Stairway to Here, a Led Zeppelin returns review in the NYer, by Sasha Frere-Jones is a quality review of the show. The genius of the piece is that she pens a turn of phrase that quite effectively sums up how I feel about the band: “My affection for Led Zeppelin is limitless and somewhat irrational.”
I wish I had thought to say it that way. She also has a blog post about the Led Zep show as well.
On the outskirts of London yesterday, Led Zeppelin completely and utterly destroyed the rock landscape for the first time since I was a little lad. I was not there. I thought I would be okay with not being one of the supremely lucky 20k people who were on the inside but reading the reviews, viewing the photos, seeing the set list…let’s just say that I am super & seriously sad that I did not see it live. Now I’m I am dying for either the DVD or a tour to arrive immediately. Immediately meaning yesterday.
In terms of learning what when down across the pond, you could turn to the UK Times has a good review and our own NYT has a decent review as well. So does New Music Express. I’m waiting some other good music publications to post their reviews. When they do, I’ll update the site.
12/11 UPDATE: The Rolling Stone review is quite good.
In terms of pics, the NYT has an okayslideshow of photos from in and around the Ahmet Eretugan tribute show. Rolling Stone has a decent one too. By later today, a few hundred other news outlets will as well and again, if they are worth noting, I’ll update this post.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll be listening to Zep a lot in the upcoming days… [“When the Levee Breaks” is on right now]
DRM stands for digital rights management, aka the utter bullshit that companies use to “protect” their content from the very people who gave them money for said content in the first place. DRM sucks and not just because the song/show/movie you bought will only play on certain “approved” device(s) – there are about 10 other good reasons why it sucks which I’m not going get into in this post. Not only do most music consumers hate the very idea of DRM, now music industry professionals are going on the record against this failed idea as well.
For instance, Ian Rodgers, the Head of Yahoo! Music, the #1 music destination on the web, stated two weeks ago that he won’t spend a single dollar more on DRM. As he so eloquently put it,
“In the end you get what you pay for. I won’t spend another dime paying engineers to build false control, making listening to music harder for music-lovers. I will put all of my energy into making it easier and making the experience better. I suggest you do the same.”
Now for a little history about this whole nonsense: DRM became “hot” due to the Napster and P2P phenomenon which caught publishers by complete surprise. Their only strategy for the last 8 years has been to circle the wagons and go into lock down mode while they try to figure out how to take advantage of this new digital landscape. I do not use “take advantage” lightly; what the music publishers have done over this almost decades worth of time is take advantage of their customers, by first rolling out poorly thought out and poorly executed DRM strategies and then by trying to get everyone to use subscription based models – you don’t own any music, you just “lease” it – to make as much money as they can.
eMusic has always known what users want and has allowed them to buy DRM free MP3s since they first launched their site years ago. However, the eMusic song catalog has always been limited to the lesser (though still good) known acts of the world which has been one of its main drawbacks. The other main drawback is that you can only buy a package, like 30 tracks in a month for $9.99, and not individual songs from eMusic. So, I like the site but I don’t love it.
Apple then got on the bandwagon a few months back by starting to sell DRM free songs in its iTunes store at a premium, which was a step in the right direction but still annoying and not just because Apple basically hid (from a information architecture / usability point of view) this whole DRM free section of the site. As an aside, I have been buying tracks off of iTunes for a while now – mostly because my wife keeps getting gift certificates to the iTunes store so hey, why not right? I love the store but hate the rights managed AAC format. This means that some of my great music can only be played on an iPod. While I do have an iPod now, who knows what the future brings? Being locked into a certain device in order to listen to music I bought and paid for is aggravating and upsetting. Trying to find the new DRM free iTunes tracks is almost as aggravating. Almost.
Then, just about a month ago things got very interesting. Amazon, praise Jesus, rolled out their DRM free MP3 store and hallelujah, there is a real player out there who can honestly compete with iTunes (i.e. the store has over 2 million songs) . Say it with me the way that Marv Albert says it: “Yesss!”
Finally, a major store exists that sells you a product that you, not they, control. You give them money. They give you control. I’m so in love with this new store and the idea of being able to buy individual DRM free MP3s from major artists that I even posted a small banner on my site to the new Amazon MP3 store to try and help our their business. Go check out their store and buy a track while you are at it – it will only cost you a buck (or less).
The even better news is that Amazon is being taken quite seriously. Apple has cut the costs for their DRM free music and I bet that these types of track will become easier to find / more heavily promoted as well.
Y!’s Mr. Rodgers said, “Convenience wins, hubris loses” and I hope he is right.
At long last, Led Zeppelin is going to sell their music archive in a digital format. This event is coinciding with the release of the new Led Zep box set and will only stoke the crazy enthusiastic fan fires that have been burning bright ever since the group announced that they are playing as a band again for a one time only tribute concert in honor of Ahmet Ertegun (which I didn’t get tickets to – boo hoo – but neither did about 998,000 people).
Led Zeppelin is known for not licensing their music, and knowing this, Richard Linklater filmed a plea by actor Jack Black in front of 1,000 screaming fans, imploring the band to let the film production use the “Immigrant Song” in the movie. The plea worked and the filmed request is included on the DVD. Said Randall Poster, a music supervisor on the film, “It’s a very special thing to have one in your movie. “It’s the holy sound of the temple of rock.”
Via Jessie
Mr. “I’ve got a permanent beef with MTV” Kayne West is super hot and winning his album selling contest against 50 Cent because he took the beat from Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger and created a monster hit called “Stronger.” This song is my current favorite hip-hop tune by very wide margin. If you haven’t heard it yet, you are living in a cave.
For instance, it’s so popular that 30 Seconds to Mars covered “Stronger” in a really decent way on BBC Radio 1’s Jo Whiley show. You have to listen to some other music from the program but its worth it. You can skip ahead – the song is played about 25 minutes into the program.
Aside from the awesome opening of “Let’s get lost tonight – You can be my black Kate Moss tonight,” the start of the chorus is what I truly love about the song. The lyrics are, “N-now th-th-that that don’t kill me – Can only make me stronger” which paraphrases an ultra famous Nietzsche quote – “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger” – which also happened to be my high school year book quote.
The idea that as long as you are alive, you can rise above and get past whatever life throws at you has been a guiding principal in my life. It has helped me get over and get past a lot of bad shit over the years. Not only are the words powerful on their own, but with the added bumping bass and catchy Kayne lyrics, I see listening to this song as the aural equivalent of slamming down two freshly brewed cups of espresso.
Trent Reznor is still pretty pissed off at his record label for price gouging on his latest CD, Year Zero. At a recent concert, he said:
“Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means – STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin’. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they’re ripping people off and that that’s not right.”
NIN’s contract with Universal is almost up. It should be interesting to see what he’s going to do as an independent artist.
Feel free to watch the clip below.
Via K-Rock
Break out the air raid sirens and stop the presses or whatever you say in this digital age: Led Zeppelin will perform together for the first time in 19 years on Nov. 26, at London’s The O2 venue, on the banks of the River Thames to raise money for Ahmet Ertegun’s Education Fund. Run on sentence be damned: Led Zep is back!
The lineup is what it should be: singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer Jason Bonham (John’s son). The Who’s Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman, Foreigner and young Scottish singer Paolo Nutini — the last British act Ertegun signed — will also play at the tribute concert.
I am not hording this info due to the fact that tickets are only available via a random selection process involving ballots. You can enter by going to the concert’s site. I pray that fate smiles upon me and I somehow am selected with a golden ticket, or ballot in this case, because there is no stopping me from going if that happens. After I get my ballot, I hope that ka’s wheel rolls in your direction as well.
Mothership, a two-CD compilation of 24 remastered tracks culled from all eight Led Zeppelin studio albums is scheduled to be released on November 13th 2007 on the Atlantic/Rhino records label. The tracklist was handpicked by surviving Zep members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones and will boast such signatures as Whole Lotta Love, Stairway to Heaven, Kashmir, Dazed and Confused and Rock and Roll.
Mothership will be offered in multiple media configurations:
Also scheduled to be released the same day is a new DVD version of the concert film The Song Remains the Same, in 5.1 surround sound and expanded to include all 14 songs that were performed during the 1973 Madison Square Garden shows in NYC. Among the extras are performances of Misty Mountain Hop, Over The Hills and Far Away, Celebration Day, and The Ocean; a 1976 BBC interview of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and a Cameron Crowe radio show. TSRTS will also be offered in multiple media configurations:
“We have revisited ‘The Song Remains The Same’,” says Jimmy Page, “and can now offer the complete set as played at Madison Square Garden. This differs substantially from the original soundtrack released in 1976, and highlights the technical prowess of Kevin Shirley, who worked with us on ‘How The West Was Won’. When it comes to ‘The Song Remains The Same’, the expansion of the DVD and soundtrack are as good as it gets on the Led Zeppelin wish list.”
Get the full track listing after the break. Depending on how much they cost, I actually want the collectors editions and even though this is Led Zep, I cannot believe I’m making that statement.
“Mothership” Track Listing:
Disc One:
01. Good Times Bad Times
02. Communication Breakdown
03. Dazed And Confused
04. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
05. Whole Lotta Love
06. Ramble On
07. Heartbreaker
08. Immigrant Song
09. Since I’ve Been Loving You
10. Rock And Roll
11. Black Dog
12. When The Levee Breaks
13. Stairway To Heaven
Disc Two:
01. Song Remains The Same
02. Over The Hills And Far Away
03. D’Yer Maker
04. No Quarter
05. Trampled Under Foot
06. Houses Of The Holy
07. Kashmir
08. Nobody’s Fault But Mine
09. Achilles Last Stand
10. In The Evening
11. All My Love
“The Song Remains The Same” track listing:
Disc One:
01. Rock And Roll
02. Celebration Day
03. Black Dog (including Bring It On Home)*
04. Over The Hills*
05. Misty Mountain Hop*
06. Since I’ve Been Loving You*
07. No Quarter
08. The Song Remains The Same
09. Rain Song
10. The Ocean*
Disc Two:
01. Dazed And Confused
02. Stairway To Heaven
03. Moby Dick
04. Heartbreaker*
05. Whole Lotta Love
Further details and Pre-Order information will be provided soon.
I loved Brian May, the lead guitarist from “Queen” before but now I love him even more. It seems that being a rock god isn’t enough for him: he wants to finish the astrophysics degree which he put aside when “Queen” started to take off. While his thesis is titled “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” I know I would enjoy it more if somehow he worked in “Under Pressure” or “Another One Bites The Dust” into the title.
Read more after the jump.
Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen.
The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.
May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful.
Queen were one of Britain’s biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits including “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You.”
After Mercury’s death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums, including 1998’s “Another World.” But his interest in astronomy continued, and he co-wrote “Bang! The Complete History of the Universe,” which was published last year.
He was due to finish carrying out astronomical observations at an observatory on the island of La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands, on Tuesday, the observatory said.
May told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had always wanted to complete his degree.
“It was unfinished business,” he said. “I didn’t want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for.”
Paul McCartney played a secret and free show at the Highline Ballroom yesterday and I missed it. I have all the time in the world right now to sit and wait on a line for tickets yet knowledge of this show escaped my usual network of sources and I only found out about it today after the fact. Sure, it was only announced on his web site but still, come on – at this point either my minions or I should have been able to sniff this show out. He played 20 songs, a mix of Beatles songs and songs from his new album Memory Almost Full and from what I’ve seen in the “Watch” section of his site (where you can view clips of the the show), he sounded and looked great. And I missed it. Doh!
I wrote about a site called Tour Filter back in March of this year and how I was hoping not to “slip” anymore regarding rock shows because of this site. However, I wasn’t tracking Paul McCartney on TourFilter – probably because his last tour’s tickets started at $5,000 each (okay, I exagerated a tiny bit). I wonder when Tour Filter picked up on the show…
Regardless, in order for this to not happen again, I plan on now doing 3 things: add every single band I like to my Tour Filter profile, add these bands as my friend at MySpace (if they have a profile there) and sign up for their mailing lists from their own personal web sites. I would suggest you do the same except then maybe you’ll snag my ticket in the future so instead I say simply do what you want. Only time will tell to see if I “slip” again in the future…
Via Dave