Late! I’m so sorry…
Jimmy Page is here on the Julie Felix show, playing White Summer/Black Mountain Side on acoustic guitar. It’s probably my favorite version of the instrumental.
Sadly, the video quality is… poor… but then this is recovered raw footage. It aired on April 26, 1970.
If you listen closely, from 2:57 to 3:21, it sounds like he’s riffing on “Friends” just a tiny bit (different key and arrangement, obviously, but still).
I’m moving another post over from my old blog. I’ve thought about putting this here in the past, so here it is. Also, yet again I’ve got another series of days of just Self Care posts. I’ve decided to stop getting myself stressed over the daily disgusting Agent Orange headlines darkening the news and focus on two posts I’ve been promising for a while now… the policing post and the ableism and slurs post. Both of these have taken me so long because they both require a lot of research, formatting, editing, and so on. I can’t just bang these out in a few minutes and throw them on here. Which, of course, means I’m procrastinating. But not any more. I’m getting them done, whether I want to or not!
But anyways… let’s talk about Led Zeppelin…
As a collector of unofficial Led Zeppelin material, there are so many things I wish to have but don’t. A few rare things are simply because I haven’t been able to find them. Some more are because they’re being horded.
But there’s some material that, as far as most collectors know, simply isn’t being circulated. Indeed, for some of this stuff, whether or not recordings exist is a question hotly debated.
But my interests aren’t limited to unofficial stuff. They extend towards potential official material, as well.
I got in to collecting unofficial Led Zeppelin material on an old, sadly no longer existing forum known as Planet Zeppelin. My very first unofficial recording was known as “The Secret History of Led Zeppelin”, which was a 1-cd compilation putting together some of the material from the BBC sessions that wasn’t officially released. I can’t put in to words how I felt when I listened to it for the first time, but it certainly made me addicted, and I haven’t stopped collecting since.
I’d like to go ahead and list, with short explanations, my top 10 “holy grails” of Led Zeppelin material, both official and unofficial.
Jimmy Page again! This solo is yet another amazing one from Page. Powerful and emotional, it definitely soars.
Of course, I’m talking about the second solo. There are actually two, here, the first one opening the song. And that one is really good, as well, setting the tone of the song quite nicely.
The first solo starts right at the beginning and ends at 1:12. Page continues to play lead licks underneath Plant’s singing, so the lead playing continues. But the second, and main, solo starts at 3:37 and ends at 4:52.
Enjoy!
In honor of Physical Graffiti’s 42nd birthday (back on February 24th), here’s Ten Years Gone, an amazing song with an incredible guitar solo…
The solo starts at 2:29 and ends at 3:20. There’s another bridge, with a sort-of solo, that starts at 3:42 and ends at 4:07. There’s more lead guitar throughout the rest of the song from there, as well. The whole song is incredible.
This is just audio, so nothing to watch.
Enjoy!
(Yup, a second Self Care post today. I did say this would happen sometimes…)
If you’re still unsure whether or not I’m a Zephead, you haven’t been reading my blog. Their music is everything to me.
On this day 42 years ago, Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti was first released. I already listened to the entire album, twice, before posting this.
The album is an experience, frankly. And in honor of it, this Monday’s GGS post will be Ten Years Gone.
Feel free to seek out and listen to the whole thing.
I just realized that I have a good bit of covers in this series… I need to rectify that, but not right now. And don’t worry… you’ll be seeing more of Chantel McGregor in this series. But first, I wanted to introduce you to her the way I was introduced to her…
Although this is a song with lyrics, Chantel never really stops soloing… even under the verses, it’s got a more lead feel than a rhythm feel. So it’s throughout the whole song.
Also, again, this is live, so there’s something to watch, here.
Enjoy.
Nope… it’s not about a copyright lawsuit…
(This is another light-hearted post to fill the time while I’m working on the police post. There’ll probably be more light-hearted stuff until I finally have that finished, sourced, and ready to post.)
So… I think at this point it’s obvious that I’m a pretty big fan of Led Zeppelin, and I will generally shell out the absolute maximum limit of what I can afford to purchase basically anything and everything they release officially.
I have a bit of a soft spot for their BBC sessions, from 1969-1971, because that was how I first heard Led Zeppelin. My first Led Zeppelin official release was their 2-disc BBC sessions release, and my very first unofficial recording/bootleg was A Secret History of Led Zeppelin, which was an early compilation of BBC sessions that were not on the official release, plus live tracks from other shows during their 1969 tour (I cannot put into words what it felt like listening to that CD for the first time, but, amazingly, I still feel that every time I put the CD on, and I absolutely love it). Later, Empress Valley, a Japanese bootleg label, came out with The Complete BBC Sessions, which I also have (one of only two “silvers” I ever purchased, and I will never purchase any again because of how guilty I felt [Led Zeppelin should have gotten that money]; I’ve gotten and get all the rest of my bootlegs either for free or, at most, the cost of shipping and blank CDs [for trades]).
So you can imagine how excited I was when an expanded edition of the BBC Sessions was announced. I was all set to preorder it, but then I saw that the music from the Alexis Korner sessions, including the song Sunshine Woman, were included. Now this is interesting, because the official tapes for that show were either wiped or went missing. We only have the sessions because they were recorded off of the radio, so the audio quality isn’t official-level quality. When it was first announced, there were a lot of questions about the music from the Alexis Korner sessions, the main one being the audio quality. And I decided to hold off on preordering the set until more information came out, because, technically, I already have the complete BBC sessions in the Empress Valley release, and the quality is actually surprisingly good for an unofficial release.
Well, Sunshine Woman was recently released online, and I am… unimpressed. If you can get Soundcloud to work, and you’re interested, here’s a link to listen.
Notice anything about the quality?
This right here is literally why I play guitar.
Jimmy Page playing his guitar with a violin bow. I don’t know what exactly it was that made me sit up and take notice, but this blew my mind, and made me think of the guitar in ways I had never imagined the guitar before seeing this.
This is live at Earl’s Court on May 24, 1975. Yes, it’s over 30 minutes long. No, that’s not the longest Dazed and Confused has ever gone.
The bow solo starts at 11:33 and ends at 19:00.
Again… this is why I play guitar. This is how I see the guitar.
Sadly, this you can’t watch, because there’s no video footage.
But you can certainly listen to it.
And please do. Eat it up. Enjoy it. Get it. Live it. Love it. The guitar solo starts at 2:07 and ends at 6:50.
Moving more blogs over from my old space. Bringing this one here because I want to get back into blogging about music. See this as a segway to my Great Guitar Solos series, which I’m bringing back next Monday, and will (try) to do every Monday, starting with ones I already wrote.
So I wanted to introduce everyone to my all-time favorite song. I don’t even know why it’s my all-time favorite song. What I do know is this:
a) It’s written by my all-time favorite band, Led Zeppelin.
b) It’s about a dog (Strider, the dog Robert Plant had at the time).
c) It’s my all-time favorite song.
I listen to it every morning when I wake up. It’s my ringtone. I know the lyrics by heart. I made myself a collection of every recorded instance of the song live. I have the studio outtakes and sessions on the electric instrumental version of the song. The studio outtakes/sessions, especially from Bron-Yr-Aur Cottage, of the acoustic version (which is the officially released version), are my Led Zeppelin collection holy grail.
Needless to say, I’m a bit obsessed with this song.
And I know you’re a Led Zeppelin fan if you already know what song I’m talking about.
And just which song am I talking about?