Looking back, over 50 years since their first album was released, it might be hard for the audience today to get their heads around the amount of albums this band sold. Every single one of their records released in their ten year of recording new material achieved Platinum status in the US and UK markets and their fourth album has sold over 20 millions copies in the America alone. The band have also tightly controlled their output, famously not releasing an official single in the UK until 1997. The 70s were their decade but they did not last into the next decade having decided not to continue after their drummer, John Bonham, died in 1980.
I knew very little about Led Zeppelin before 1990, and then I heard Stairway to Heaven on the radio. Asking around, I found a friend at school had a copy of the album that song came from and lent me the record. I was hooked. This just happened to coincide with my first forays into buying my own records instead of just what was in the house. Coincidently, it was around this time that the band announced that they going to release a 4 CD Boxed Set, remixed by Jimmy Page who had not only played on all of the albums but had produced them the first time around. I had to have it and on Christmas Day morning, there it was.
I seem to remember the set was produced because Page was annoyed with the mastering job that had been done on his music when they first released on CD and felt that he could do a better job. He was not wrong in that respect. The sound is in you face from the moment ‘Whole Lotta Love’ comes out of the speakers. The rest of the first CD is uniformly excellent with enough light and dark in the music to show that they are not just a hard rocking outfit. CD 2 is a bit more folkie and mellow and that was all I could take on the first sitting. It took me a while too warm to the music on the latter discs, especially CD 3. Like most bands I like, the longer they go on, the less I seem to like the music. The CD 4 was the same.
What annoyed me a little bit about this Boxed Set was that at the same time, a two disc highlights set was also released and contained the song ‘Good Times Bad Times’ that was missing from the set I had. With funds limited, there was not way I was going to be able to buy the two disc set just for one song. I was also able to borrow most of the individual albums off of other people to hear the songs that I was missing and I left it at that. However, Led Zeppelin did something that no other band have done to the best of my knowledge. That was, they released another Boxed Set which included all of the songs not on the 1990 set. This meant that I now had every song from their albums including BBC sessions, unique remixes and outtakes. Well done Zeppelin; an excellent example to other bands of not ripping off your fans.
This compilation is my own best off of Zeppelin songs over three discs as they produced so much good music that it had to be that long. Enjoy!
Disc 1
- Good Times Bad Times
- Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)
- Whole Lotta Love
- Heartbreaker
- Communication Breakdown
- Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
- What Is & What Should Never Be
- You Shook Me
- Boogie With Stu
- Tangerine
- Baby Come On Home
- Thank You
- Gallows Pole
- Ten Years Gone
- Kashmir
- When The Levee Breaks
Disc 2
- Black Dog
- Over The Hills & Far Away
- Immigrant Song
- Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
- Black Country Woman
- Rock & Roll
- Four Sticks
- Misty Mountain Hop
- The Battle Of Evermore
- Hey Hey What Can I Do
- Going To California
- Down By The Seaside
- That’s The Way
- Ramble On
- The Rain Song
- Stairway To Heaven
Disc 3
- Your Time Is Gonna Come
- Black Mountain Side
- Travelling Riverside Blues
- The Girl I Love She Got The Long Black Wavy Hair
- The Lemon Song
- Since I’ve Been Loving You
- How Many More Times
- South Bound Suarez
- Bring It On Home
- The Rover
- Poor Tom
- Houses Of The Holy
- Custard Pie
- I’m Gonna Crawl
- All My Love
- Bron-Yr-Aur
I used the artwork from that 1990 box set for this collection. To me, it was perfect.