To remember 2007 reunion, Zeppelin fans make do without official DVD

"A Work in Progress" is a fan-produced assemblage of video clips shot near the stage during Led Zeppelin's 2007 reunion performance at the O2 arena in London. This homegrown release has hit trading circles in recent months without being available on any particular bootleg label.

It is being seen as a visual upgrade to a previously available video source credited to Third Eye Productions. Such is the assertion made in a description of "A Work in Progress" posted on the site Collectors Music Reviews.

A Work In Progress uses fifteen different angles to replicate what can be considered to be a professionally edited concert on DVD. The use of quick edits is able to capture the enormity of the event and to give much more visual information than the Third Eye [release] is able to do.

All of the videos used in this redaction are relatively close to the stage and offer many tantalizing close ups. The careful work is directed by a knowledgable [sic] Zeppelin fan who focuses upon the point of excitement and interested [sic] in any given song. It is a masterful work that moves the production values of the visuals from bootleg quality into a professionally edited live concert as it would have been presented in the nineties. The one camera missing is the roving eye camera used for the show and which appeared on newscasts which presents a more kinetic view of the show.

Presumably, footage caught by this "roving eye camera" is being reserved for the possible commercial release of this show on DVD at long last by the Led Zeppelin members. Preserving this concert with an eventual release is something Led Zeppelin fans have felt strongly about pretty much from the moment the show was announced, long before the planned show date changed from Nov. 26 to Dec. 10.

Two months ago, on the second anniversary of the concert, fans listening to syndicated radio host Carol Miller's daily installment of "Get the Led Out" heard an inside scoop about the possibility of a DVD from Phil Carson, a former Atlantic Records executive and confidant to Led Zeppelin. Now one of the board members of the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, for which the concert raised money, Carson said:

"Well, they've got it [footage]. It's all really on multi-camera, high-tech, high-def, state-of-the-art stuff. They spent a fortune getting it done, and the board of the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund agree it should come out, and as far as they're concerned, they can do what they want with it. It's just a question of what the three guys decide."

As far as what thoughts Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant have on releasing their celebrated one-off performance with Jason Bonham on drums, we have precious few on-the-record insights.

On June 16, 2008, the night Led Zeppelin picked up the Best Live Act award from Mojo magazine, both Page and Jones were in attendance and answered questions from BBC 6 Music about plans to issue a visual record of the concert.

Page's entire reported comment was:

"I hope so, one day, yeah."

That's all.

Not much more from Jones, except some insight into why the delay:

"Yeah, I should think one day the DVD will come out, but there is no hurry to do it. ... It was a special occasion, you know, and we really wanted that just to be it, really."

Really, Jonesy?

For now, fans wanting to relive the moment are making do with non-commercial releases like "A Work in Progress" and the Third Eye Productions disc, some of them possibly recognizing their own concert footage being used in the visuals.

And the Collectors Music Review description of "A Work in Progress" doubles as a pretty good run-down of the concert as it unfolded, even if the author raced through the end of the concert and thereby failed to capture the essence of "Kashmir," that Dec. 10 version rated by some witnesses as the best performance of it ever.

Despite their increasingly suitable bootleg editions, fans are still hoping someday all unofficial discs will be made obsolete by the release of an official concert video -- one that reporter Mark Cunningham, for Total Production International magazine, once offered could be superlative based on the images presented on the screen backdrop onstage:

The video production was essentially delivered by a three-way partnership between director Dick Carruthers (famed for his award-winning work on the 2003 Led Zeppelin DVD), video ‘scientist’ Richard Turner and graphics guru Mark Norton, the creative director at London-based agency, Think Farm.

The combination of their acutely intuitive skills resulted in what can only be described as a watershed moment in the relatively short history of large format live concert video production. The creativity applied to the merging of stunning graphic art and animation with Carruthers’ mind-blowing treatment of live camera feeds was incomparable. In fact, I’m confident that December 10 2007 will be remembered as the date when, for the concert video industry, everything changed.

Cunningham also reports that Carruthers operated a console, nicknamed "the Big Kahuna," "whose mysterious fascia echoed that of Lt. Uhura's control panel aboard the Starship Enterprise." With this gargantuan gadget, "Carruthers was mixing eight cameras for the live screen, although there were 17 in total, including two HD cameras, two HD minicams around the drums and three film cameras," Cunningham reports.

He also quotes Carruthers as saying:

"I was looking for a desk that would work in HD and SD, that also had DVE effects and would work live. The Kahuna had it all. ... It's an exceedingly clever beast and its four mix effect busses allow all sorts of different routing and panels, so I could do things like the three-way mix in 'Dazed and Confused.' In the past I've had to use multiple DVEs to do this kind of thing, but here it all was in one big desk with native HD resolution as well.

"Once I found the Kahuna and the shoot expanded for archive purposes, I knew we'd need to get an OB truck in and shoot on Hi-Def, so we hired CTV's OB9 with Jim Parsons at the controls."

I take it that, in layman's terms, it would suffice to say if this thing ever comes out, it would be rather phenomenal.

Third report from fans in London

Chris from Virginia, who got two tickets in the first passcode drawing, just called me from a pub near the O2 arena to let me know he's in the presence of Led Zeppelin authority Robert Godwin. In case you didn't know, Godwin is the celebrated author of "The Press Reports" and "The Collector's Guide to Led Zeppelin" among others. And, according to the story Chris just told me, Godwin is also the guy who coined the name of the bootleg Listen to This, Eddie!

Godwin was apparently fed up with hearing the fictional story about the bootleg title being attributed to some radio disc jockey who had Eddie Van Halen on his radio program. According to that old wives' tale, Eddie was complaining about Jimmy Page's guitar playing as being sloppy, which miffed the DJ, who then played a fine counterexample, ordering him, "Listen to this, Eddie!"

Well, the story has now been debunked by none other than Godwin himself, who says he coined it. The bit about Eddie Van Halen complaining about Page's guitar playing as "sloppy" was correct, but it was Godwin who suggested to the publisher of the first unofficial release of Led Zeppelin's show from Los Angeles on June 21, 1977, that the guitar playing on that date was so good it should be played to Eddie Van Halen. Godwin suggested that someone ought to take this concert recording to Eddie Van Halen and say, "Listen to this, Eddie!" And hence the bootleg title was born! Thanks for the tidbit, Chris!

Speaking of bootlegging, somebody "anonymous" wrote a very nice comment today on my blog posting from September 2 about bootlegging. It reads like an essay, and it offers a very nice suggestion for bands that have been recorded. It is some very useful advice for Led Zeppelin.

Word has it the Ahmet Ertegün tribute concert is going to open with an all-star performance of "Fanfare for the Common Man," the Aaron Copland piece popularized by ELP. Participating in the performance are to be the E of ELP -- Keith Emerson -- along with Alan White and Chris Squire (who are both members of Yes and played with Page in a band called XYZ shortly after the demise of Led Zeppelin) and possibly also Rick Wakeman, who may or may not be wearing a cape. What a beginning to the show this would be!

I was listening to some Foreigner the other day. Great stuff! I called up one of my brothers out of blue that night and asked him what the best saxophone solo in rock history is. I didn't give him a hint that I was looking for a particular answer. It took him a minute of listing off a few contenders, and then he got the exact song I was thinking of: "Urgent" by Foreigner.

Fats Domino tribute released with two Robert Plant tracks

On a new two-CD collection produced both as a tribute to 79-year-old singer/songwriter Fats Domino and also to benefit the music culture in New Orleans, Robert Plant lends his vocals to two cover songs.

Domino, a New Orleans native who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina two years ago, has been recording since the late 1940s. He earned his first pop hit in the United States and England in 1955 with "Ain't That a Shame." John Lennon's cover version of the song, originally released 20 years later, now exists as the appropriate choice to open the tribute album released tomorrow in the United States.

As for Plant's involvement in the project, New York Times reporter Nate Chinen tells the story in an article published on Saturday: Plant had first agreed to contribute only one song for the compilation, a version of Domino's 1961 single "It Keeps Rainin'." However, one was not enough; he chose to record another, engaging in an impromptu recording session with a large vocal ensemble dropping in from another continent.

In April recording sessions attended in person by Domino, Plant committed both songs to tape during a three-day visit to New Orleans. For "It Keeps Rainin'," he was assisted by the Cajun sounds of the accordion-wielding Lil' Band O' Gold, a swamp-pop group from the southern Louisiana town of Lafayette. Plant and the band laid down their rendition on Thursday, April 19, according to Scott Jordan in a blurb for Lafayette's Independent Weekly and Keith Spera in a blog entry for The Times-Picayune.

Spera adds that following the recording session, Plant stopped by three New Orleans concert venues to take in some live performances. One of the acts he watched was Lil' Band O' Gold member Steve Riley's other band, the Mamou Playboys, performing at the Mid-City Lanes Rock 'n Bowl. Plant also listened to local mainstays The Trio at the Maple Leaf.

At Tipitina's, the top-billed act was not an area group but the 26-member Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa. During their stay, they were ushered into a recording studio with Plant to record an impromptu cover of "Valley of Tears." In the original version, released 1957, Fats Domino was assisted by a pop choir and saxophone solo. However, the only musical accompaniment in the new recording of that song comes from some light percussion. Plant provides two verses of restrained vocals in this track, which stretches just barely over two minutes in length.

While it might be construed as an atypical combination of forces to outsiders, at least one person familiar with the New Orleans music scene was quoted in the New York Times piece as declaring Plant's recording session with the Soweto Gospel Choir was commonplace. “So you have the Led Zeppelin guy with a South African gospel choir doing a Fats Domino song,” said Bill Taylor, executive director of the Tipitina's Foundation and executive producer of the double album. “It’s an example of what happens here musically every day.”

Plant and Domino met again in the afternoon on Saturday, April 21, before the British singer joined the Lil' Band of Gold onstage for a half hour at Tipitina's. They were reported to have played both "It Keeps Rainin'" and "Valley of Tears," in addition to a few Elvis Presley songs, the blues song "Hoochie Coochie Man" made famous by Muddy Waters, and snippets of Led Zeppelin songs.

Led Zeppelin fans may best know Domino as the author of the song "Blueberry Hill," famous for a performance as an encore at a single Zep show 37 years ago this month. An unsanctioned recording of the concert by an audience member was released in the 1970s without authorization of the band, making it one of the very earliest bootlegs of a rock concert ever produced.

The double album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, is to be released Sept. 25 by Vanguard Records. It is not the first musical release for which proceeds benefit the Tipitina's Foundation. It is preceded by Domino's independently released 2006 album, Alive and Kickin'.

Doing time for bootlegging

A guy against whom Jimmy Page testified in court pleaded guilty last month to charges stemming from his selling bootlegged recordings of Led Zeppelin and other bands. Now the guy has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.

Not long ago, a Zep fan who attended the trial in Scotland compiled his recollection of the questions and answers with Jimmy on the stand. If accurate, this account provides some insight into Jimmy's misunderstood stance on bootlegs.

What can't be mistaken is Jimmy's statement that some tapes of his went missing over 20 years ago, taken from his personal stash at home. One must assume this was the source of some Zep studio outtakes that have circulated through the years, plus soundboard recordings from live shows now common to collectors. At any rate, it gives Jimmy the opportunity to elucidate on the ethics of bootlegging.

The main argument against it is that unsanctioned bootlegs aren't really worth the prices they're charging due to their questionable quality. It is Jimmy's argument now, and it was the same one Zep manager Pete Grant had back in the '70s. Now, many bootlegs are of good quality, but Jimmy has noticed bootleggers release the same shows over and over again, each time improving the sound quality a little so as to capitalize on each sequential release.

It's capitalism at its most egregious because no matter what the price, people will buy it. The veracity of Zep fans translates to a big demand for these recordings. It's a compliment to the band, for sure, and a testament to how electrifying the band was in its shows and how important they are to the history of rock 'n' roll.

But who profits from it? People who don't have the right to release these recordings in the first place, that's who. And not Jimmy. Hence the frustration he experiences. Other people are controlling the name and image of Led Zeppelin when they release these bootlegs, and they're reaping the benefits too. Peter Grant made it so that only the band could do those things: They would retain control over their image and music, and they would get 90% of the gate at their shows. Peter allowed it no other way. Jimmy is evidently doing Peter's work..

Recording shows for your personal enjoyment? Fine, says Jimmy. Sharing recordings among fans? Yes, short of financial gain, he says. Get money involved, and that's when he objects.

But doesn't Jimmy have a habit of visiting Japanese bootleg shops? True, he visits those shops and even gets his photo taken with fans. He doesn't deny that. And he even smiles in the photos. He doesn't want to be a jerk to fans, does he? But what about the bootlegs he collects there? He doesn't pay for them. Why would he? They're his. Who has the right to own them? He does. In Japan, they don't challenge him.

Twenty months. Does the punishment fit the crime? Sound off.