To the smoke yesterday to meet up and interview Mark Norton and Mike Warry of the Think Farm design team. Mark was responsible for the superb graphics that featured on the backdrop screen at the O2 show. Both offered an illuminating insight into the creative process that led to the hugely impressive production seen on the night. Their exclusive thoughts will form part of the extensive 02 aftermath coverage in the next Tight But Loose magazine. Be sure not to miss it.

Research into various Zeppelin topics also led me back to the Physical Graffiti album this last week. When February comes around, my mind often drifts off to thoughts of the arrival of said album back in 1975. Its impact 33 years on is no less impressive than it was back then.

In particular those outtakes that surfaced in 1997 – it’s a while back since I played those tracks and they sound amazing – the renditions of the undubbed Custard Pie and Trampled Underfoot display a raw and unnerving confidence, as does that untitled instrumental jam on the Tangible Vandalism bootleg album which is sometimes described as an early Hot’s On For Nowhere outtake. It does include variants on the riff of that track as well as Candy Store Rock. The syncopation of Bonzo’s drumming is just incredible – as is of course the whole of side three of the original double album which has also been high on the play list. On this Valentines Day may I make the point that the whole sequence of songs on side three from In The Light through to Ten Years Gone offers more pure romanticism than any number of Phil Collins or Barry White waxings. Play that as you sit at the candle lit table tonight and see the results…!

For me that whole record is the most complete one stop summary of what made Led Zeppelin great.

So dig the Physical Graffiti album out again and I’m sure you’ll agree that they remain as the renowned NME scribe Nick Kent noted in his review at the time “Quintessential doyens of the kamikaze dissbuster game….”

Which may not be the most romantic a description but one that remains most appropriate.