My thoughts on the Speedy 8mm cine film of Led Zeppelin at Knebworth August 4 1979 premiered last Sunday on YouTube…

View the clip here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbBLgsuRfkM

30 years ago on Sunday April 17th 1994, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant performed together for the first time in four years at a special memorial concert for Alexis Korner. This was the first sighting of the newly reunited Page & Plant on stage -they were already rehearsing  for their MTV Unledded project which would eventually see them perform two special shows at the London TV Studios on August 25th and 26th. Robert Plant had initially been billed to appear but the rumour mill was soon in overdrive that he would be joined by Jimmy.

I had already cleared the way to attend when it was announced in early March Robert would be performing. Even up to the day it was uncertain to what was actually going to happen but when the TBL crew of Gary, Kam and I we arrived at the venue in the late afternoon there was no doubt that Jimmy Page was going to be in the house.

So it was in the unlikely setting of the Buxton Opera House we watched in some wonderment as Bob Harris introduced the pair and the long awaited reunion of the pair was on. They kicked off with a cover of Them’s Baby Please Don’t Go and then on to a very authentic I Can’t Quite You Baby ably assisted by Charlie Jones on bass and the late great Michael Lee on drums – my review of the time noting that he ‘’crashed and clattered in all the right places’’ –something he would do throughout the P & P re-alliance between now and 1998.

Ah the review…Alongside feeding back for TBL, I was reporting in it for Kerrang !then the main rock music paper and  given the low key nature of the event I was billed as an ‘’undercover Big K! reporter’ – ooerr!

My review went on to reveal they then played an up-tempo blues jam built around Don’t Stop Me Talkin’ and then a loose instrumental work out with definite Crunge like leanings.

Here’s some extracts from my review:

And finally ’’At least two people haven’t played this song before’’joked Plant as Jimmy stepped on the wah wah pedal and teased out the intro to the classic Train Kept A Rollin’, a track Jimmy used to play with The Yardbirds before he formed Zeppelin and the same number that Zep used to open their set on their last tour in Europe 1980. Inevitably this one was met with a huge roar of appreciation and was performed with an irrepressible swagger that recalled so many past glories. And with that Page and Plant were gone..

This comeback proved conclusively that Page and Plant are more than happy to be back in each other’s company rekindling a partnership that was responsible for so much great music in the past. And judging from a delightful telling moment when Jimmy skipped around the stage chugging out a fierce blues riff against Robert’s incessant scat singing – the potential for this new alliance is awesome. Buxton might just have signalled a whole new beginning for the post –Zep era’.

Pleasingly that latter statement proved to be somewhat prophetic. By the end of August the pair had recorded in various locations and performed the memorable Unledded concerts which formed the contents of the No Quarter Unledded film aired on MTV in October and accompanied by the release of the soundtrack album.  The next year they hooked up with the Egyptian Ensemble and orchestra for an ambitious world tour that delighted audiences across the globe.

The initial spark of all this reunion activity occurred on this remarkable Sunday evening in the Derbyshire countryside all of 29 years ago.

Dave Lewis – April  2024

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TBL Archive 2:

TBL Archive – it was 36  years ago this week…
SUNDAY APRIL 17 1988
LONDON, ENGLAND
HAMMERSMITH ODEON

My thoughts on Led Zeppelin – The Coda Tapes 4 LP box bootleg set…

Led Zeppelin – The Coda Tapes (Hammer Falls Records – 4LP box set)

I have to say I was pretty intrigued when I saw the announcement of this set.

I have a great affection for the original Coda album released back in November 1982. Despite its meagre 33 minute length, it was a genuine last gasp effort to round up to summarise the 12 year Zep recording career with some very impressive stops along the way. The opening pair Were Gonna Groove and I Can’t Quite You Baby from the Royal Albert Hall 1970 with 1981 overdubs and mixing, Poor Tom from the summer of 1970 Zep III sessions r, Walter Walk from the spring of 1972 with more 1981 overdubs and Plant vocal. Ozone Baby Darlene and Wearing And Tearing from the Polar Studios  In Through The Out Door sessions of late 1978 outtakes and Bonzo’s Montreux from 1976.

Over the years the Coda album has had a couple of extensions. The 1992 box set The Complete Studio Recordings added Baby Come On Home, Travelling Riverside Blues, White Summer/Black Mountain Side and Hey Hey What Can I Do.

For the 2015 remastered reissue Jimmy Page took artistic license into his own hands adding a companion disc packed with excellent outtakes and alternate versions. With no limitation of being linked to a certain time period it criss crossed throughout their there career as the original album had. Thus there was room for the likes of Sugar Mama , If It Keeps On Raining, St. Tristan’s Sword, Desire and Everybody Make’s It Though.

I love this set and it’s often on the playlist and it was far and away the best release of the entire remastered series.

No comes this 4 LP bootleg package via the label. The cover art depicts the lookout air warden used on the Over Europe 1980 tour posters and the pics are all from the Over Europe gigs. Stylishly done but perhaps a bit miss leading as there are now 1980 live recordings included. The four LP’s are pressed on red blue and black heavy vinyl

There’s a four page insert with some background info to the Coda album –there’s a glaring error concerning Were Gonna Groove which is stated as being the set opener in 1969 – it was nothing of the sort –any self-respecting Zep fan knows it was the opening number for their UK ,European and US dates from January to April 1970.

So to the contents…

Side One and Two:

Side One Rough Mix Version One kicks off with Sugar Mama  and then replicates the previously released alternate Coda versions such as the instrumental takes of Poor Tom ,and Walters Walk. Side Two has similar outtakes and also drops in the alternate Night Flight featured on the 2014 companion disc.

Side Three and Four: Rough Mix Version Two. There’s a fair bit of repetition here as once again alternate mixes of the Coda material is the source. Darlene quoted as a bonus track is the longer jam version to be heard on bootlegs such as In Through The Outtakes and the Studio Magik CD box set.

Overall there’s nothing on this set that has not been available before.

Side Five and Six:

This side is dubbed Coda Live Tapes and features Were Gonna Groove,I Cant Quite You baby and Bring it One Home on side five while side six is taken up with the lengthy How Many More Times. All this is sourced from the excellent Royal Albert Hall January 9 1970 soundboard recording which again has been bootlegged on a fair few CDs and LPs.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the material here and it’s always a blast to hear what really was and is one of the magic nights in their concert history.

Side Seven and Eight:

This final LP is dubbed Another Coda.

The compilers bring together a rather random collection of  various well known and not so well known material -again all previously released

From the BBC Sessions there’s The Girl I  Love, Travelling River side Blues  and Sunshine Woman, plus Baby Come On Home which surfaced officially on the 1992 Boxed Set 2. This  is the alternate version presented on the Olympic Gold bootleg CD. Hey Hey What Can I Do is the delightful alternate instrumental take.

I Gotta Move is the sparse performance of the Otis Rush number taken from the March 14 1969 Konserthuset Stockholm gig . This was slotted in to their set when Jimmy broke a string. Take Me Home is the rhythmic work in progress groove that surfaced during the Physical Graffiti sessions at Headley Grange in late 1974. This first came to light on the Tangible Vandalism bootleg.

The final track is the Key To The Highway/Trouble In Mind outtake that surfaced on the 2014 Led Zeppelin III companion Disc.

Summary:

it was evident at a cursory look over the track listing that there was not going to be anything too enlightening among the 4 LPs and that is certainly the case. The choice of material is quite random and at times superfluous.

So, the Coda Tapes can be firmly described as something of a luxury purchase – and it’s an expensive item. There are cheaper ways of obtaining the alternate Coda material -in fact it strikes me that this whole set might have been better presented as a two or three CD package.

That all said, I did enjoy delving into the Coda maze again and being a sucker for this type of multi LP bootleg set, I am glad I invested – and having number 6 of the 300 limited edition is a bonus.

Led Zeppelin The Coda Tapes clearly won’t be for everybody but for Zep vinyl LP collectors and completists it will be one for consideration. Just don’t expect a reinvention of the Coda wheel…

Dave Lewis – April 12 2024.

Most Blueswailing Futuristic Way-Out Heavy Beat Sound – The Yardbirds by Peter Stanfield…

Here’s an extract from a new work in progress book on The Yardbirds written by Peter Stanfield  it’s due out next year.

When, in October 1968,   Melody Maker  finally broke their silence around The Yardbirds’ extinction they had ready their own version of the now perennial question, ‘Whatever happened to the Yardbirds?’ – ‘One of the great mysteries of our time’, wrote Chris Welch, ‘ranking with the Devil’s footprints, the Marie Celeste and the Five Penny Post, is the disappearance of a group once hailed as the most progressive in Britain’. He put his question to the ‘good natured’ Jimmy Page (the piece was illustrated with a 1966 photographic portrait of the guitarist in his Civil War kepi).

Looking back across the past four years, Welch recognised that The Yardbirds were ‘trying experimental pop long before today’s Underground groups’, but they were either too early ‘or lacked the drive to carry their breakaway from the original blues formula through to the public’. Their trips to America, he explained, had kept them out of the public eye in Britain. He provided a potted history of the band and noted that now only the ‘new boy’,

Page, was left to form a ‘New Yardbirds’; a band, he wrote who threaten ‘to be a welcome piece of fire power to the armoury of British groups’. The split with the original members had been due to Keith Relf’s loss of enthusiasm, said Page, which was now made up for by the ‘new chaps’ in the band who he reckoned were all about 19-years-old. Their debut had been in Denmark, whether to keep The Yardbirds’ name was still uncertain, he said, but they would still be playing the blues: but not Fleetwood Mac style. I hate that phrase progressive blues. It sounds like a hype, but it is more or less what the Yardbirds were playing at the end, but nobody knew about it because nobody saw us. We’re starting work on an LP and we’re going to the States in early November. I’m hoping the Marquee will be a good scene.

Robert can get up and sing against anybody. He gets up and sings against Terry Reid! Those two are like brothers together. I thought I’d never get a band together. I’ve always shied off leadership in thepast because of all that ego thing. . . I didn’t want the Yardbirds to break up, but inthe end it was too much of a headache. I just wanted to play guitar basically, butKeith always had this thing of being overshadowed by Jeff and that, which wasnonsense. It was great when we had two lead guitars.

Page, reported Welch, was all smiles and had no ill-feelings . . . ‘he is far too excited about the future to worry about the past’.

***

Most Blueswailing . . .   is the story of The Yardbirds’ magnificent reverberations, those sonic truths made between 1963–68. The book moves the story on from the tired celebration of the band’s trio of guitarists – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – and puts The Yardbirds back into a history of the development of popular music during the Sixties.Avoiding over-subscribed secondary sources,    Most Blueswailing   draws in a vast range of primary materials that are used to produce an electric, engaging and wholly original account.

The history of the band is told chronologically, tracking the shift from Trad Jazz to R&B to the emergence, five years later, of the progressive rock scene. The exponential growth of the London R&B scene in 1964 rivalled the provincial beat explosion, centred on Liverpool, that had begun the year previously. Both scenes were rapidly commercialised, producing hit records, television appearances and package tours.

This scenario brought to the fore a debate on popular music and authenticity – art and ​commerce, the real and the false, sincerity and pretence. This is not a posthumous theorisation, but the very heart of the matter as discussed by contemporary critics  and the artists themselves.

From mid-1965, The Yardbirds’ attention switched toward the American market and a year later it was their principal area of activity. This period saw them tour as part of such extravaganzas as Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, playing department stores, ice rinks and county fairs, mere cogs in the pop machine. By 1967 The Yardbirds would be part of the developing ballroom scene, participating in the psychedelic tumult of 1966 and, in 1967 –early ’68, acting as trailblazers for the underground movement. It was on these excursions that the groundwork was laid which Jimmy Page would build on when he formed Led Zeppelin.

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Record Store Day 2024:

The annual Record Store Day is upon us and this Saturday I will be venturing to our local store the Slide Record Shop. There’s one  Zep related interest this year which is The Yardbirds Psycho Daises The Complete B Sides LP  – Jimmy Page  is on a few of these tracks. I’ll be aiming to seek that one out along with releases by David Bowie  The Rolling Stones, The Faces and Elton John.

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