New online-only videos span Led Zeppelin's career

The other day, I chortled when I read a comment on this blog from my friend Rich, requesting some live Zeppelin clips rather than live clips of Zep covers from a music festival in 2008 where no Led Zeppelin members even appeared. He has a point!

It just so happens that some vintage live Zeppelin performances are being uploaded to Youtube these days with the approval of the band. The LedZeppelin Youtube channel is officially sanctioned by the group, so some video and audio clips are now seeing their official release exclusively online.

The channel has some clips from their previous official releases. Who could forget this excerpt of the powerful "I Can't Quit You Baby" from the Royal Albert Hall in 1970?

...or this funky version of "The Ocean" performed at Madison Square Garden in 1973?

...or the classic and penultimate take on "Kashmir" from the Knebworth 1979 shows?

But what's especially interesting to see are some of the videos added over the past couple of weeks whose release the band had heretofore withheld authorizing.

Chris Welch took some 8mm footage of the group on tour in West Germany in July 1970. Now these clips have been edited together and come to life with the soundtrack of "Celebration Day" supplied for effect.

An outstanding performance of "Sick Again" from the L.A. Forum in 1977 is presented in full with several sources supplying great angles of Jimmy Page in his white dragon suit wielding his double-neck guitar, and the rest of the guys doing what they do best. This montage was spliced together by Sam Rapallo, webmaster of the official Led Zeppelin Web site, www.ledzeppelin.com.

The band takes flight in this 8mm footage shot on location in Pittsburgh in 1973 outside the Starship. This was the location of a famous photo shoot in which the band poses next to their touring plane with Robert Plant opening his arms wide. The first half of the footage is accompanied by Page's guitar instrumental "Bron-Y-Aur," until we arrive at the concert. Then, snippets of that night's version of "Rock and Roll" and "Black Dog" kick in with the visuals synched up to the tunes.

Cut to a year earlier in San Bernardino, Calif., where the band can be seen and heard ripping up a version of "The Song Remains the Same" a whole year before it was released. Page's guitar antics continue in the middle of his "Heartbreaker" solo. This also includes snippets of "Black Dog," "Stairway to Heaven" and Page's violin bow solo from "Dazed and Confused." Remarkably, before the footage ends with a brief snippet of "Whole Lotta Love," we get a glimpse of a rare onstage performance of "The Crunge."

Here's a version of "Kashmir" recorded in Los Angeles the year it came out on album. That Mellotron John Paul Jones plays may not be quite in tune, but what else would you expect from a 1975 performance?

Fast-forward two years, again in Los Angeles, and this time there's nearly 10 minutes' worth of Led Zeppelin performing. This 8mm footage includes a shot of Jones at his keyboard during "Trampled Underfoot" and another of John Bonham during his "Over the Top" drum solo. Page can be seen performing portions of a guitar solo that preceded "Achilles Last Stand." But the biggest surprise of the night comes five-and-a-half minutes into the video, when Led Zeppelin welcomes a rare guest onstage -- namely Keith Moon, drummer for the Who. With Keith at Plant's microphone and Plant at the drums, hilarity ensues! Moon then sticks around to play timpani and tambourine for the encores, and Page marks the one-off occasion with an out-of-tune string heard a few times at the beginning of "Rock and Roll."

There are also segments from several shows on Led Zeppelin's final tour. Catch up with them in 1980 at their destinations in Munich:

...and Zurich:

...and Rotterdam.

Led Zeppelin covers all bases with revamped official Web site

Almost as long as the Web has existed, fans of Led Zeppelin have created their own Web sites and forums dedicated to the band. In absence of an authoritative site with the stamp of approval from the band, the story has been told and retold on the Internet by concert goers and those from the next generation of fandom.

For the first time ever, today marked the launch of an official Web site that does many of the things fan sites have attempted in the past. Its user-friendly layout, stylized after the In Through the Out Door album artwork, boasts of a complete, detailed timeline of the band's historical live performances along with photographs, tour and concert memorabilia, and other information corresponding to those shows.

Concert set lists are printed wherever known, with single sentences inserted to denote remarkable happenings at the shows -- such as for June 23, 1977: "Keith Moon joining the group onstage during Moby Dick and the encores." (The fact is also evident by a shot of the Who drummer sharing a microphone at center stage with Robert Plant.)

Other dates have entire newspaper clippings to herald the concerts, such as a review of the show two nights earlier, and a Denver newspaper's review of the band's North American debut concert on Dec. 26, 1968.

The site also contains a forum for discussion among fans and, through a partnership with the online store Bravado, a venue for the purchase of officially licensed Led Zeppelin clothing, accessories, buttons, stickers ... and, of course, official video and audio releases.

Among the shirts available are black shirts with the Mothership design, an already recognizable icon one week after the release of the newly remastered two-CD sampler of the band's studio work.

The site's webmaster is Sam Rapallo, who has for a decade been behind the now-closing Electric Magic fan site and, for more than three years, the official site of John Paul Jones. The Led Zeppelin site calls for fans to contribute their concert memories or any corrections or updates they see fit.

Its debut coincides with the release of The Song Remains the Same both on a superior-audio DVD and as an expanded CD soundtrack. The new packages were released Nov. 19 in the United Kingdom and will be available Nov. 20 in the United States. The release concludes a month of anticipated sets from the band, which played its last note in 1980, less than three months before the death of drummer John Bonham.

The existence of a news section and, more to the point, a section marked "Reunion" makes for an interesting point. It suggests that if a more permanent reunion is to exist beyond a single concert held in London on Dec. 10, a section of the Web site is already dedicated to covering it.

A page exists for the reunion show next month at the O2 arena. Interestingly, the concert timeline ignores the previous reunions the band played.

Coincidentally, a new BBC interview filmed at Jimmy Page's house sees the guitarist explaining why he did not enjoy either the reunion concert at Philadelphia's Live Aid in 1985 or the Madison Square Garden performance in 1988 for Atlantic Records' 40th birthday celebration.

To mark the release of the new version of The Song Remains the Same, a promotional screening of the film was held in London, as covered by Tight But Loose fanzine author Dave Lewis on his diary connected with TBL/Web.

"It's not just a great time to be a Led Zeppelin fan right now," Lewis writes. "It's f***ing fantastic."