Led Zeppelin Remasters in 2014+ to include 2nd disc of bonus material (Pt 8)

Nice idea. I decided to redo the Boxed Set, cherry picking my favorite versions. These were Davis/companion disc versions I used, the rest are Diament/Sidore.

 

Coda & III are probably the best of the lot IMHO.

 

I think there is considerable audible evidence. The bonus tracks all sound similar to each other and not to the original album mixes. If he really did them all back then they should sound more like the original album. But they don't. But they do sound similar to each other. In addition, like I said in my previous post, they all compliment the released versions a little too neatly to be mere works in progress.

Plus it wouldn't be the first time that Page has lied about the origin of a track---see "We're Gonna Groove" and "I Can't Quit You Babe" on the original Coda.

 

This is the compilation I did, in chronological order, from the companion discs... I've enjoyed it immensely. I 'cheated' a bit too - by using a few still-unreleased tracks from other sources - for the sake of 'historical reference'! And on DISC TWO, I've included some original tracks from Led Zeppelin III so I could have a full acoustic album from that period...

I've called it "THE COMBUSTION YEARS 1968 – 1978"


DISC ONE:

1 - Sugar Mama (Olympic No. 1, London, 3 October 1968)

2 - Baby Come On Home (Olympic No. 1, London, 10 October 1968)

3 - La La (Olympic No. 1, London, 14 April 1969)

4 - Whole Lotta Love (Multitrack Mixdown Version 2) (Olympic No. 1, London, 19 April 1969 / Overdubs May 1969)

5 - Moby Dick (Mirror Sound, Los Angeles, 6 May 1969)

6 - The Girl I Love She Got Black Wavy Hair (BBC Session) (Aeolian Hall, Studio 2, London, 16 June 1969)

7 - Travelling Riverside Blues (BBC Session) (Maida Vale, Studio 4, London, 23 June 1969)

8 - Bring It On Home (Atlantic, New York, 24 July 1969)

9 - Jennings Farm Blues (Olympic, No. 2, London, 13 December 1969)

10 - We're Gonna Groove (Royal Albert Hall, London, 9 January 1970 / Guitar Overdubs at the Sol, 1982)

11 - Bathroom Sound (Olympic No. 2, London, 3 June 1970)

12 - Since I've Been Loving You (Olympic No. 1, London, 5 June 1970)

13 - St. Tristan's Sword (Island No. 2, London, 5 July 1970)


DISC TWO: THE ACOUSTIC SIDE MAY-JULY 1970

1 - Hey, Hey, What Can I Do (Olympic No. 2, London, 29 May 1970)

2 - Bron-Y-Aur Stomp (Olympic No. 2, London, May-June 1970)

3 - That's The Way (Olympic No. 2, 30 May 1970)

4 - Bron-Y-Aur (Island, London, June 1970)

5 - Friends (Olympic No. 1, London, 5 June 1970)

6 - Poor Tom (Olympic No. 1, London, 5 June 1970)

7 - Hats Off To (Roy) Harper (Olympic No. 1, London, 10 June 1970)

8 - Feel So Bad/Fixin' To Die/That's Alright Mama (Olympic No. 1, London, 10 June 1970)

9 - Key To The Highway/Trouble In Mind (Olympic No. 1, London. 10 June 1970)

10 - Tangerine (Island, London, July 1970)

11 - Gallows Pole (Island No. 1, London, 5 July 1970)


DISC THREE:

1 - Four Sticks (Island No. 2, London, 2 November 1970)

2 - If It Keeps On Raining (Island, London, 11 November 1970)

3 - Going To California (Rolling Stones Mobile, Headley Grange, 29 January 1971)

4 - The Battle Of Evermore (Rolling Stones Mobile, Headley Grange, 29 January 1971)

5 - Over The Hills And Far Away (Olympic No. 1, London, 16 April 1972)

6 - Walter's Walk (Rolling Stones Mobile, Stargroves, 16 May 1972)

7 - Sick Again (Ronnie Lane's Mobile, Headley Grange, 25 October 1973)

8 - Swan Song (Olympic, London, November 1973)

9 - Everybody Makes It Through (Ronnie Lane's Mobile, Headley Grange, 28 February 1974)

10 - 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Musicland Studios, Munich, 17 November 1975)

11 - Bonzo's Montreux (Mountain, Montreux, 12 September 1976)

12 - Drum Segment (Polar Studios, Stockholm, November 1978)

 

Coda was named Mojo's reissue of the year in the new issue.

 

I would put Presence in there, but I admit that was always one of my favorite albums from them.

 

They were all mastered at the same time, in one or two big batches, which accounts for the consistency in sound that they have with each other. And they sound different from the album tracks precisely because they're mostly rough mixes, so they were never given the final polish one does in the final mixdown. The rough mix of "Heartbreaker" has more natural-sounding drums because the album version has them trebled-up and compressed to within an inch of their lives so they can be heard distinctly from Jones' bass. The early version of "Sick Again" sounds like you're in the studio with a couple of musicians, while the final album version has no sound of the studio in it - it's a more cohesive (but less natural sounding), polished surface. Ditto for "In the Evening" - the rough mix is lacking all kinds of EQ and effects applied to the final version to get it to sound as it did.

And even with all that, the the companion tracks do actually exhibit a lot of variation in sound amongst each other. "La La" from Zep II sounds a lot different than any other track on Zep II, and than most of the other companion tracks on all the albums. Ditto for "Key to the Highway/Trouble in Mind." And three of the In Through the Out Door tracks sound just awful - muffled with little to no stereo separation. They clearly were drawn from inferior sources - but if Page was making fresh mixes from the original multitracks, then such muffled-sounding tracks wouldn't be necessary. For that matter, why even use a live show for the Zep I companion disc if he could just manufacture fresh mixes of all the album tracks?

And then there's the fact of all the glitches in the companion tracks. If he were making them fresh, why have that extremely conspicuous bass screw-up in "Gallows Pole" rough mix? Why have Plant's vocal jarringly cut/clipped in the alt. version of "Houses of the Holy"? Why have a rough mix of "We're Gonna Groove" where you can still clearly here the live Royal Albert Hall guitar solo cacophonously competing with the 1982 overdub? Why keep the weird equipment noise in the initial silent break in "In My Time of Dying" when it could so easily have been removed if he were doing a fresh mixdown?

These are not new mixes. They're stuff from the vaults. The only companion-disc tracks that have had actual mixing work done on them beyond their initial recording period are the tracks that were worked on in 1982 for Coda, and possibly "Boogie with Stu" alt. mix from the PG companion disc since it was recorded in 1971(?) but maybe not given its final mix until 1974.

 

the song remains the same............

 

Let me repeat that the ITTOD remaster is the only one I have heard, at all. So my comments and theories are limited to that album and that bonus disc.

It's interesting how the album version of "Hot Dog" has that few seconds of useless barely audible chat at the beginning, but the 'rough' mix has a perfectly clean start.

I will continue to maintain that "Carouselambra", at least, is a new remix. It answers every complaint fans have had about that song and mix for years--the vocals are more audible, without the swamped-in-reverb sound as on the album, the "cheesy" keyboards are toned way down, guitars more prominent. Other tracks are like that as well. "Hot Dog" turns down Plant and Page a bit so you can hear more of Jones' contributions to the song.

 

someone could have easily edited everything on the new outtake version right up until the music starts. why is that so hard to understand? Do you want there to be 15 min of talking included just because they happen to have that on the tape preceding the take? what you are saying MAKES NO SENSE for your argument

 

It makes sense that Jimmy Page didn't want fans to hear the exact same little chit-chat that he wanted fans to hear before. (To make virtually identical mixes sound more different? Perhaps) It also has the effect of making the so-called, 'rough mix' sound more polished in a way than the released version was.

 

It doesn't answer all of mine. Not even close.

 

I understand that. But let me suggest that the only reason your theory about fresh mixdowns seems likely to you - or even plausible to you - is precisely because you've heard only the ITTOD remaster - and because, as you noted in your initial comment, you haven't read very many of the 3,400+ comments in this thread.

I'm not saying this with any malice. I'm just saying that it's one thing to base your theory on a single data point, but it's quite another to base it on a single data point when almost everyone else in the thread (and that's got to be 100s of folks) has all nine data points plus a wealth of secondary evidence and insights from the thread.

 

Granted all of that, why is it inconceivable that Page utilized the only real opportunity he has to put a much different mix of "Carouselambra" out there? It's not like the guy hasn't had the time in the past 35 years to play around with the multi-tracks. In fact, I would be extremely surprised if he never has...

 

It's not inconceivable. It's just not probable, and not terribly plausible given the totality of the evidence.

 

=

Well if he has remixed it recently, and if that's the best he can come up with for this wretch of a song even with the power of nearly half a century's hindsight, he's not the genius we all thought he was.

 

No recent remixes.

Prediction:
The multi-track masters will be revisited in a few years' time and the resulting new stereo mixes and multi-channel versions will be launched in a blaze of publicity, with poor old Jimmy wheeled out to promote them. They'll be sold at a higher price than can be justified and we'll buy essentially the same music all over again. (I can't wait!)

 

I would really doubt the new remixes would sound any close (not saying better!) than the originals. Don't forget about all effects they used back in 1970s, how could they possibly reproduce all of them now?... About the multi-channel versions, I don't believe they will ever release them. Nah. Forget about it.
The best they could do for us is releasing original master tapes in a really well-made hi-res format. But that's a daydream of mine.

 

Didn't they just do that?

 

Hardware and effects from the 70s still exists and is in use in studios all over the world, and plug-ins now recreate them to near perfection.

You mean you want flat transfers of the masters?

 

Since you obviously don't like the song to begin with, I'm not going to waste my time repeating the reasons why I think it is a remix.

 

Yes I do. In hi-res format.

 

No they did not.

 

So, what did they do?

 

What are you talking about? They did anything but master tapes flat transfers in a hi-res format.