Led Zeppelin
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.20 You Save: $21.79 (73%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Led Zeppelin
Movie Review: Whole Lotta Zeppelin
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are a true Led Zeppelin fan you will love the Led Zeppelin two DVD set. It has all the favorites on it that a Led Zeppelin enthusiast would love. It's chocked full of live performances from early in the band's career to late in their career, featuring live performances from Royal Albert Hall, Madison Square Gardens, Earl's Court, and Knebworth. There are also some great extras in this set.
The 1970 performance at the Royal Albert Hall features some spectacular live versions of Whole Lotta Love and Moby Dick. Moby Dick features a quiet long drum solo by the band's drummer John Bonham. There is some great footage of this solo; especially when he plays part of the solo with his bare hands. These DVD's sound great; they don't sound like they were produced in 1970. They have both been digitally re-mastered.
The 1973 Madison Square Garden performance is my all time favorite. It starts out with a rocking version of Black Dog, and then goes into the rhythm filled Misty Mountain Hop. The DVD ends the performance with The Ocean, which is a timing masterpiece. The song bounces back and forth between 4/4 time and ¾ time. Led Zeppelin was way ahead of their time for doing this. They were probably the first rock `n roll band to do that.
The sound quality of the Earl's Court performance is impeccable. It starts out with a magical sounding version of Going to California. I like to put the DVD player on the five-channel audio setting that is an extra on the DVD, and let it play through my surround sound. It takes you back to 1973 and you feel like you're sitting on stage between Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. This performance also features the classic, Stairway to Heaven.
The Knebworth 1979 performances were awesome. You can truly see the progression of the band and their maturation process, both musically and physically. This performance was the most recent of the performances. It starts out with the rocking song Rock `n Roll and closes out with the great performances of Kashmir and Whole Lotta Love.
This is my most favorite concert DVD in my collection. Even if you aren't a committed Led Zeppelin fan you will still appreciate this collection of nostalgic hits. They were one of the most influential bands of their time and for several future generations. These concert DVD's are not filled with some of the insipid sounds of some of the more recent pseudo music that most create these days.
You should really tune into this historical masterpiece.
Movie Review: This IS the Holy Grail!
Summary: 5 Stars
Every now and again in history someone or something comes along and changes the way things are in some field of culture. It may be painting, writing, heck it could even be needle point. In 1968 God smiled upon man and gave us the formation of the greatest rock band of all time, Led Zeppelin. They not only had the greatest songs you've ever heard, but they changed the face of popular music forever. This DVD shows exactly how and why Led Zeppelin were and are so important to the music world.
Each song on this compilation regardless of the concert it comes from is perfect. Not really great, but perfect. Jimmy Page plays with more emotion than Hendrix, Clapton, and King combined. Robert Plant sings with such range and diversity to make Freddie Mercury look like a joke. John Paul Jones does things on bass and keyboars that are not humanly possible with out divine intervention. Then of course there is John Henry Bonham. If Moby Dick doesn't prove to you that he is undeniably the greatest drummer in history than you are either ignorant or recently had a part of your brain fried by listening to the utter crappyness that is Green Day. Every song takes you to a different place and time. The range of the styles on this dvd also proves the genius that is Led Zeppelin. I see some of the reviews here on Amazon saying that the songs are all long and boring, and that 50 Cent is such a better artist. All of those reviews were written by MTV. Not directly of course, but by MTV's young brain washed soldiers around the ages of 12 and 13. They've been told that classic rock is old and crappy except for The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. They only go back as far as Punk Rock and they think that they are true geniouses. Rap and Punk kick ass. People don't take these reviews seriously. You only need to look at the gramnmatical structure of their sentences to know they are young and ignorant. It's not their fault either. SO thanks MTV for dumbing down America one 12 year old at a time. Led Zeppelin is the definition of music. Seriously look it up in Webster's, their picture is right there. Also young kids don't think I'm some old guy in Southern Alabama who is a narrow minded redneck. I'm not. I'm 16 and I have a younger brother who is your age. He's been brainwashed by MTV too. Do yourself a favor and don't buy that new Kanye West LP. Go out and by Back in Black or the White Album or something. (Also throw away all of your Blink 182 and Green Day records) LED ZEPPELIN RULE ALL!!
Movie Review: At the heart of truth lies paradox ...
Summary: 5 Stars
As a Led Zeppelin fan for the last 30 years, I jumped for joy at the news of this DVD. To be sure, Jimmy Page's sound byte of "mystery, thunder and the hammer of the gods" to describe Zep live is well presented here, and the DVD is worth every penny.It should be noted that we're also subject to a fair amount of smoke and mirrors here, as anyone who's heard bootlegs of these shows can attest to. Page has unabashedly mixed multiple audio performances and less than stellar, damaged source footage into a singular illusion of Zeppelin live ... in its own right, a technological achievement as groundbreaking as the first Matrix movie. Multi-tracks (when available) have been remixed, edited and likely auto-tuned to present Zeppelin as more consistently proficient than they were ... Page was often out of tune, and when he WAS in tune, he often played inarticulate (albeit passionate) solos, and Robert Plant was often hoarse, flat or both ... but make no mistake, the overall sound quality here is absolutely startling. This is Zeppelin as you WISH they were live.
While Led Zeppelin DVD is less than honest from a documentation standpoint, it is quite possibly the BEST produced music DVD ever. Page created a DVD with all the love a true Zeppelin fan would have. The menus are meticulously produced with wonderful surprises -- not the least of which is a bootleg film (culled from two nights, naturally) of "The Song Remains the Same" opening their 1977 set. Other menus include footage from all through the years set to various rare live soundtracks. It's simply a blast discovering each of these as one explores ...
The track selection is near perfect (I believe most Zep fans would've loved to also see versions of "No Quarter", "Over the Hills and Far Away" or "Ten Years Gone", plus we get only teased with a brief clip of Jimmy's violin bow/laser light show solo at Knebworth), and one gets VERY present to the loss of John Bonham as one of the best drummers ever.
But we Zeppelin fanatics are a forgiving lot ... we love Zeppelin warts and all ... and are ELATED about this release. I, personally, have made a second career out of watching this DVD since its release and look forward to seeing it again. Thank you, Jimmy Page for making this happen, and of course to the other lads for the legacy of Zeppelin this honors so well. While this might not be an entirely authentic Holy Grail, it's certainly the Grail we wanted to find.
Movie Review: A Great View of Great Artists.
Summary: 5 Stars
I think the new Led Zep DVD is a very credible representation of the small amount of really good visual recordings of the band. It has been cleaned up and looks and sounds as good as can be with help from state-of-the-art equipment. I think all Led Zep fans will love this collection. Most of the footage contains actual synced performances: the images you see are different camera angles of the performances you hear. This is great and remains true to the "live and uncut" nature of these vintagefilms. While I personally think The Song Remains the Same is very good concert film (except for the hokey fantasy sequences) it also has footage spliced in that does not go with certain portions of the performances as well as overdubbed "fixes" to the soundtrack. You wont find much of that in this new DVD. And the performances are all genuine: Jimmy page has not gone in and "fixed" much, if anything. This is one of the things that makes all this so great. These performances were all very improvisational; no number was ever played the same way twice. Sure there are mistakes; the band veers of into impromptu jams that sometimes dont work, there are many technical mistakes by all the players (not just Page),the PA systems were archaic and noisy,the productions looked shabby, even their clothes are pretty silly sometimes. It was also quite normal for both the performers and their audiences to be quite stoned in those days!
And guess what? I love it! But those who give a bad rating to this DVD just dont get the point: these guys were innovators. Back in their day no one had ever seen or heard anything like them. Led Zeppelin redefined the rock experience and made it bigger than life. They were great players but werent perfect, which makes them human. They were constantly pushing the limits of their abilities and challenging themselves and their audiences. How boring it would have been to hear Stairway to Heaven played exactly like the album night after night. This was what a real rock concert was like in the early years of the big loud stadium bands! Somebody had to invent it, and here are four guys who were there at the beginning! And so I highly recommend this sound and visual Led Zeppelin experience to any and all who love real rock performances by real rock musicians, from a time when you could'nt hide lack of talent behind multi-effects processors,drum machines,lasers,samplers,tattoos and nose-rings! Bring it on Home!
Movie Review: Page Gets The Live Led Out, Finally
Summary: 5 Stars
Over the course of Led Zeppelin's career, Jimmy Page often spoke of creating a chronological live Zeppelin album which would showcase the band in full flight. Not only has Page done that with "How The West Was Won", he has released this monster. This will make Zeppelin freaks remember why they fell in love with the band in the first place. "Led Zeppein DVD" primarily consists of material from four concerts: Royal Albert Hall 1970, Madison Square Garden 1973, Earls Court 1975, and their final UK gigs at Knebworth in 1979. Zeppelin was not the type of band that would do note-for-note renditions of their songs. The band would often improvise new sections in the middle of a song. Witness "Communication Breakdown" from Royal Albert Hall; Robert Plant starts belting out the Isley Brothers "It's Your Thing" right after a furious Page guitar solo. Witness "Since I've Been Loving You" from Madison Square Garden, which begins with a Page onslaught and features some great interplay between Plant and Page. The footage from both of these shows is excellent, the sound prestine in Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound.
However, Earls Court will leave you breathless. This section begins with a 3 song acoustic set which looks like it was recorded yesterday. Plant is in great voice, and Page looks every inch the guitar god in his black dragon suit. "In My Time Of Dying" is incredible. John Paul Jones starts whipping out these furious bass runs while Page goes postal on slide guitar. John Bonham is right there with Jones, doing fill after outrageous fill. "Stairway To Heaven" is beautiful with split screen shots of Page in blue light and Plant's hair highlighted by a yellow spotlight.
Knebworth 1979 has more great footage. "Achilles Last Stand" has to been seen and heard to be believed. Page, although by this time is suffering through heroin addiction, pulls out all the stops on this epic, and the whole band pushes their skills to the limit and beyond. "Kashmir" is awesome, as is their revamped version of "Whole Lotta Love". Then, it's over.
This DVD shows why Zeppelin cannot reform without John Bonham, who died 13 months after the Knebworth concerts. He is simply irreplacable; his drumming throughout the CD is powerful, concise, and quite fun to listen to. Zeppelin wouldn't be a quarter of the band they were without Bonzo, and they know it. Be thankful that Jimmy Page oversaw this DVD project and buy it now. It's simply amazing.