Customer Reviews

The Song Remains The Same (Remastered / Expanded) (2CD)

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I admit I wasn't a fan of The Song Remains the Same live album when it was released back in 1976 (was it that long ago?). The concert seemed flat. When the CD was first issued, I thought it sounded even worse. Hardly any highs or lows -- sound-wise and performance-wise.

But Jimmy Page and Kevin Shirley have waved a magic wand over the master tapes. This isn't the same album any more. It's dynamic, vibrant, blistering. The bass guitar is there now! The guitar rings out clear as a bell. And Plant's voice is right up front where it belongs.

I've been listening all afternoon to this remastered edition of The Song Remains the Same. There have been projects around the house I was supposed to get to. There was another new CD I wanted to hear. But I couldn't take this 2-CD set out of my player. It held me in its grip for the entire concert.

Led Zeppelin continues to astound some 25 years after they broke up, and a full three decades plus after this concert was performed at Madison Square Garden in 1973.

If you've held off buying this because the original version left a bad taste in your mouth, rest assured this is a unique experience now. It's crisp as a new can of Pringles and twice as tasty.

I highly recommend The Song Remains the Same remastered 2-CD edition.

This updated version had the potential to be up there with "Made In Japan", "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" etc. etc. as a classic live album even if the performances are somewhat uneven mainly due to them going into unknown territory and natural causes. That's the great thing about LZ if you listen to their live bootlegs - no version of any song is the same as another. It's a hit and miss but always exiting game.
Plant's voice changed dramatically for the worse after hitting his peak in Australia in 1972. However, he still hits plenty of peaks as well as the lows here. In fact, still great compared to years to come!
As stated by other reviewers, yes the sound is great and the edits are incomprehensible. TSRTS was never an honest document in either version and the disappointment is now larger than previously. I've got bootlegs of the Madison Square shows and therefore can confirm there are huge chunks missing from many songs: Black Dog was always played in full unlike this circumcised edit; Dazed and Confused has been chopped in the section before San Fransisco; No Quarter here has Page jumping straight into the his solo whereas we know he feels his way around before exploding; Heartbreaker has a chunk of Pages solo missing after the drums and bass come back in just before WLL; Whole Lotta Love's edits are glaring even to the blind. There's alot more but i'll leave it alone. The question is, why?? Another confusing band decision has The Ocean placed at the end of the 1st cd when it was actually played as an encore - I even looked at the time length of the 2nd cd and there's no problem there with room to fit it in (??). (I've burnt myself a copy with The Ocean where it should be).
On a positive note, it's great to hear the extra songs even if they aren't all the ultimate renditions.
I'll still give it 3* based on the sound quality and the sheer balls they play with at times - the title track and The Rain Song have never sounded better and that includes other bootlegs from the same, and different years.
Let's hope the surviving band members listen to their fans and decide to release a 3rd version as a triple cd without the edits. Hey Jimmy - you readin' this, mate?
Overall, I'll still recommend it. Make sure you keep your old copy - if you don't have it, hurry and get it before it's deleted.
As Otto the bus driver on The Simpsons says - "Zeppelin rules!!"

As much as I agree with the other reviewers of this title that is has supurb sound, the rest of it is a very big let down. When the movie and sountrack came out in 1976, they were two seperate items. Now what has happened is that they took the remixed soundtrack from the movie itself and put it onto the CD. What's wrong with that is that there are a lot of bad edits in the movie that were transfered over to the CD itself. That did not happen in 1976. THIS IS TOTALLY UNEXCEPTABLE. I cannot believe that Jimmy Page would alow this to happen. If you want to save yourself some money this holiday season, buy the DVD and listen to the music. Don't waste your time on the CD (I would take mine back for a refund if I could). I am so happy I didn't get rid of my original copy.

As a hard-core fan who has been waiting over 20 years for this to come out, I do not recommend it at all. A very big disappointment.

I'm one of those who saw the movie when it came out in 1976, more than once in fact. It was an immediate 'Saturday midnight' favorite where I grew up (Belgium). By then the band's reputation was larger than life and there simply was not much of an opportunity ever to see them live. I bought the double-album when it came out, and I never understood why the album was so much maligned by both fans and critics. I thought it was pretty darn good. Now after 31 years, and amid a frenzy of renewed Led Zeppelin activity (catalog on iTunes, the "Mothership" best of, and of course the upcoming one-off show in London--among swirling rumors the band may tour proper in 2008), now comes a newly expanded version of this album.

On "The Song Remains the Same" (2 CDs; 15 tracks; 132 min.), the first CD starts off with the classic "Rock and Roll" and "Celebration Day", then dives straight into 4 previously unreleased tracks, including a rousing "Misty Mountain Top", but even better is the slowburner "Since I've Been Loving You". CD1 (10 tracks, 60 min.) finishes with 4 songs from the "Houses of the Holy" album, which the band was touring behind at the time, including a previously unreleased "The Ocean". It is impossible for me to listen to "No Quarter" and not think of the John Paul Jones 'fantasy sequences' in the movie. CD2 (5 tracks, 72 min.) brings one more new track ("Heartbreaker") but the lead-off track, a 25 min. epic "Dazed and Confused" towers over everything else. It is for me the ultimate Led Zeppelin track. I usually skip "Stairway to Heaven" (overrated and played to death on classic radio), but still like the "Moby Dick" drum solo, as well as the closer "Whole Lotta Love".

The remastering by Jimmy Page sounds fantastic, and the packaging (with nice liner notes from Cameron Crow, with lines like : "The brown cardboard sing in the window simply read 'It's here'"--referring to the release of Led Zep II in late 1969) is done quite nicely. All in all, I am really pleased with the remastered and expanded CD release of "The Song Remains the Same", which is like discovering a new album in the Led Zeppelin catalog. (Incidentally, I did get to see the band in concert once, on their 1980 European tour, only months before John Bonham passed away.)

First, I want to say that the ORIGINAL version of this album is one of my favorite albums of all time! On the original release, the live versions of Song Remains the Same, Rain Song, Celebration Day and No Quarter are far superior to the studio versions in my opinion.

HOWEVER, this release is not just a remastered version with 6 new songs. Listening to this release frustrates me because I hear so many edits on what were really great versions on the original. I would just like to ask Jimmy Page WHY!!!!! Sure add new songs and improve the sound quality but why edit versions that have been part of this album for 31 years!!!

I know people who are new to this album won't care that much about the edits but for Diehards like me, it's a slap in the face! Just a few examples of horrible edits that differ from the original release:

Celebration Day - The outro solo is different and inferior.

No Quarter - The piano solo that starts at 3:27, Page cut out a minute of that very cool groove before the guitar solo starts and THEN he edited the guitar solo which on the original version was one of my favorites of all time. WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And then he cut John Paul Jones introduction after the song (He does like to disrespect Jonesy).

Whole Lotta Love - On the original version at 1:22 a very cool funky jam happens for about a minute and 40 seconds. On this release Page cut out a minute and half of that jam. It didn't improve anything it sounds awkward and edited.

There are other small edits not worth ranting about but I hear them everytime I listen to this release.

Now for the positive. Yes the sound and packaging are far superior to the original and yes it's great having new tracks:

The Ocean, Heartbreaker, Since I've Been Loving You - All great performances and sound great.

Misty Mountain Hop and Over the Hills and Far Away - Good performances and sound great.

Black Dog - I would have left this one off because it becomes a trainwreck at the end. For me, they never pulled this song off live.

I was very excited when I heard that this album was going to be remastered and expanded but I have to say I am disappionted and I will probably keep listening to the original version I own.

Do yourself a favor and buy a used copy of the original release. It won't sound as full but the versions are better.

The new remastered version of this set also contains new versions of some of the songs that were released on the original version of the album. I presume they culled them from the same 3 night stand at Madison Garden but the liner notes don't say. Some versions are better, some versions not so better. I prefer the old "No Quarter" to this new one, although very good, but the old version has Page pyramiding on his solo - slowly going into it, then exploding, and then calmly fading out of it, whereas this new version has him tearing right into it and getting right out. The old version is also 2 minutes longer than this one. Also, the new "Rock And Roll" sounds like it might be the version used in the film (which was okay). Having said that, this is still NOT Zeppelin at their best, but a decent document, nontheless, of an amazing band (a bad Zeppelin night was still infinitely better than most bands on a good night).

After the incredible Led Zeppelin DVD I was hoping for another gem from Jimmy Page and Co. However this new "improved" soundtrack has some glaring faults! For all the huge Zep fans who have listened to and watched TSRTS will notice that the movie has a couple of bad edits involving the sound. On the old album these bad edits are not present making the music that much better. However on the new expanded CD set the bad edits from the film are now included on the CDs!!! The worst example is the funk riff in "Whole Lotta Love" prior to the theremin solo. It has been completely chopped up thus destroying the fluency of the segue Jimmy Page employs as he moves to the next passage of the extended songs. WHY WOULD HE ALLOW THIS!?! Jimmy Page has always given us top-notch production but this error is simply inexcusable. I've been waiting for this cd to come out for months only to be disappointed by someone I thought would never disappoint me!!! There are also several instances where Robert Plant's voice has been over-dubbed to the existing vocal to create some type of echo effect I guess; but it is clear that it is an overdub and not simply a vocal effect used live. The extra tracks are great but I just can't believe Jimmy Page has drop the ball like this with so many bad edits most obvious in the guitar passages and vocal echoes. I've never before been disappointed by Led Zeppelin! This Sucks!

Much better drum and bass sound than the original. But like many other people, could not see the point of the edits. I would love to hear the whole concert unedited but alas never will. Celebration Day which was one of the best songs on the original along with No Quarter has been butchered as has the latter. The second solo is all over the place and obviously a cut and paste job.

Rainsong is great as is The Song Remains The Same and The Ocean sounded really good. But the sound has been cleaned up too much. Lots of the crowd noise and interaction with the band is gone. I mean it is supposed to be a live disc ! I don't really know what Page was trying to achieve. People liked the original for it's roughness even though the performance overall was not one of their best as even the band admitted but it was an honest live record. I am glad I didn't get rid of the original, ordinary sound and all ! Great band but weird release. Oh well...............

Yes, the sound is superior, and we get the Celebration day solo as it was originally played, but some of the songs are EDITED, and the edits are glaring, like Black Dog, and the Whole Lotta Love crunge section is GONE! You get two seconds of it. I cannot listen to Black Dog anymore, and Whole Lotta Love will be replaced by the old version on my IPOD. A dissapointment for this long-time fan who was anxiously awaiting this release.

3 Essential Facts about This CD (IMHO, of course):

(1) SOUND IS WORTH IT ALONE: The audio is improved remarkably: much more "direct from the soundboard" presence all around; so much so that I think this is partly why some folks complain that it sounds like a whole different album.

(2) EDITS NOT A DEAL-BREAKER: The original was itself "impure" and full of edits, and I think only three edits really matter here. The short missing funk improv near the beginning of Whole Lotta Love is a problem, but the track sounds so much better now that it's worth the tradeoff to hear the other 13+ minutes so well remastered. The edits of No Quarter and Celebration Day do ruin them - the originals were the best versions of these two songs available anywhere. Keep (or get) the original CD for these two songs.

(3) WHY MOST PEOPLE SHOULD GET THIS CD: I firmly believe the core "Led Zeppelin sound" most general, non-hardcore-Zep rock fans know and love is from the 1973-1977 period, when (for better or worse, depending on your perspective) Plant's vocal style matured; the band added funk, acoustic and prog-rock elements to the bluesy style of 1968-71; Page's guitar sound got sharper-edged and more "metallic"; they added more reverb and effects to their live performances; and they played huge venues and really gelled as a touring act.

This CD is by far the best-sounding, most complete document of that era, period. It's not the only live Zep you might want to have, but I do think it's essential for any collection, no matter how small or large.

(The only other officially released live recording whose performances are consistently good enough to rival it is the second disc of the 2003 DVD, which contains about 1/3 of the fantastic Aug 4 1979 Knebworth concert, and a very nice example, from Earl's Court 1975, of the acoustic "mini-set" they started doing in the mid-'70s.)