Customer Reviews

4-Cassette Boxed Set

5 star:		(155)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

About six months ago I became a fan for life when I heard 'Achilles Last Stand' off of Presence. I made it my New Year's resolution to get my hands on more of Zeppelin's music. I landed this box set ... in an Amazon.com auction and for almost 2 months didn't buy another CD, because this was all I needed. This is the ultimate starter kit for those who want to get the full scope of the band's work and an understanding of why they remain probably one of the best rock bands in history. It makes me wish I had been born 15 years earlier (I'm 23) so I could have seen them perform; music that stretches boundaries the way Led Zeppelin's did and still does is hard to find. Ballads, opuses, ditties, driving rock -- it's all here, and assembled in such a way that each CD has a different feel that successfully spans the more than 10 years that LZ were making music. This is not solely an essential item for the Led Zeppelin fan, but for the music fan as well.

This set artfully explores the ingenious travels of hard rock's most influential and creative band, Led Zeppelin. Some of these songs are probably familiar from the radio, such as the crunchy "Black Dog" and "Whole Lotta Love" and the mystical epics "Stairway to Heaven" and "Kashmir." To get a full feel of the band's range, one needs to listen to the whole set, which ranges from bludgeoning heavy blues to delicate folk. The only possible drawback to buying this 4-CD set is that it's missing a few good tracks - but for that, there's always Box Set 2!

I bought this box set as soon as it was released. I owned the original Led Zeppelin albums on vinyl, and the difference in sound quality, obviously, is huge. I like Zeppelin, but there are other artists I listen to more frequently. That being said, this is a very good box set overall, and if you are just getting into Led Zeppelin, is an excellent place to start, with one caveat: this is a four CD set that's about one CD too long. All the classics are here, but there is quite a bit of material that is for true die-hard fans only. While it's better to err on the side of too much material, this could have easily been pruned a bit more to make a tighter, more cohesive package. For the Zeppelin purists that disagree, I recommend that they skip the box set altogether and buy all the original albums on CD for even more material.

The individual CD's are somewhat jumbled, and don't follow a strict historical timeline, which doesn't bother me, but does annoy some fans. Of the four CD's, the best of the bunch in my opinion is disc one, which contains such greats as "Heartbreaker," "What Is And What Should Never Be," "Ramble On," and the excellent but comparatively rare "Hey Hey What Can I Do," plus eleven more. This is the disc I normally pull out of the box to play, although all the others are good, too (disc four drags a bit, though.)

In all, this is a reasonably priced, balanced set of the best of Led Zeppelin: it won't be the favorite of everyone, though; hardcore fans will want more, casual listeners will want less, but for most of those in between, this set is of great quality and is a good value.

This is the perfect box set to start one's Zeppelin collection. If you've heard all the stuff on the radio and want that and a little more, buy this set. The sound quality is excellent, and the order of songs seems just as fitting as the original studio albums. There is incredible fluidity on this set (a quality that is far too often not achieved on most box sets), meaning you can listen to the whole thing straight through, getting a listen of the gradual developing sound of Led Zeppelin in the 70's without the awkwardness of a sudden change in sound from song to song. If you like this set, buy the 2nd box set (containing some lesser-known gems) and your collection is complete. Enjoy!

Me 2. With roots from old blues,soul, 60,70,& 80's classic rock,70's P-funk a, 70's 80's,90's punk,80's& 90's alternative, and international music from all over the world, I've always kept a fairly large & rotating collection of LP's & later CDs. It gets pretty expensive to own entire catalogs of all your fav artists. I own 300 plus CD's right now and I just began replacing LP's with CD's about 8 years ago. I started to buy each Zep CD individually, then I found this box set, which I gave to myself for Xmas, one of my best presents ever. Now if you're a hard core Zep fan then you will probably need to buy every remastered release that they have put out, along with the Page and Plant CD's (I especially enjoyed the No Quarter CD), But I think that for those Zep Fans with a wide variety of musical tastes, a limited budget, or new fans this could definitly make you smile. After all, This box set has most of the best stuff Zep ever did, remastered and crystal clear. I'm sure that I can think of several other pesonal fav's that I might have included,(Lemon Song, How Many More Times, even Boogie with Stu), but you're getting 54 really cool tunes here, just pick up what you're missing later. Its all good. By the way, I'm 39 & have 3 punk and hip hop loving teenagers who raid my CD's regularly. in their words, Led Zep Rocks.

Peace.

V

For a while this was all we had, box-set wise, from Zeppelin. This 4 CD set (and an accompanying 2 disc set released later) was the ultimate Zeppelin collection. Since there were no greatest hits and no more comprehensive collections available, it was this or nothing for those of us who wanted a heavy dose of Zeppelin on CD.

Today we have more options. For mild fans of Led Zeppelin I'd recommend, instead of this product, the Early and Latter Days 2 CD set. It's not as comprehensive and focuses more on the blowout superhits. For those who, like me, are utter Zep heads, the 10 disc Complete Studio Recordings works better. But this box set is still the best idea for people who really like Led Zeppelin but not enough to want everything the band ever released. With 4 CDs you get a lot of material (the selection was done by Jimmy Page, and he did a great job) but not everything the band ever released. This set rocks, and again the only reason I'd defer from buying this set is if I wanted something more comprehensive.

This set will give you all of the very best, including such rock staples as "Stairway to Heaven," "Whole Lotta Love," and "Rock and Roll," as well as such must haves as "The Ocean," "All of My Love," and my personal favorite of Zeppelin's lesser classics, "Ramble On." On top of that you get a whole lotta major and minor hits and a lot of filler material that's actually worth listening to--something you don't see much these days.

To sum it all up, this is a spectacular collection from one of the most phenomenal bands of all time.

I bought both Vol.1&2 Box sets and I really regret doing that, the songs are in no particular order and growing up hearing Zep songs your used to certain songs running together such as "Heartbreaker" into "Living loving maid" or "you shook me" into "dazed and confused" you get none of that classic line up on here. Led Zeppelin were an ALBUM band and their Classic music should be listened to as they intended it to be heard, one album at a time. I plan in the future to buy all of the individual albums.
I highly recommend anyone else to go that direction also.

It's rare that you can buy a Greatest Hits CD and not find some filler, let alone a 4 CD compilation. Every song is a classic Led Zeppelin hit put together in a nice package which includes a poster and history of the band with pictures. This is an excellent collection from one of the Greatest Groups in Rock and Roll.

Let me make clear at the outset that this review is NOT intended to be critical of Led Zeppelin as a musical group, and hopefully avoid some terrible comments and negative feedback. I like Led Zeppelin. I have every song they ever recorded. Wonderful band. Unfortunately, no matter how great of a band they are, that can't save this boxed set from being truly awful.

Honestly, I can't begin to understand the inspiration behind this collection. It's four discs of music containing almost - but not quite - everything the band ever recorded, including some off-album tracks that can be harder to get. Certainly, this set collects the majority of the desirable Led Zeppelin tracks, but unfortunately, it also collects a large amount of other detritus that will only be of interest to the dedicated fan and will most likely be skipped over by the casual listener. I don't know what the audience of this boxed set is supposed to be, but the odds are you aren't it.

Aside from being a somewhat scrambled set, this box carefully avoids collecting all of the tracks from even one of Led Zeppelin's original studio albums, no doubt in a ploy to force listeners to purchase another CD or 10. The completist will be dissatisfied with the fact that there are gaping holes in this collection, while the casual fan or an individual just looking for radio hits, in addition to finding a couple of notables missing, will find much, much more material here than he could ever want. For a short while, the Led Zeppelin Boxed Set Volume 2 2-CD set served to complete the box and turn it into a complete collection of studio recordings, but that box has long since gone out of production, forcing anybody who finds that they like the majority of the music on these 4 discs to either lay out for the 10-CD boxed set or buy the CDs individually, and in both cases utterly invalidates their purchase of this set.

I can't recommend this set to anybody. Led Zeppelin is a terrific band - II, IV, Houses of the Holy, and still more are all classic rock recordings - but this boxed set has an audience of exactly nobody. For dedicated fans, I recommend that you go out and get the 10-CD complete recording set, and for casual fans, I would recommend one of the many other 1 and 2 CD greatest hits compilations, or just going straight to the original recordings to get a taste of what the group is all about. This box, however, will ultimately satisfy nobody.

This is THE box set to own. Practically every song on the jam-packed four CDs rings with classic, blues-inspired rock. There are no duds. You can listen to this for months, you can crank it as loud as your stereo can go. I actually bought this box set -- my first CDs ever -- BEFORE my first CD player, I was so excited when it came out. The four black discs are still the prizes of my significantly larger collection. There is a reason why Led Zeppelin has sold approximately 70 million albums, many long after they dissolved.

This box set also has a way-out cool cover and accompanying booklet. Definitely choose this over the 10-CD set, too. If you want all of the songs, you can add Box Set 2 (which includes some wonderful songs that didn't make Jimmy Page's cut for this set, as well as their few, well, duds). That way you get the same songs, but on six CDs instead of 10.

To anyone who likes Led Zeppelin or Rock and Roll, this is frankly a treasure trove. A perfect gift also for a young kid with a guitar and a dream -- this is a compilation that shows what Rock and Roll was all about, before Pop killed it.

For anyone depressed about the NSYNC's of the world with their simplistic, recycled lyrics and lame dance-synth-pop sound, this box set is the antidote.

(Also check out Almost Famous, a movie with a lot of Zeppelin homages).