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Lost And Found: Tales from the rubbish tip…

24 October 2008 1,982 views No Comment

It’s an easy mistake to make when you have life laundried like I have these past few days.

So there we were at the local Beds County Council rubbish tip with 26 bags of rubbish from the loft to dispose of. It’s quite a maze at our local tip with skips aplenty: man made wood, recycled items, small electrical goods, large electrical goods, newspapers and magazines….now that was the one for us.

So once organized by the not so friendly tip advisor, an anguished cry goes up from the good lady:

“What an earth are you throwing those away for!”….

Christ I thought I’ve somehow included some rare Zep artifact.

An original Earls Court  programme? That VHS video marked Houston video feed May 21 1977?  A rare Zep 1 with turquoise sleeve?

Oh now it was far worse than that. “These are our wedding day cards you’re throwing out!!!”

Now as we are coming up for our silver wedding anniversary early next year that was not a cool move. Hastily said bag was recovered and said cards are now safely returned to the loft.

As I said before this life laundry caper isn’t easy!

Aside from that near catastrophe, progress has been made in the quest to make some space here so the returning Sam can have a crash pad of her own. I even found the complete year of 1980 Sounds music papers I’d loaned from Terry B a couple of years ago. They too have gone back to their original owner (Terry now you can marvel over a years worth of new wave of heavy metal articles – Diamond Head and Saxon ruled in 1980!)

The good lady did have the last laugh. Picking up a binder with the first edition of a magazine part work I was going to collect a few years back called ‘PC Knowhow made easy’…she dryly commented “How come that’s still in the original cellophane?”

Elsewhere it’s been chipping away at TBL 22.

Martyn came over to collect some pics as the life laundry was underway. Of course on further investigation of the loft I’ve uncovered a few gems from the past –many a rarely seen in years item in fact, and we had a laugh watching a video of a young Mick Wall interviewing Jimmy circa Outrider on the old BskyB rock show.

One thing I was very pleased to find was the folder containing some original Zeppelin lyric sheets I was given on a visit to Swan Song office in 1977. Back then Jimmy had a plan to produce a songbook for Physical Graffiti and Presence – some rough music sheets and lyrics had been printed out. I was given copies to check over the lyrics and return the next week. This I duly did and when back in the office I also looked over a fair few contact sheets of photos under consideration for the songbook. These included a lot of Neal Preston shots and one set that caught my eye was a series of shots taken offstage in America in 1977 with Robert wearing an England shirt. Never seen anything surface from that session since..

As it turned out the songbook idea was put aside…and I kept those original lyrics under wraps. In the early 90’s music publishers Barnes Music got in touch and used them for the Remasters official songbook.

One remarkable aspect of those sheets is that  Black Country Woman carries a subtitle of ‘Never Ending Woman Blues’

In fact looking at the sheets again this week it actually states on the music lyric sheet

 “Tag (Spoken)

 “What’s the matter with you mama. Never ending, nagging doubting woman blues”.

Could it be that an outtake exists with that line intact?

The life laundry will continue but not at such a pace with retail frenzy ahead. On the player I’ve a few new acquisitions to get into namely the Bob Dylan Tell Tale Signs outtake set and Fotheringay 2 the newly completed version of Sandy and co’s long lost second album. On the Zep front I can feel a yearning for some late ‘71 and ‘72 UK live tapes enthused by Steve Jones excellent ‘I was there’ feature in the next TBL. 

On that score there’s no shortage of Zep live cassettes of that era still stored in the loft. They ain’t going nowhere. Along with our wedding day cards.

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