what was so captivating about Zeppelin... was it just the 'mystery' surrounding the group? The musical virtuosity? Perhaps the mystique or androgynous charisma and strong sexuality? Perhaps everything combined? Well, here we have the answer at last. This document comprises all the legend of Led Zeppelin... raw and edgy, and not a sight of a 'light show'. 'laser beams', 'smoke explosions' or whatever. I was standing, dumbstruck in front of the screen for about 45 minutes (amused passers-by would look at me as a more interesting spectacle than the performance playing on the screen) before I realized that I had to go or miss my plane to Ibiza. Well, some things could wait... only to get better after this. What I've been watching since then is young, pure, fresh, elegant and disciplined. Tongue-in-cheek at times, always exuding charisma beyond anything we can imagine (including later Zeppelin!). I was finally adding moving images to all those songs... those gimmicks...those concerts! The "Dazed And Confused" of this Albert Hall alone should be rated among the Greatest Spectacles On Earth. The images add a complete new dimension to a performance of a song that I am much more than familiar with. Can't take my eyes from the screen: This is extraordinarily weird stuff. A disciplined schizo-ritual (I was amazed at the general tightness, seriousness of the playing and the control factor even in the most frenzied moments) that takes Led Zeppelin (as I always knew) much farther than the cliché title of 'feel good band' some people want to attach to them. Plant catches flying saucers while Page smashes strings in his violin bow ritual... with the rest of the group 'taking positions' and balancing the drama sometimes in complete stillness only to suddenly burst out in fits of madness. How Many More Times, fully uncut and with medley! The call and response episodes reverberating to Page's expert, frenzied hand manipulation of the tone switch of the guitar ...has anybody been struck by the similarity of lyrics sung by Plant here with the Bath Festival six months later? All the good things in life! This was and IS the Time of the Revolution man! But there's not a let-down moment: The detailed, fantastic drum solo with us right there on stage with John Bonham; the epileptic fits of JPJones; the long, polished fragile fingers of Page and the perennially bemused and amazed Robert Plant in high-pitched voice and begging for a tambourine that still wasn't there while Page changes his sunburst Les Paul to a black one for the encores. We notice that most of the images are a great cut and paste collage and the sound is added later. But the montage of images is expertly made , with rough edges and cuts to add to the interest and synchronized as best as possible to the soundtrack. Finally a grown-up Led Zeppelin documentary! I must admit: This performance is very difficult act to follow (for all the bands in the world and for the later Zeppelin too!). What can you do after these 100 plus minutes except watch it again and again? And still they have been so generous as to give us an extra compilation of the best 69 VideoZeppelin . Yes, there is the Danish TV show(complete... itself a superlative spectacle we have been watching so many times) and a good part of the extra-superlative Tous En Scene... incomplete and without the comedy mockery but good to see all digitized. It's always good to see the Salvation Army Orchestra sitting in the audience being dazzled by Lucifer and his cohorts of Angels of Light. Pagan lights breaking out and signalling the end of the Dark Ages. After this... the other DVD. I must admit I wasn't planning even to watch the second DVD (at least until the impact of the first DVD started to diminish a bit). But I opted to give it a chance... and I wasn't going to be disappointed either. In the making of this DVD they have shown an almost unusual loving care of their own best image material . So more surprises were on stock. First, the interval introduction to the second DVD is a fragment of the violin bow sequence from a 1970 concert, beards an all!!! Too good for a mere teaser...So where's the rest? The first images are a frantic, excruciatingly fast compilation of cine-film taken in Australia early in 1972 but strangely using the later Long Beach 1972 (from the new triple audio CD) as soundtrack. More Australia is included with those legendary Sydney images of Rock And Roll... where's Let's Have A Party? Good also to see Germaine Greer, the ultimate feminist, having a chat with the lemon-squeezing kids. So civilized! And then the MSG extra shots. Very well mounted once again (there is some dubbing, but it is far from being the extreme level of collage shown as The Song Remains movie). From the top of my head I can't say what did they use ( for that I'll have a chat with Eddie Edwards later). There were some extra snippets of audience bootleg recording (paying tribute to those indefatigable bootleggers) inserted here and there that give the whole thing a complete new dimension. But what really comes out shinning bright is The Ocean. Yes, one main aspect of the DVD is presenting Zeppelin not only as a tightly working Group but as a People's Group, and the Ocean is there to show their appreciation. By some of the gestures of the audience it seems that they really wanted to eat them! The frenzy of the performance and the obvious fact that Page was then the Most Elegant Guitar Player Ever directing the orchestra with twists and turns that create an extraordinary chemistry, specially with John Bonham: I really think that this double DVD is a complete tribute to the Greatest Rock Drummer ever. And then came what for me were the 'bonus': So much awaited segments of Earl's Court and Knebworth. Entertaining and colourful Zeppelin that definitively sounds good even if some of the dynamics are lost somewhere in Earl's Court and recovered a bit in Knebworth. It is good to see well reflected the intimacy of the acoustic section. The intensity of the colours almost hurt the eyes. My only complaint is that they didn't choose (for my taste) the best Earl's Court stuff. "Stairway" from the 24 of May would have been much much better (at least music-wise). To compensate they selected some of the best, more dynamic Knebworth stuff and is superbly remastered with segments of audience bootleg cine film (that actually reflect the grandiosity of the scenery better than anything taken 'professionally'). For some statistics: Five and a half hours summarizing 11 years of the life of Led Zeppelin... and that has taken (inexplicably) from 33 to 24 years to see the light in all its remastered glory. And in spite of that...somehow this stuff is so alive, so real that watching almost anything promoted as 'novelty' by your local MTV seems banal and dated. I may be biased, but I don't think so. In this uncertain times we are living in we need the best, longer lasting dope we can find to compensate a bit.. .and I don't think we can get a better and higher dose of concentrated pleasure than this double DVD. Peace. Luis Rey ---------------------------------------------------- posted via FBO-Mailing List 3.06.2003 THX to Buckeye