The post says that Jimmy and Zofia visited Bron-yr-Aur. it doesn't say they're both in the photo. That girl isn't Zofia Jade Page, who is older, taller, and definitely not blonde. Edited to add,: Having read the comments on the post it seems likely that it was Zofia who took the photo.

You're behind the times. More likely to be some unexpected and rapid al-fresco dental surgery these days.

So diligent with the replies Bob. So, so diligent. It warms the cockles of my heart. A friendly word of advice. I wouldn't call it St.Patties day to an Irishman (I'm only 50% Irish, so I'm more forgiving). Unless maybe there's an Irish patron Saint of hamburgers?

Four Sticks is one of my favourite Zep songs ever, and some of the lyrics have always bugged me. The lyrics quoted as 'definitive' just don't feel right. That last section..... loads of opinions here. 'Strong shields of war', 'Strong shields and lore', 'Strong shields and armour'? Nah. 'Strong shields of war' felt closest.... but not quite right. And the line after 'Rainbows end' - ''For those who hide, who hide their love to depths of life' is the 'official' line. Again, close, but no cigar. This line is further muddled by RP changing the lyric when he sang the song during the P&P era, where he completely omits the 'and ruined dreams that we all knew' line, and sang something about 'eyes that mesmerised' (or something similar). So.... how do we really find out? Modern technology finally comes to the rescue. Maybe we can finally put this to bed? I spent a bit of time isolating those two lines from the rest of the music, and then vari-speeding it down to (probably) something like the pitch he actually sang it at so it's a bit easier to understand. It's still REALLY hard to hear what he's doing, but I think we've got this: Craze, baby, the rainbow's end, mmm, baby, it's just a den For those that hide, who hide their loves the depths of eyes (the 's' at the end of 'eyes' is really clear)And ruin dreams that we all knew so, babe ....and this: Ooh yeah, brave I endureOoh yeah, strong shields ever war (or possibly 'ever were') - edit. actually the more I listen to it, the more convinced I am by 'ever were'.They can't hold the wrath of those who war (it could be 'walk' but I can't hear the 'k')An' the boots of those who marchBaby, through the roads of time so long ago Sorry to the people who like 'lore' or 'armour' in there. There's definitely no 'L' for the beginning of 'lore' in there. And no 'M' for the middle of armour either. Now, I know everybody out there is going to flame me and say 'Yeah, whatever - that's what you say.....'. So, check it out for yourselves. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IQ75c0_74kET86RrwDA7VSQfkMfUawlf/view?usp=sharing Have fun!

Highly unlikely. The final mixes for Presence were completed in November 1975. The first commercially available digital reverb unit, the EMT 250, wasn't available until 1976. Because it's an outtake It's possible that '10 Ribs' wasn't actually mixed until the remasters were released. However, all of the other extra tracks that were released were either reference mixes or alternative mixes from the archives, and there's been nothing to suggest otherwise about '10 ribs'. I think that the only studio track to be actually mixed since the release of CODA is 'baby come on home'.

Locrian is a weird one. There really aren't that many songs that use the Locrian mode (outside of metal). Chord I (your 'home' chord) is diminished - F# A C. You'd expect a song to have lots of references to the I chord (it's the 'key' chord after all...), but there is not a single diminished chord in the whole song. A common substitution that happens when people write music in Locrian is to change the dim chord to a minor. But that leaves you with an F# minor chord, and there's are none of them in the song either Chord V (a C chord) is a tritone - away from the I chord, and this adds a whole other wrinkle... Suffice to say - Really unlikely it's based on the Locrian mode.

To be honest, I've not really listened hard to anything beyond George Marino's remasters of the 90's. The end of that version is 'Stairway' has a fairly brutal fade at the end, to the point that the 'ven' of 'heaven' is barely audible, so if there is any print through, it's inaudible. There is plenty to be heard throughout the rest of the catalogue though if you listen carefully. I'm definitely not au fait with the various vinyl pressings that are available. Suffice to say: print through is the cause. If you can hear it in the 2020 pressing and can't hear it on the 2014 pressing there can be only one possible answer - they were made from different masters.

Someone sent the wrong file to the pressing plant maybe? Who knows?! There have been lots of mistakes going on with vinyl pressing during the pandemic. A friend has been waiting for a single to be pressed since last March. The Levellers got a test pressing back to evaluate for their latest album and it turned out to be an Elton John record.... they weren't impressed. Quality control has gone to shit. I wouldn't be too trusting of anything pressed in 2020/21.

JPJ can be heard playing the lap steel on Led Zeppelin III. The main riff on Celebration Day is lap steel and is all Jonesy.

Remastering generally only involves gain correction, equalisation, compression and/or limiting. Artifact removal comes under the audio restoration banner. There probably been quite a lot of restoration going on during the latest remaster series. The technology just wasn't good enough for the 90's remasters. There are a couple of things that can lessen the effect of print-through, but they are both contingent on the condition of the tape. 1: Spooling the tape three or four times (winding and rewinding). This has the effect of demagnetising the print- through to undo it's effect. (You can do the same thing with a fixed magnet and a piece of steel that's been magnetised.) It would appear that a lot of Zeppelin's master tapes were in particularly poor condition though and needed baking before they could be played. This means they were extremely fragile and would likely not have survived the spooling process without the oxide layer - which is the recording medium - literally falling off, destroying the recording forever. After baking you get one (maybe two if you're lucky) goes at digitising the audio before the tapes become unusable. 2: Adding bias to the tape on playback (too complex to go into here), but this can degrade the fidelity of the recording and is generally seen as a last resort. Why baking? Because the glue holding the oxide layer to the backing tape degrades and becomes gooey over time. If you try and play it back the oxide comes off onto the tape machine, destroying the recording and gunging up the tape machine. Baking (low temperature for a long time) temporality stabilises the glue allowing you to very carefully play the tape for duplication or digitising.

The remaster would have been made from an original tape that's been in storage. The thing about tape is that it's a magnetic storage medium that is very thin and wrapped around itself doing nothing for the majority of its existence. Over time the magnetic field produced by the stored audio (especially if it was recorded "hot", which can add some desirable harmonic distortion...) influences the storage medium around it, causing a phenomenon called "print through". The longer the tape is stored, the stronger the "print through" effect gets. It gets hidden in music where there's lots going on, but if you've got something really exposed, like a solo vocal, it can become really obvious. Here's a bit more info: http://www.avartifactatlas.com/artifacts/print-through.html

Reverb is a bitch to deal with if it's 'baked in', or 'printed'. It does horrible things if you want to use compression. Using an expander can deal with excessive reverb tails in the right circumstances, but that adds other issues of its own... There are some audio restoration algorithms/applications that will remove reverb (iZotope do a really good suite of audio restoration tools... but £££££), but you're generally left with warbly/watery sounding results (same as if you use too much de-noising). Better for use on speech than music. When you consider what de-mixing applications actually do - Fourier analysis of the frequency bands in the music, and using AI algorithms to figure out which frequencies/transients belong to which instrument so that they can be reconstructed as (mostly) separate sounds - it's a wonder they work at all! Add that to the Rock genre, which has really difficult sounds to analyse and separate, making it exponentially more difficult (separating distorted guitars from snare drum transients and cymbal hits???? Insane!). Adding poor quality recordings with printed reverb on top of all that is like asking someone to reconstruct an unbroken egg from an omelette.

You want an audience recording to sound like a soundboard recording and to make it stereo? 🤣 Rebalancing and stereo-ising a good quality soundboard recording is challenging enough, and would have been laughed off as impossible even ten years ago. Making an audience recording sound like a soundboard is impossible now and unlikely to be possible, even in the long term I'm afraid. Also, it's really important to say that there is no audio separation software available where you just load this stuff in and it magically improves. Audio restoration/remixing/remastering involves a lot of hard work, a lot of compromises and some pretty in-depth knowledge of audio processing. If you read any of SteveZ98's posts you'll begin to appreciate the time, the expertees and commitment involved.

It does, if you have any knowledge of guitar effects and are willing to apply some thought rather than have somebody do a Noddy guide for you. It clearly shows the effects that Page was using on the night (there were a couple of mods for the O2, but they were more for routing issues and to add another whammy pedal), in a list put together by the man who built the pedalboard. You can't really get more definitive than that. Since we obviously need the Noddy guide, here goes: In the studio he put the guitar through a Leslie cabinet - there's no Leslie effect available on Page's pedalboard. At the O2 he had the choice of three different modulation effects - two chorus pedals and a phaser. It's obviously not a phaser (do you really need me to explain why?) so that leaves one of the two chorus pedals. My money's on the Yamaha CH10. It's got a swirlier more leslie-esque feel. That's an answer.

And I'm just giving you colloquial meanings from a British viewpoint. I'm pretty sure that if you'd asked Robert the same question in 1971,1981,1991.etc.. you'd have got a completely different answer every single time. It's the nature of the beast! He's on record as saying "depending on what day it is, I still interpret the song a different way - and I wrote the lyrics!" Never heard of a witch being called a bustle - only the clothing and energetic movement references. Language is fascinating though, and I'm always happy to add to my collection of obscure words and meanings. Have you got a reference or a title for the book you found it in?

If you're British there are some completely different meanings here. The line is 'if there's a bustle in your hedgerow....' A bustle is 'a commotion, energetic movement'. A hedgerow can be a euphemism for pubic hair. The May Queen i supposed to be a pure maiden... so if there's a commotion going on in her pubes.... and Mayday is (was) a fertility festival. I don't think I need to be any more specific.... 🙄

http://www.petecornish.co.uk/jptt.html

Easiest way is an electric Double-Neck with piezo saddles on the six string neck, and a separate amp for the 'acoustic' sounds. That way you don't have to worry about horrible resonances (and the bulk) of an acoustic guitar body when playing the electric 12-string and lead sections. Or just get a variax and dial in acoustic/12-string electric/lead when you need it. An acoustic/electric doubleneck would a be true abomination, that would probably require some form of scaffolding or a crane.

Simple - put lighter strings on. DADGAD all the way. Avoid TAB sites like the plague. Working it out for yourself is always best. You may not get get it quite right to start with.... But the more you play, the more you'll hear for yourself if you're playing something 'right' or not. The more you play, the easier you'll be able to work other stuff out. Sometimes it can be convenient to know if something is in an alternative tuning before you try and play it.... I mean, I learned to play most of The Rain Song in standard tuning (by listening to the version on The Song Remains The Same) before I figured out it was in an altered tuning. The very last section is really difficult to play in standard though, so it became obvious something odd was going on. Generally you can work it out. Your ears are the best and most useful tools you have as a musician. Sooooo many people learn stuff from TAB, can hear that it's not quite right but convince themselves that it must be right because that is what the TAB says.... My experience is that people who have loads of guitars fall into two camps: Those who play loads of guitars not very well, but have a serious case of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (generally the 'if I get this guitar it will magically transform me into a great player' type); or the pro's/busy giggers who have a couple of main guitars (so you can swap if there's a string breakage, or one is loaded with humbuckers and another single-coils for songs that require different tones) and have others permanently set to different tunings. There's nothing worse than going to a gig where the guitarist spends most of his time changing tunings between songs, rather than just playing. I personally have 5 electric guitars - my main is a battered Les Paul Deluxe that's over 50 years old, my backup is a Hagstrom Super Swede (which covers 'bucker and single coil duties with the coil tap switch), a Squier Telecaster I was given and have modified with Fender noiseless pickups, an Aria 12-string because I wanted a 12-string electric(!), and a Gretsch Baritone because it growls beautifully. That lot give me every sound I'll ever need. They all have different characters and tones, and I honestly can't think of another electric that i need. For me, having three versions of the same guitar is like having three identical hammers - they all do the same job, so what's the point of the two spares?

Price? Immaterial. Looks? Immaterial. How do they play? Which is the most fun? Which one can you make sing? That's how you choose.

Looking at events through rose-tinted spectacles isn’t helpful. The Beatles worked together consistently and solidly from 63-70, pretty much without a break. They stopped touring for the simple reason that they couldn’t hear themselves playing above the sound of the audience, and they were sick of it. All the new material after that came from the momentum that had carried them from the start of their career - working and writing together consistently over that period. The fact that the material improved and surpassed their previous work is simply down to that continued and unbroken chain of mutual creativity. if Lennon had lived and they had reunited, nothing that came after 1970 would have been a patch on what came before By the time of the O2 Zep has been done for 27 years. Page and Plant had worked together over that time, and some of the stuff they wrote together in that period was good, but none of it came near what they had done as Zep. They were both very different people who’s lives and music had taken very separate paths, and the dynamic between them had changed irrevocably. The lack of inclusion of JPJ further changed that dynamic. This part of your argument sadly doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny, because the parallels you imply simply don’t exist in real life. There might have been some enthusiasm from the three instrumentalists, but there was no energy left in the tank for Plant - any that might have been left was exhausted by the end of the P&P era. Don’t forget he set the ball in motion for the O2, and pretty much instantly regretted it once that ball had started rolling. The lawyers were involved instantly, and that was part of the problem. His only motivation was to give his tribute to Ahmet Ertegun - he was clear (in his own mind at least) that the O2 was the beginning and the absolute end of it. By all accounts he was involved in the rehearsals for as little time as was humanly possible. The only thing (in my opinion) that he did wrong after the O2 was to say anything but an unequivocal ‘No’ to each and every question about any continuation of the band. He likes to be nuanced and oblique when he’s interviewed though, and sadly he used the whole ‘maybe….’ thing to give the Alison Krauss collaboration a little more momentum. But… he’s a business man and a pragmatist, so it’s not too surprising really. The last real chance was probably after Live Aid in ‘85, and Jimmy was in no fit state. Jimmy as a guitarist has been inactive creatively for over 20 years now, and hasn’t appeared on stage with a guitar for over 5. He’s done. SteveAJones has hit the nail on the head - the well is dry.

http://stringbender.com/

Ravi Shankar is a fabulous vegetarian restaurant. Used to go there lots when I was a Londoner. Never saw jpj in there though.

And here's a photo to put the 'Click Track' debate to bed once and for all. The attached screenshot show a section of the pitter-patter from ramble on. If this had been a metronome/click-track each and every one of those spikes would have been identical in height and width, and they would have been extremely evenly spaced. The height of the spikes is directly proportional to how loud the sound was - the higher the spike, the louder the sound - there is enormous (human!) variation going on here. It's fairly obvious that the spikes can be (loosely) grouped into fours - one loud and three quieter. This is Bonham emphasising the first beat of each bar. If you're super nerdy you'll also notice that the spikes are sometimes closer together or further apart. These are tempo, or speed variations. There's not a metronome/click-track-generator (don't think such a thing existed in the 60's) from the era that can vary volume, emphasise the first beat of a bar and make changes in tempo. In fact changes in tempo are exactly what metronomes are designed NOT to do.