Led Zeppelin Deluxe Editions

I recently went on a binge and bought most of the new Led Zeppelin remasters in their "Deluxe" versions featuring one extra CD of demos and outtakes per album. I only left out my least favourite ones "Presence" and "In Through The Out Door", so I now only have them twice while I have everything else 3 times: In the vinyl LP's, as part of the Remastered Led Zeppelin Box Set (4CD) and Led Zeppelin Box Set Vol. 2 (2CD) - and, now, the Deluxe 2015 remasters. The two boxsets mentioned combined all of Zeppelin's studio material plus a few bonus tracks, and were remastered and resequenced by Jimmy Page back in 1990. The sound is so vibrant and dynamic that a new remastering did not initially appeal to me. As for the bonus tracks, according to all reviews these are mostly works in progress, and far from essential. After a first listening, I have to admit that Page worked wonders again: All instruments come alive and the slightest nuance is heard loud and clear - I actually wondered if there such a thing as too much hi-fi. A couple of times I discovered details that I'd prefer to stay hidden in the background - but then again, the good stuff (which is, of course, the majority) sounds even better now. As for the bonus tracks, a real verdict would require a lot of listening, but for the time being this should be enough: It's Led Zeppelin shaping some of Rock music's greatest albums in the studio. Wouldn't you like to be in a corner listening? This is as close as you'll get to that. More details later. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to review the LP's and Deluxe CD's together or separately, but eventually all will appear in this blog.

P.S. these are the back covers of the Deluxe Editions, the front covers are replicas of the original vinyls - down to the gimmicks in III and Physical Graffiti. I'm not crazy about the paper cases though, as the CD's are bound to get scratches and finger marks going in and out, plus the glue is already coming off. They'll tell you they use paper to enhance the "vinyl replica" effect, but that's bollocks, they're just being cheap. You want to do it right, use inner sleeves like the original LP's came in, and like proper reissues (e.g. The Beatles in Mono box). Carelessness regarding such small details will eventually spell the end for the CD era. It reminds me of the LP covers (cheap paper, bad print jobs, incomplete artwork) and low quality vinyl and we bought in the late 80's and 90's - in Europe at least. No relation to modern-day 180 gram vinyl LPs. They got easily scratched and warped and were often mastered so quietly that to really listen to the music we had to crank up the volume and got a lot of surface noise and clicks. The first generation of CD's may have sounded a bit flat, but compared to mass-produced vinyl played in affordable everyday stereos it was an improvement, don't let them tell you otherwise...