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Kubrick didn’t fake the moon landing, but Led Zeppelin DID fake playing Madison Square Garden, 1973
05.16.2020
01:34 pm
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Japanese poster for ‘The Song Remains the Same,’ 1976
 
True or false: The performances from The Song Remains the Same, the concert film that supposedly documents Led Zeppelin’s 1973 Madison Square Garden shows weren’t actually filmed at Madison Square Garden?

Mostly true!

It’s not exactly a secret but it’s neither something that seems to be widely known by the general public, or even most Led Zeppelin fans for that matter. Now I’m not trying to imply here that Led Zeppelin didn’t even play Madison Square Garden for three nights in late July of 1973, because of course they did and The Song Remains the Same‘s original director, Joe Massot (Wonderwall) was there with a camera crew trained on them when they did. This much is not being disputed.

The problem was, as the group and their manager Peter Grant found out only after they’d fired Massot from the project, is that he’d gotten inadequate—practically unusable—coverage that wouldn’t sync properly or cut. Some great shots but nothing that could be used to create an edited sequence.

Grant brought in Aussie director Peter Clifton, the guy they probably should have hired in the first place, to see what could made from this mess, but the initial prognosis looked pretty grim until Clifton suggested reshooting the entire running order of the Madison Square Garden show on Madison Square Garden’s stage… recreated at Shepperton Studios in England!

Everyone assumes they’re watching the group at MSG, but in reality what we are watching (for the most part) is Led Zeppelin rocking out on a soundstage in Surrey, southeast of London. Without an audience.
 

 
On a playback screen, the band could watch themselves in the earlier footage—keeping their movements and positions in roughly the same general areas—and play along to the MSG soundtrack. So what we mostly see in the finished film are Clifton’s close-ups and medium distance footage of the band members shot at Shepperton, but intercut with Massot’s footage of the trappings of MSG, wide shots, shots framed from behind the band towards the audience and so forth.

Once you know all this, it’s screamingly obvious what was shot where.

Complicating matters for Clifton, John Paul Jones had recently cut his hair short (he’s wearing a wig in the Shepperton footage) and Robert Plant’s teeth had been fixed since the New York City shows the year before.

Jimmy Page spilled the beans in the May 2008 issue of Uncut Magazine,

“I’m sort of miming at Shepperton to what I’d played at Madison Square Garden, but of course, although I’ve got a rough approximation of what I was playing from night to night, it’s not exact. So the film that came out in the ‘70s is a bit warts-and-all.”

This little known behind-the-scenes story of the making of The Song Remains the Same is barely touched upon in some of the major books about Led Zeppelin—but in Chris Welch’s 2001 biography Peter Grant: The Man who Led Zeppelin, the story is told in greater detail, finishing thusly:

As far as Grant and Zeppelin were concerned, the movie song had ended. But they left behind smouldering resentments among the filmmakers and a few puzzles for movie buffs. Says Peter Clifton: “If you look at the credits they wrote something very interesting. ‘Musical performances were presented live at Madison Square Garden.’ It was somewhat ambiguous because the film was obviously done somewhere else!”

When he was asked about the provenance of the ‘live’ shots of Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden, Peter Grant did admit that they had indeed shot some material at Shepperton studios, recreating the same stage set while the band donned the same clothes they wore at the actual gig. “Yes, we did,” he said. “But we didn’t shout about the fact.”

See for yourself:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.16.2020
01:34 pm
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Recording console used for Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is for sale
11.27.2018
02:23 pm
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Via Bonhams
 
A legendary recording console will be auctioned off by Bonham’s next month. The Helios mixing desk, originally installed in Island Records’ studio on Basing Street, London in 1969, was used to lay down several rock classics, most notably Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” It was also used by the likes of Free, the Rolling Stones, Bob Marley (for “I Shot the Sheriff”), David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Eric Clapton, Sly Stone, Jimmy Cliff, Harry Nilsson, Jeff Beck, Mott The Hoople, and Steve Winwood and is expected to go for a six-figure sum at the December 11 auction.

Bonhams Specialist Claire Tole-Moir told Just Collecting News that it’s “hard to overestimate how crucial a role this console has played in the British rock and pop scene.”

“Songs and albums recorded on this bespoke console and its original parts rank among some of the most recognisable and best-loved pieces of music in existence, and have resulted in Grammys, Brit Awards and multiple number one spots. This console is a piece of Britain’s modern cultural history.”

The console is actually a hybrid of two separate studio desks built by Helios Electronics. The second was installed in the studio owned by guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After in 1973. Both were purchased by Elvis Costello and Chris Difford of Squeeze and then melded together at their HelioCentric recording studio which was opened in 1996. This revered piece of analog gear is now seeking a new home.
 

Via Bonhams
 
Thank you Nimrod Erez/TB!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.27.2018
02:23 pm
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A Stonehenge stage set and backstage violence mark Led Zeppelin’s final U.S. concerts, 1977
12.29.2017
07:22 am
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Day on the Green
 
Led Zeppelin’s eleventh—and final—American jaunt was in support of their seventh studio album, Presence. The 1977 tour was plagued by unfortunate incidents, with the most notorious occurrences taking place backstage at one of the last shows and a most tragic event bringing an end to the outing.

The vibes were bad before they even played a single gig. Large, menacing manager Peter Grant had recently gone through a nasty divorce, while guitarist Jimmy Page was incredibly thin, reportedly in the throes of heroin addiction. Throughout the tour, police had to be brought in to quell audience violence, culminating in a riot in Tampa; nineteen were arrested, 50 were injured. At multiple stops, a new crop of younger, wilder fans threw lit firecrackers on the stage, which would explode inches from the band members. During a Cincinnati show, a fan died after falling from the third level of the coliseum—the first tragic event of the tour.

The trek was to run for three legs of dates from April through August. For the final leg, eleven stadium shows were scheduled. The band only played four.
 
Led Zeppelin
 
On July 23rd and 24th, Zeppelin performed in front of sell-out crowds at Oakland Coliseum. Rick Derringer and Judas Priest opened. The shows were part of the recurring “Day on the Green” concerts organized by Bill Graham. The stage set was constructed to resemble the Stonehenge monument, and was likely the main inspiration for one of the funniest moments in the brilliant mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap (and before you say, “But what about…,” we debunked the theory that Black Sabbath’s Stonehenge stage influenced the film).
 
Stonehenge set
 
Two nasty backstage episodes took place on the 23rd. The first happened when Peter Grant was asked by a member of Graham’s crew if he needed help getting down some stairs, which Grant perceived as a slight on his weight. John Bindon, a London gangster brought on by Zep as their chief enforcer for the tour, stepped in and knocked out the stagehand, who banged his head on the concrete floor. Later, Grant’s teenage son was about to remove a temporary sign to keep as a souvenir, but was sternly rebuffed by a member of Graham’s security team. This prompted drummer John Bonham to kick the guy in the balls, and then Grant and Bindon beat the man so badly that a shocked Graham had him rushed to the hospital. Graham also claimed that his production manager was hit on the head with a lead pipe.

On the 24th, Graham’s security were looking for revenge, yet the show concluded without further incident. The following day at the band’s hotel, the SWAT team showed up and arrested Bonham, Grant, Bindon and tour manager, Richard Cole, who were charged with assault. After they were bailed out, the Zep entourage flew to New Orleans for the next show. Once they were settled in, Plant received a call from his wife and learned that his young son, Karac, had died suddenly on the 24th.

Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bart Bealmear
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12.29.2017
07:22 am
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Led Zeppelin watch a couple have sex on top of their gold records at a Stockholm sex club in 1973
09.21.2017
06:32 am
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Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant back in the day, perhaps recalling some good times at Chat Noir in 1973.
 
I haven’t really thought about Led Zeppelin in a while, so the other day I started poking around looking at photos of the band taken back in the early 70s (don’t judge). It was one hell of a rabbit hole where I came across an infamous shot of Zeppelin taken by photographer Bengt H. Malmqvist in Stockholm in 1973. The photo in question featured the members of Zeppelin watching a couple have sex on top of a table displaying their gold records. The bizarre image was part of a larger series attributed to Malmqvist containing 56 black and white negatives, one set of photos and two contact maps which were up for auction in 2010—though it’s unclear if they ever sold. The photos of Zep taken by Mr. Malmqvist were shot inside Chat Noir—one of Stockholm’s premiere sex clubs, and according to the auction site Bonhams, Malmqvist was the only photographer allowed to shoot the event.

The Chat Noir itself was the epitome of what one might imagine a high-end sex club to be like. The establishment prided itself on being “classy” by offering what they described as a “luxury” sex experience which would routinely feature female stars from Stockholm and other locations around the world, and even some sort of sexy “wizard” which according to folklore about Chat Noir was especially popular with Japanese businessmen. The club, considered at the time to be one of Stockholm’s most glamorous, was also a popular site used by the Swedish sex film industry and several movies were shot on there including Anita: Swedish Nymphet. That film came out the same year Led Zeppelin was welcomed by the club to receive four gold records from Metronome Records in honor of their record sales. True to form, the whole salacious event was orchestrated by the band’s manager, the notorious Peter Grant. 

Below, a few of the images from Zeppelin’s infamous visit to the Chat Noir, plus a full page account of what went down that night that was published in a Swedish magazine in 1973.
 

Robert Plant and a friend at the Chat Noir, 1973. Photo by Bengt H. Malmqvist.
 

Jimmy Page, (allegedly) Pamela Des Barres, and John Bonham hanging out at Chat Noir in 1973. Photo by Bengt H. Malmqvist.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.21.2017
06:32 am
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Go back in time to when Led Zeppelin & Alice Cooper shared the stage at the Whisky a Go Go, 1969
02.02.2017
12:20 pm
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A show poster for a series of live gigs at the Whisky A Go Go featuring Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper, January 1969.
 
Beginning on January 2nd, 1969, Led Zeppelin played a series of live gigs with Alice Cooper at the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. According to Alice, both bands were still so under the radar that they took turns opening the bill by flipping a coin to see who would start the show each night. To support Alice’s point, a scan of an old print ad for the show makes a point to promote Zeppelin by noting that the band featured the talents of former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page. Zeppelin’s set on January 5th, which you can listen to below, would allegedly mark the first time “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” (originally writen by American songwriter Anne Bredon in the 50s and popularized by Joan Baez back in the early 60s), was captured in a live recording. Cooper was only 21, and Jimmy Page the oldest member of Led Zeppelin, was just 24.

The January 5th show was part of Zeppelin’s first tour of America and once again to illustrate the point of how unknown the band was, they had yet to release their first self-titled record, which was panned by some after it came out on January 12th. The first stop for Led Zeppelin in the U.S. would be Denver and a last-minute opening slot for a sold-out Vanilla Fudge gig (along with LA band Spirit) for which they were paid $750. Promoter Barry Fey, who almost didn’t book the band for the show, recalls how blown away he was by the band that was about to take over the world:

You didn’t have to be a genius to know that Zeppelin was going to be a smash. Oh, my God. People were going crazy!

The next day the program director for local Dever station KLZ contacted Fey telling him the station’s phone lines had been inundated by calls from people who had born witness to the first coming of Led Zeppelin, demanding that the station play their music. Fey headed over to KLZ with his copy of Zep’s eponymous (and still unreleased) album which the station would play over and over again for the entire day.

When it comes to shock-and-roll history associated with Alice Cooper’s reception by critics at the time, it’s not that much different than Zeppelin’s. Pretties for You, the 1969 debut from the group was also being beaten up by music reviewers including legendary meanie Lester Bangs who had this to say about the record in his review published by Rolling Stone on July 12, 1969:

But neither is there any hint of life, spontaneity, joy, rage, or any kind of authentic passion or conviction. As such, Alice Cooper’s music is, for this reviewer at any rate, totally dispensable.

Oof. After playing three shows, Page and other members of the group came down with the flu and so Alice Cooper would soldier on with the Buddy Miles Express filling in Zeppelin’s slot.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.02.2017
12:20 pm
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Led Zeppelin perform their first live set on TV, 1969
05.31.2016
09:56 am
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0_0lz68ghfhgih.jpg
 
Led Zeppelin’s appearance on Danish television in 1969 is one of the classic moments of rock music history. It was Zeppelin’s second time on television but their very first playing a full live set of songs in front of a studio audience—they had previously lip-synched to “Communication Breakdown” for Swedish TV.

What is surprising watching this superb concert is the audience’s lack of response to Zeppelin’s fully charged performance. They sit listening intently showing little enthusiasm for what they’re hearing. For guitarist Jimmy Page this sort of apathy was part of the appeal of launching his newly formed band in Scandinavia:

They don’t cheer too madly there, you know? We were really scared, because we only had about fifteen hours to practice together. It was sort of an experimental concert to see if we were any good. I guess.

 
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An advert for Zeppelin’s first gig together as ‘the Yardbirds med Jimmy Page’ in 1968.
 
Zeppelin first appeared under the name The Yardbirds with Jimmy Page at the Gladsaxe Teen Club in Denmark on September 7th, 1968. They developed their prowess touring Denmark and Sweden over the following months. However not everyone was convinced of this new band as one Swedish reviewer of their early gigs at the Inside Club in Stockholm noted:

It has been up and down for the Yardbirds. A couple of years ago, they were on top. For a while, a lot of people thought that the Yardbirds would lead the developing English pop but their efforts led nowhere.

The members changed and the Yardbirds currently touring Sweden have very little in common with the original line-up. It is not only the line-up that has changed. The style of music is different, as is the quality - only the name is the same.

Friday night they played the Inside. They were so loud it almost hurt. Sometimes playing loud has an important role in pop, but here it was just superficial effect.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.31.2016
09:56 am
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Footage of Keith Moon crashing a Led Zeppelin gig then jamming with the band in 1977
04.07.2016
08:49 am
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Keith Moon sitting at John Bonham's drum kit while Jimmy Page looks on, June 23rd, 1977
Keith Moon sitting at John Bonham’s drum kit while Jimmy Page looks on, June 23rd, 1977.
 
While many (most?) drunken escapades end up badly—but especially when they’re taking place in front of thousands of people—the time The Who’s antic-prone timekeeper Keith Moon crashed a Led Zeppelin gig in 1977, was thankfully not such an occasion.
 
Keith Moon and Robert Plant on stage at the Forum in Los Angeles, June 23, 1977
Keith Moon and Robert Plant on stage at the Forum in Los Angeles, June 23, 1977.
 
Keith Moon sitting behind John Bonham's mythical drum kit, June 23, 1977
Keith Moon sitting behind John Bonham’s mythical drum kit, June 23, 1977.
 
On June 23rd, 1977, the perpetually drunk Keith Moon unexpectedly joined Led Zeppelin onstage at the Forum in Los Angeles, along with his bongos and a tambourine during “Moby Dick” and the band’s encore. At one point after Moon’s impromptu materialization, he commandeered Robert Plant’s microphone and began to regale the crowd before Plant, who was chopping away behind Bonham’s kit, shut him down.

The action with Moon, who engages in what I can only describe as an awesome “drum duel” of sorts with Bonham, starts at about 5:40. Sadly, it would turn out to be the last time Moon would perform on U.S. soil as he passed away just over a year later in September of 1978 at the all-too-young age of 32. Bonzo wouldn’t last that much longer himself, dying in his sleep on September 24, 1980. He was also just 32 years old.

After the jump, watch footage of Keith Moon crashing Led Zeppelin’s party at the Los Angeles Forum in 1977…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.07.2016
08:49 am
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Some Led Zeppelin songs that you’ve probably never heard before
08.19.2015
04:51 pm
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I had listened to every Led Zeppelin album so many times by the age of 14 that I went from playing their records constantly to not listening to them at all again for many, many years. Decades even. It’s not like I ever stopped loving Led Zeppelin, it’s just that I overdid it. Like eating the same thing every day for years, even something awesome like Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, it simply gets tired. Until the new reissues started coming out last summer, the only Led Zeppelin album that I actually owned on CD was Physical Graffiti.

Like many of you reading this, I got massively into those remastered albums. On a good stereo system they sound quite wonderful. I’ve played “When the Levee Breaks” from Led Zeppelin IV on repeat for hours on end on full blast. (I am a bad neighbor, true, but it’s as addictive as crack, that song.) Of all the 2014 and 2015 editions, it was the three-disc expanded release of Coda, their odds-n-sods 1982 swansong, that I was looking forward to the most, not the least reason being that it’s the only one that I never owned, and had never actually even heard all the way through. In other words, an entirely new Led Zeppelin album. Lucky me. What a fun experience to have, right?

The expanded 3 disc deluxe Coda is well worth your attention, rock snob readers. Let me count a few of the ways…

In some of the interviews Jimmy Page has given to publicize the most recent (and final) spate of Led Zeppelin releases (Presence, In Through The Out Door and Coda), he mentions that although Coda was in fact, a bit of a “contractual obligation album” (as well as an anti-bootlegger move), he knew that they had the stunning John Bonham drum solo “Bonzo’s Montreux” (with electronic treatments added later by Page) as the centerpiece, so he was confident that it would all hold together as a coherent listening experience. Even if that is only partially true—it’s all over the place—Coda is still pretty amazing. Unreleased Led Zeppelin tracks are not exactly plentiful—I’m certainly not complaining—but it’s a stylistic mishmash. And this is in no way a bad thing!

Here’s the rollicking instrumental “St. Tristan’s Sword,” which was recorded during the sessions for Led Zeppelin III in 1970. It comes from the same session that produced “Gallow’s Pole” and you’ll note a similar drum sound there:
 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.19.2015
04:51 pm
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Bootleg Led Zeppelin album covers from Soviet Russia
05.15.2015
11:50 am
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The Cold War seems an awful long time ago, long enough that it’s sometimes hard to remember that a huge percentage of our planet’s land mass was officially denied the right to listen to classic rock. You couldn’t just wander into the USSR with a bunch of Mott the Hoople albums under your arm and expect anyone not to mind, there were actual policies about this. Those people who had heard about and liked Led Zeppelin had to resort to illegal, grassroots ways of disseminating the music, and that process included pressing albums illegally and creating fake, yet plausible, album covers.

In the r/vinyl/ subreddit, reddit user “zingo-spleen” uploaded scans of several awesome album covers that were created for illegal Russian pressings of Led Zeppelin albums. Represented are the band’s second through fifth albums, being II, III, IV, and Houses of the Holy, which is hilariously called V in the Russian version.

Helpfully, “zingo-spleen” provided some background about the fantastic covers:
 

these are two double albums in gatefold sleeves, with a cover on each side. II and III are together as a set, while IV and V (Houses of the Holy) are together as a set. Not sure why the first one is not included - blame the Russians and their twisted logic. I found these in a thrift shop a long time ago and couldn’t bear to get rid of them, even though I’ve had offers.

 
The record label, AnTrop, was a major force in underground bootlegs, releasing illegal versions of all the most notable classic rock acts:
 

AnTrop was named after the legendary Russian underground producer and sound engineer, Andrey Tropillo, who in 1990, on the wave of “perestroika,” became the head of the St. Petersburg branch of Melodia. Since there was much turmoil in Russia at the time, he made the St. Petersburg branch independent of central headquarters and started releasing a series of classic Rock albums. These releases were not legitimate. They started with releases by The Beatles, Jesus Christ - Superstar, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and eventually Pink Floyd. All these records were released using Melodia facilities, but AnTrop was operating as an independent record label and was putting the Antrop logo and their own numbers and copyrights on the covers. However, since all the records were printed in Melodia owned and run facilities, AnTrop had to give its releases additional Melodia catalog numbers, which is why there are two catalog numbers on the releases. Antrop is the label that released most of the Pink Floyd albums in Russia. “P” in the AnTrop catalog numbers stands for Russian letter “P” (that looks like Greek “Pi”). AnTrop records were all pressed in Aprelevka.

 
According to “zingo-spleen,” the quality of the pressings is “really not bad at all ... certainly listenable.”

I think reddit user “arachnophilia” speaks for us all when he says, “oh man, i love aeg threenneauh.”

(Clicking on the images will spawn a larger version.)
 

 

 
More Soviet Zeppelin after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.15.2015
11:50 am
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Jimmy Page SINGS on his pre-Led Zeppelin solo single, 1965
04.08.2015
12:41 pm
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Encouraged by his then-girlfriend, American pop singer/songwriter Jackie DeShannon, Jimmy Page tried to move beyond his work as a session musician for a bit of the limelight himself. The result was the solo single “She Just Satisfies,” co-written with Barry Mason, which came out on Fontana Records in February of 1965. DeShannon co-wrote the instrumental B-side “Keep Moving” with Page and sang back-up vocals on the A-side.
 

 
Page later remarked to Nick Kent in the pages of CREEM:

“There’s nothing to be said for that record except it was very tongue-in-cheek at the time. I played all the instruments on it except for the drums and sang on it too, which is quite, uh … unique. “She Just Satisfies,” that’s what it was called. It’s better forgotten.”

 

 
Not sure if I agree, it’s a nice Kink-ish curio of Page’s long career. He’s no Robert Plant, but then again he’s no Jeff Beck either... [In actual fact, he sounds like Keith Relf!]
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.08.2015
12:41 pm
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Finally: The Peanuts gang takes on AC/DC, Led Zep, Journey, Floyd, and the Who
03.19.2015
01:45 pm
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Everyone’s already seen YouTube videos in which Snoopy, Pigpen, and the rest bop and gyrate to the dulcet tones of Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum.” In fact, lots of folks have repurposed that dancing footage from A Charlie Brown Christmas to make it seem like the Peanuts gang is into Pharrell or whatever.

But it took YouTube user Garren Lazar/Super G to see the possibilities in the rest of the animated Peanuts oeuvre. He has made a whopping 34 videos (!) using Peanuts characters to animate videos for songs by a variety of classic hard rock acts, as seen below. These videos are remarkably good—I especially like the use of Schroeder’s impressionistic “Pathétique” sequence, which was just waiting to be used for something like this. The Peanuts version of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”—24 minutes long, mind you—is especially mind-blowing.
 

 
I’ve embedded a few of my favorites here, but there’s plenty more on Garren Lazar’s YouTube page.
 
Led Zeppelin, “In the Light”:

 
More “classic rock” fun with the Peanuts gang after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.19.2015
01:45 pm
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Kickass kids cover Led Zeppelin songs on xylophones!
02.21.2015
12:41 pm
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Here’s a delightful video of the Louisville Leopard Percussionists during rehearsal sessions for their cover versions of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” “The Ocean,” and “Immigrant Song.” 

Even though this video was posted to YouTube back in November 2014 (with hardly any views), it’s finally getting the attention it deserves now due to Jimmy Page posting it to his Facebook yesterday afternoon. “Too good not to share. Have a rocking weekend!” wrote Page.

It is too good not to share. The kids are going to be all right.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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02.21.2015
12:41 pm
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This ASCII animation of Led Zeppelin playing ‘Whole Lotta Love’ is surprisingly fantastic
02.12.2015
03:36 pm
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More than a decade ago, New York-based artist and musician Yoshi Sodeoka did these remarkable experiments where he would take videos of well-known hard rock videos and render each frame as ASCII art—then he’d create an 8-bit or midi version of the music and you’d have a whole new thing, the same video as seen by Neo in The Matrix or as seen by the Jeff Bridges character in the original Tron.

The series was called, appropriately enough, “ASCII ROCK.” The lineup of videos Sodeoka transformed is mouth-watering: Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law,” Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” AC/DC’s “TNT,” and so on. I say “mouth-watering” because when I went to play them on his website, my browser was not up to the task, sadly. It was that much harder to find YouTube videos of them, files I could embed here, and I failed at that as well. Ten years is a long time in the land of the Internet, it seems.
 

Jimmy Page and ASCII Jimmy Page
 
However, I was able to find Sodeoka’s version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” online, and we’ve provided it for your pleasure below. Here’s the original video, for comparison.

If anyone finds any of Sodeoka’s other ASCII videos online, please let us know!
 

   

 
via Rummage Through the Crevices

Posted by Martin Schneider
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02.12.2015
03:36 pm
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Fun facts about Led Zeppelin’s ‘Physical Graffiti’ album cover
02.04.2015
06:00 pm
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With just a few days to go before the release of the newly remastered and expanded “super-deluxe” version of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album—my personal favorite, although I’m also partial to III—I thought it would be a good time to post about its iconic cover art. Physical Graffiti was originally released on February 25, 1975. I was nine then, and already a budding rock snob and Led Zeppelin fanatic after buying their first four albums at a neighbor’s garage sale for a quarter each (Score!). I can remember seeing Physical Graffiti when it first turned up in record stores—it was a very solid package, heavy in the hand and also mysterious looking, like some sort of mass-produced, cellophane-wrapped occult object d’art. I coveted that album but it was too expensive for me to buy at that age. I think I ended up getting it as like an Easter present or something. In any case, I recall it being a real event in my young life to get to finally own that epic thing and I listened to it so many times before I even reached my teens that it became a part of my DNA. It’s the ultimate Led Zeppelin tour de force.

The outer cover art is a heavily doctored photograph of two side-by-side five-story tenement buildings discovered by designer Peter Corriston located at #96 and #98 St. Mark’s Place in New York’s East Village, near Tompkins Square Park. The fourth floors were cropped out entirely to better form a square album cover, and the windows were cut out holes, something similar to what the group had already done with the spinning wheel cover of III.
 

 
The front cover is a daytime shot, while the back cover was taken at night. Amongst the tenants who can be seen through the die-cut windows are JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, astronaut Neil Armstrong, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, King Kong, the Virgin Mary, Judy Garland and the main cast of The Wizard of Oz, members of Led Zeppelin in drag, their infamous manager Peter Grant, body builder Charles Atlas, the Queen and Laurel & Hardy. The inner sleeve could be combined in a number of ways to make different covers, and there was an inner sleeve designed by Mike Doud with all the song titles that saw the title written out on closed window shades:
 

 
For several years in the 1980s, I lived on this very block, and then right around the corner. I’ve walked past this site a gazillion times. Even in a pre-Internet era, I’m pretty sure that most people who lived on that block knew that they lived near the Physical Graffiti cover. Or even lived in it. Eventually a second-hand clothing store called Physical Graffiti opened up in the basement making it glaringly obvious to any tourist with half a clue and willing to look up. It’s the faces (sconces) that are ultimately the dead giveaway. Now there’s probably an app for finding it. Next time you’re in NYC, you can take a selfie or something cute for your Instagram account in front of the Physical Graffitea shop (and then, as the tee-shirt says, you can “go the fuck home.”)

The Google Street View of St. Marks Place between First Avenue and Avenue A:
 

 
One of the buildings on the Physical Graffiti album cover are the same stoops where Mick is seen cooling his heels before Keef boogies along and collects him in the Rolling Stones’ “Waiting on a Friend” music video (also shot in the perennially divvy shithole, the St. Marks Bar and Grill on the corner.)

Simon Gardiner recreated the Physical Graffiti cover as the buildings look today. If you click through to his Flickr page, you can see a sharply detailed larger version.
 

 
Gardiner also dug up this choice morsel of Led Zeppelin-related arcana…

Unlikely as it may seem, the concept was itself heavily influenced by the design for Jose Feliciano’s album, Compartments (1973).

 

 
Entirely plausible. Led Zeppelin were apparently never shy about borrowing…

Below, one of the album’s highlights, “In My Time of Dying” performed live at Earl’s Court, London, 1975

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.04.2015
06:00 pm
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Kubrick didn’t fake the moon landing, but Led Zeppelin DID fake playing Madison Square Garden, 1973
11.21.2014
08:36 pm
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Japanese poster for ‘The Song Remains the Same,’ 1976
 
True or false: The performances from The Song Remains the Same, the concert film that supposedly documents Led Zeppelin’s 1973 Madison Square Garden shows weren’t actually filmed at Madison Square Garden?

Mostly true!

It’s not exactly a secret but it’s neither something that seems to be widely known by the general public, or even most Led Zeppelin fans for that matter. Now I’m not trying to imply here that Led Zeppelin didn’t even play Madison Square Garden for three nights in late July of 1973, because of course they did and The Song Remains the Same‘s original director, Joe Massot (Wonderwall) was there with a camera crew trained on them when they did. This much is not being disputed.

The problem was, as the group and their manager Peter Grant found out only after they’d fired Massot from the project, is that he’d gotten inadequate—practically unusable—coverage that wouldn’t sync properly or cut. Some great shots but nothing that could be used to create an edited sequence.

Grant brought in Aussie director Peter Clifton, the guy they probably should have hired in the first place, to see what could made from this mess, but the initial prognosis looked pretty grim until Clifton suggested reshooting the entire running order of the Madison Square Garden show on Madison Square Garden’s stage… recreated at Shepperton Studios in England!

Everyone assumes they’re watching the group at MSG, but in reality what we are watching (for the most part) is Led Zeppelin rocking out on a soundstage in Surrey, southeast of London. Without an audience.
 

 
On a playback screen, the band could watch themselves in the earlier footage—keeping their movements and positions in roughly the same general areas—and play along to the MSG soundtrack. So what we mostly see in the finished film are Clifton’s close-ups and medium distance footage of the band members shot at Shepperton, but intercut with Massot’s footage of the trappings of MSG, wide shots, shots framed from behind the band towards the audience and so forth.

Once you know all this, it’s screamingly obvious what was shot where.

Complicating matters for Clifton, John Paul Jones had recently cut his hair short (he’s wearing a wig in the Shepperton footage) and Robert Plant’s teeth had been fixed since the New York City shows the year before.

Jimmy Page spilled the beans in the May 2008 issue of Uncut Magazine,

“I’m sort of miming at Shepperton to what I’d played at Madison Square Garden, but of course, although I’ve got a rough approximation of what I was playing from night to night, it’s not exact. So the film that came out in the ‘70s is a bit warts-and-all.”

This little known behind-the-scenes story of the making of The Song Remains the Same is barely touched upon in some of the major books about Led Zeppelin—but in Chris Welch’s 2001 biography Peter Grant: The Man who Led Zeppelin, the story is told in greater detail, finishing thusly:

As far as Grant and Zeppelin were concerned, the movie song had ended. But they left behind smouldering resentments among the filmmakers and a few puzzles for movie buffs. Says Peter Clifton: “If you look at the credits they wrote something very interesting. ‘Musical performances were presented live at Madison Square Garden.’ It was somewhat ambiguous because the film was obviously done somewhere else!”

When he was asked about the provenance of the ‘live’ shots of Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden, Peter Grant did admit that they had indeed shot some material at Shepperton studios, recreating the same stage set while the band donned the same clothes they wore at the actual gig. “Yes, we did,” he said. “But we didn’t shout about the fact.”

See for yourself:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.21.2014
08:36 pm
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