Review: Led Zeppelin - Celebration Day DVD/Blu-Ray/CD

My history of buying Led Zeppelin product goes back to 1972 as a 9 year old kid when I bought the 45 "Rock and Roll" b/w "Four Sticks". Since then my obsession has grown to the point of owning over 200 bootleg shows in various former as well as every studio outtake not to mention virtually any bathtub fart that has seeped out from Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones from 1968 to 1980.

Rushing to Best Buy to get my copy of the Deluxe Edition of Celebration Day on the day of its release reminded me of that day in August, 1979 when I drove my nearly 17 year old self to the local Peaches to buy In Through The Out Door for a mere $5.99. Granted I have had a few different sources of this show bootlegged on audio and video I was quite ecstatic to get my tubby mitts on the new official release. The one-angle phone-shot video that I have on DVD is a great companion piece to the official DVD (or Blu-Ray if you roll that way) but the sheer slickness of the professional filming, recording and mixing renders all bootlegs as merely curios for reference. Some editing has occurred with some of Plant's banter removed and a few bars cut here and there where a couple moments ran afoul of excellence.

So does Led Zeppelin 27 years after their last official performance hold up? Well, compared to the rather horrendous 1985 Live Aid and the 1988 Atlantic Records Anniversary shows, it more than does their legacy well and indeed is an entertaining show. However it is but a nice souvenir of what was once was mighty, edgy and often lethal.

With the death of John Bonham, Led Zeppelin died. The chemistry of the 4 members was destroyed and thus the telekinetic synergy of the band died on that day in September, 1980. Jason Bonham is a fabulous drummer, one of the best of his generation, but he is not his dad. Led Zeppelin's magic was fading at the time of their demise and in fact they were beyond irrelevant and even through valiant efforts to re-invent themselves before the end arrived all too soon, they probably would have had a long period of sub-par albums and declining box office draw. With the death of Bonham and the death of the band before they could descend into suckitude, Led Zeppelin's status became more and more legendary and mythical as the years passed. By the 1990's the band, with no new product or tours and only Robert Plant cranking out solo albums of any worth, Zeppelin somehow became, or at least remained, even more robust than ever. Because they were a band that never played one genre of music and could not be pigeonholed as just a hard rock group or a blues group or a proto-metal outfit, their influence stretched far and wide across many musical stylists.

The 2007 setlist for the Ahmet Ertegun tribute show was, in itself, daring even if the performance was less than adventurous at times. Many of the improvisational flourishes of Page's playing were not in evidence as the band played through 16 songs that represented 8 of their 9 studio albums. Not that I miss anything from Out Door, I have to say it was a great set list just in the fact that it featured 3 tunes the band never played completely as a unit in their existence. Zeppelin only hinted at Good Times Bad Times in their repertoire. Its intro was used as a segue into Communication Breakdown for a few shows in 1969.  At the Celebration Day show it is a strong opener and has some nice lead work by Page even though he's a little rust. Then they go right into Ramble On which Led Zeppelin never played live. The Page and Plant tours of 1995-1998 did feature Ramble On and here it is rendered in much the same fashion with a snippet of What Is and What Should Never Be as the outro. Black Dog is played next and is a great version with some tasty fills by Jason Bonham filling in ably for his old man.

The first thing I noticed when I heard the bootlegs of this show which started showing up online as early as the very next day after the show in December, 2007, was that many of the songs were tuned down a whole step from the original key. I am quite certain this was done to accommodate Plant's, uh, aging vocal cords. Over the years Plant's voice has lost a lot of its early Zeppelin power and hitting the high notes on tracks like Black Dog, Whole Lotta Love were tough for him night after night even at his peak form. Ol' Bob had lots of vocal issues in the day. Plant came down with the flu right after the first dates of the 1975 tour that made most of the first half of that tour kind of shambolic and other nights before and after that there were times he sang in a lower register just to save his voice for months of touring. Plant has adapted his vocal style to suit the styles of music he does now and it works for him. It kind of bugs me on a musical level that the songs are down-tuned as they often sound odd. Black Dog and the last encore of Rock and Roll sound especially strange a whole step down. The slackening of strings to the lower pitch makes Page's already notoriously sloppy playing even more so in certain instances such as in the rather chaotic re-arrangement of Dazed and Confused and on Stairway To Heaven where the key of G minor just sounds plain weird. In My Time of Dying is played a step down but always was even in 1975 and 1977 so it sounds like the old Zeppelin. Kudos to Page for playing it on a Gibson ES350 hollow body guitar. Kashmir was also in the correct key and was the highlight of the evening and lived up to its epic status and then maybe even surpassed it. Kashmir, with its complex arrangement and its hypnotic throbbing drone of modal chords and faux-orchestral mellotron parts caused many train wrecks in days of old. In 2007 it was delivered perfectly.

The third new song was Presence's For Your Life which Zeppelin 2007 played for the first time ever. One of my favorite songs from my favorite Zeppelin LP, For Your Life is a bold move and a great surprise. Page's playing is epic and though he played it some with Black Crowes in their co-tour of 1999, to hear Plant sing it is a special treat even if in a different key.

So how is Celebration Day as a film? It is purely a concert film with no extraneous cuts, fantasy sequences, interviews, backstage footage and few crowd shots. Edited for the MTV generation, no shot lingers for more than a couple seconds. This can be annoying but it does create excitement and some of the shot, especially when the perspective is what seems to be Jason Bonham's seat in super wide angle is especially pleasing and gives a real feel of the event. With only one performance to cut from, the direction is superb and the sound is beautifully mixed. The bootlegs are all murky audience recording and the band was plagued with hideous feedback from what I assume is the on stage monitor system for the first few numbers. There is no evidence of this and kudos to Alan Moulder for his mixing wizardry. Maybe there is some studio trickery going on but eliminating that feedback must have been a herculean task.

If you have seen The Song Remains The Same and the self-titled DVD from 2003 you can get a pretty good idea what the Zeppelin experience was like. There are plenty of short clips of Led Zeppelin live on their official website and on YouTube so certainly investigate those. Make no mistake this is Led Zeppelin as good as you can expect for a bunch of guys who were in their late 50's to early 60's at the time and given the fact that the engine that was John Bonham was 27 years dead. No great chances were taken but they rose to the occasion and then some. The fire is long out but this little spark served as a reminder that the mightiest beast of musical barbarians that once roamed the east can still will themselves to rise to a special occasion.

Setlist

01. Good Times, Bad Times

02. Ramble On

03. Black Dog

04. In My Time Of Dying

05. For Your Life

06. Trampled Underfoot

07. Nobody’s Fault But Mine

08. No Quarter

09. Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You

10. Dazed And Confused

11. Stairway To Heaven

12. The Song Remains the Same

13. Misty Mountain Hop

14. Kashmir

15. Whole Lotta Love

16. Rock And Roll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PLMmd10177iHtvpf8rJZf3IgvmxM63eKvk&v=PD-MdiUm1_Y