woz70
-
Posts
731 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by woz70
-
-
3 hours ago, ThreeSticks said:
I read in an interview where Plant said he was very unhappy about Grant and Co. forcing him to go into tax exile after the accident in Greece. I swear I read this somewhere. Not making it up. It wasn't just that he was angry at the British govt and their tax laws.
In 1975/76 the income tax rate in the UK for earnings over £20,000 was 83%. Basically this means that for every £1 they earned (over £20,000) they got to keep 17p. (Tax on earnings up to £20,000 would have left them with a tax bill of around £13,000. So - earn £20,000 and take home £7,000).
As an example, let's pretend that they earned £250,000 in one year - a lot of money in 1975, but not inconceivable for them at the time:
First £20,000 you get to keep about £7000 (actually a little more, but I'm keeping it simple).
That leaves £230,000 to pay 83% tax on - a tax bill of £190,900.
That left them with £39,100, plus the £7000 kept before the higher rate: A total of $46,100 they get to keep.... well actually it would be less than this too, because I've not allowed for National Insurance contributions (which , despite being called 'contributions' are actually compulsory).
That's a total payment to the taxman of £203,900 from earnings of £250,000.
I honestly don't think Grant 'forced' them to go into tax exile - I'm sure he would have just given them the best advice, which would have been 'get out of dodge or the taxman takes pretty much everything you've earned'.
Their earnings and the taxman forced them into tax exile.
You don't have to be a genius to look at those figures and think that they probably thought for themselves: 'why do I have to give 4/5ths of what I earned to the taxman. What can I do to avoid this?'. -
On 2/8/2017 at 7:00 AM, porgie66 said:
The lyrics about " when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving" obviously seems to be a reference to touring the US, and "the voices of those who stand looking" are the audience.
Or it could just as 'obviously' been about his love for Wales. He was brought up near Birmingham and Wales is directly West from there, he often spent family holidays in Wales and still owns property there, and he often, to this day, talks about the mythology and history - the story of Owain Glyndwr for example. When the Page/Plant project happened, that's pretty much the first place they went to. A great deal of Led Zep III was written there.
The point being... you simply can't say 'obviously' when interpreting a lyric (or prose) that's intentionally vague, because there's nothing obvious about it. The other thing with Plant is, if you actually asked him what the lyrics 'mean', and compared notes with other people you'd find that he'd probably give ten different answers to ten different people.
-
1 hour ago, Jimmywalnutz said:
Should I be ashamed or feel lame that I've never heard of Albini ?
Totally.
Depends on the sort of music you're into generally. If you're into Nirvana, The Pixies, The Breeders, Low, PJ Harvey etc. - the more 'grungey' end of the scale then you'll be hard pressed not to have heard of him. -
1 hour ago, KellyGirl said:
If there's no reason to have a trial then by all means don't.
Whatever happens in this case the lawyers will still have to be paid - they're usually the only real winners when this sort of litigation comes up.
Some good may come of the whole situation if the case is thrown out though. It could start to close the door on the sort of spurious crap that the Thicke ruling opened up - possibly one of the most damaging rulings in music copyright history.
Gotta see the bright side somehow!
-
2 hours ago, SteveAJones said:
I've mentioned many times the mix for this album is horrible and it is simply screaming to be remastered at long last. My most fond memory of this album, aside from the live shows, is a Northbound drive made thru the whole of Wales that summer with only this cd as my musical accompaniment. Entering the Black Mountains with Upon A Golden Horse reverberating at top volume--priceless!
Even a really good remaster won't help WIC - it just needs to be remixed. It sounds to me like they got far too bogged down in the (frankly awesome sounding) acoustic space at Abbey Road to the point that everything, especially the drums, sounds like it was recorded at the end of a hallway. It just leaves the whole thing sounding distant and cluttered at the same time. You can hear the genesis of the 'swampy' sound that has pervaded just about every single Robert Plant record since this, but sadly most of WIC ended up muddy, with the exception of the really sparse songs like 'Heart in your hand' which allows the acoustic space to work with the song, rather than against it.
Loud music whilst driving through Wales is always awesome. -
On 2/5/2016 at 3:36 AM, luvlz2 said:
Ran across this today, Steve Albini talking about recording at Abbey Road with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
The most eye-opening thing that Albini has to say about the WIC sessions is the sheer amount of time they took to record an album that in places still sounds like a demo.
-
9 minutes ago, sixpense said:
I had read that he used a delay effect (pedal or board) with some kind of modification of the input connection that made it feedback to itself. The guitar sound is quite drastic from the companion disc to the finalized version. (Leads me to believe the effect was dome through the mixing board)
^ this...
There's a thing called a phase reverse button on most mixing desk channels. If you play back a sound, and also play a phase reversed version of the sound back at the same time, the two versions of the sound cancel one another out so you end up hearing nothing at all...
If you do the same thing but also delay one sound very slightly from the other you can get some quite odd metallic sounding effects (for the nerds out there it creates a form of comb-filtering), as only bits of the sound cancel. Not really practical as a effect pedal or a live effect because it severely cuts the volume of the guitar, but it can be a cool sounding studio tweak.
-
4 hours ago, randolph patterson said:
I've heard some conflicting reports regarding the exact instruments. My ears tell me plainly they aren't flutes, but instead sound like Irish Low Whistles -- a flute-like instrument that uses a recorder-like mouthpiece. Hobgoblin Music must have at least two dozen varieties, and there are several YouTube videos showing how to fashion them from various materials. One could go through a lengthy experimentation process finding some that best emulate the tonality of those used on the recording. I have a hunch that the whistles were taped for the Mellotron and played live that way, but I can't say anything about the actual studio tracks. For those like me, who wish to find a set of those for ourselves, they come in differing ranges & sizes, each one imparting a somewhat distinct voice. The trick would be to find those that most closely emulate the ones heard on the original, while somehow avoiding the need to have to purchase fifty of them in order to experiment. I don't believe there's any need to look for a different instrument. A Mellotron can play a recorded instrument, starting with the actual capture of the instrument's initial attack envelope, and sustain it for up to eight seconds, the length of tape controlled by each key. The whistles played on Stairway to Heaven seem to need only sustain for about four seconds before a different note is sounded. If someone were wishing to sample those sounds for their own performance uses, keep in mind that you can use studio processing to enhance the inherent character of an instrument, but that little can be done to impart a natural-sounding character to an instrument that it doesn't possess on its own. If you want to give a sound an artificial character, however, the sky's the limit. If I were tasked with re-creating the exact sound of the whistles on the original, I'd start with the largest Low Whistles that would cover the musical range expressed on the original, and proceed to get a good capture that requires the least processing, hopefully needing none. This is an adventure I wish to follow through with someday.
For the studio recording Jones is definitely using a wooden Treble recorder (sometimes called an Alto recorder, especially in the US). There's a couple of interviews out there where he says something along the lines of 'I had a recorder lying about....', plus I play the recorder - it's a very distinctive and instantly recognizable sound, easily distinguishable from flutes & Penny/Irish whistles.
Here's an example of the sound of a Treble Recorder:And an Irish Low Whistle as a comparison:
The Recorder has a purer and less breathy sound, whilst the Whistle has a reedier sound, with much more breathiness to it.
For the early live performances he used the Hammond organ, but soon changed over to the stock 'flute' sound (the same sound used on The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields") on the Mellotron all the way until 1979, when he used the Yamaha GX1 (1979) and then a Fairlight CMI (1980). -
Page and Clapton, 1983. Never heard of this before. Legit?
Definitely some Page-esque B-bender action going on in there.
-
I think I can debunk this, at least in part.
Given there was a hired band performing at the reception, it's possible the amps and microphone were borrowed.
Jason was pulled out of bed to join them for the jam (according to Robert), so the blue kit Jason performed on may have been hired band's, and I don't have any photos of Jason performing on a blue kit any other time. However, FWIW, in a review published in Metal Hammer (5/21/90) it is said the kit was Jason's.
JPJ's bass is obscured in most of the photos I have. It's difficult to discern if it's his but I think it is.
Jimmy, on the other hand, I believe is quite clearly using his "Cherry Red" Les Paul with Zebra-striped guitar strap. So for him it would seem he is definitely NOT using borrowed gear.
above from Metal Hammer (UK) (May 21, 1990)
NOTE SAME GUITAR WITH ZEBRA-STRIPED GUITAR STRAP ALSO USED IN JAM THREE MONTHS PRIOR and EXTENSIVELY ON THE 1988 OUTRIDER TOUR:
Music Therapy Benefit, Hammersmith Odeon, January 10, 1990 (encore jam with Bon Jovi on 'Good Golly Miss Molly', 'Train Kept A Rollin' & "With A Little Help From My Friends'
You can clearly see the B-bender button behind the bridge. There can't be many cherry-red les-pauls in the world with a Parsons-White B-bender.
-
Having a clueless moment here. On one of the previous pages, there is an interview that mentions
Plant calling Jimmy a punter at one time when he went to see the Firm I believe.
Maybe I am losing something with British to American meaning with that word. All I keep trying to do
is connect Jimmy Page with a position on a NFL roster and I draw a blank. Can anyone explain
what he meant. Online dictionary I didn't find helpful in this case. A punter is someone who places a bet, or a customer from the point of view of someone trying to sell something.
A bar owner who hasn't got many customers in might say 'not many punters in tonight'. A band playing to a rowdy audience might say that 'the punters are restless!'.
I think Robert was probably calling himself a punter as he was an audience member (ticket buyer) at a Firm gig.
-
^^^
Thanks. Did Boyle usually fingerpick or was it just this song?
Just this song - he's got his pick in his mouth for most of it.
-
who is playing on Ship of Fools? That is some seriously sublime playing!
Doug Boyle.
http://dougboylemusic.com/
Check out the live version from Atlantic 40:
-
If that's true, it's a measure of how far the Page-Plant relationship had swung from 1968-1995. Page, once the leader of the band and musical visionary, was slapped by the lead singer. It's hard to take.
Addiction does terrible things to people. Jimmy still seems to be in deep denial about quite how much his addictions have affected his life. I can understand him not wishing to discuss it, especially as he has teenage kids who he wants to project the best image to, but denying that it crucified him creatively when there is so much easily accessible evidence to the contrary is a little mystifying.
-
To my knowledge he was pretty sober from at least 94' on, if not then he finally learned how to play pretty damn well stoned because his playing, especially from 98' - 2000 was IMO the best playing he had ever done, even eclipsing his best Zep years. He also played the O2 gig completely sober according to all accounts.
He stopped drinking, by his own admission in about 2000, and I reckon the O2 was his first sober gig in a very long time. I think he was 'managing' his alcoholism towards the end of the Page/Plant run, but I have a sneaky suspicion that his inability to cut the (excessive) booze out was one of the factors that led to the end of that collaboration (amongst other things...). Wasn't there a story of Plant punching Jimmy out for being drunk before a gig at some point during the P/P years?
-
This probably means that one or more tracks was recorded to tape too hot, resulting in distortion (much like RP's vocals on the Bombay sessions 'friends'). Whilst you can get away with that (just) for bass & guitars and barely for vocals, distorted drums can't really be made to sound good outside of industrial music... Distortion is not something you can remove from a recorded sound, even with clever digital processing.Nick
this was not the question the Osaka show was deemed sub par and therefore unworthy for release.
The only problem was that the balance of the Multi track recording was off. Robert mentioned this during an interview at the advent of IVs release in november 71. He stated the balance was' worse than a bootleg' and that the band had made better recordings recently with 'an ordinary Revox' (now we know he's refering toOrlando, Toronto and Hampton!). A more indepth account is available in Lewis/Pallett's Concert File (page 156 of the 2nd edition). The infamous recording was reconsidered for official release in 2003.But alas 'How the EAST was won' companion release to HTWWW was shelved for the second time. A great pity, but somehow since technology always gets better, maybe Jimmy knows how to fix the imperfections sometime in the near future...fingers crossed
-
Page has stated categorically that RAH 1970 was the first multi-tracked show...
Everything prior that has been released has been from master or 1st gen recordings - 1/4" stereo or mono.
If you use the search function you'll see this subject, along with the question of available film footage, has been covered more than comprehensively.
-
Possibly muting the strings (to silence the echo effect or stop unintended feedback).
^ this. He's just stopping the strings from ringing.
-
To the people who can isolate tracks of tunes, like the fascinating JPJ isolated bass on RO, is it possible to take the lyrics out of Midnight Moonlight? I would love to hear that.
Not unless somebody has access to the multitrack recordings, which is the only reason why we have the isolated bass (and everything else) from Ramble On.
-
"Darlene" is not in my favorite top 20 (or so) LZ songs but I love it nonetheless. It's Zeppelin, how could I not like it?
Am I mistaken or not, because I hear Robert sing the words, "I beat my baby Darlene"?
It's 'Ah, be my baby Darlene...'
-
Excellent detective work. But if that was the setup for the 80' tour, that damn Dano still had ill tuning stability. In fact, I'm pretty sure
Page used 2 different ones, you can see this in that they had two different size pick guards. Not in the same show, however.
Could be wrong, This info came from another Zep site.
During the Outrider tour Page played Midnight Moonlight (DADGAD) back to back with IMTOD. He needed two guitars to save having to re-tune. The 'old' Dano with the swoosh pick-guard was used for MM and the 'new' Dano with the kidney-bean shaped pick-guard was used for IMTOD. There's a couple of video clips from the tour where he mentions using different versions of the same guitar.
I think some of the tuning problems with the Dano after the Badass had been fitted were down to Page's handling of the guitar. He wasn't exactly on top form in 1980 and the Dano needs a lighter touch (especially left hand) than he seemed to be giving it. The bloody thing sounded awful at the Atlantic 40th concert, but when I heard him play it in '88 it seemed to be fine.
-
Just one correction Page replaced the standard junk Dano bridge with a Tune-a-matic with the regular 6 string saddles. Pretty sure
he also put Grovers in place of the std tuners. Still, that rattletrap often went out of tune. Although sometimes Page's dissonance
would sound interesting, ultimately during IMTOD or Kashmir for me I would end up irritated. Kashmir IMO sounded so much
Better when Page moved over to his trans-performance Les Paul.
Actually he had the bridge changed to a badass all-in-one with adjustable saddles, but not until the 80's - that metal plate with a bit of wood glued to it was still in use at Knebworth.
Edit: Just found out the badass bridge was added after Knebworth but before the 1980 Europe Tour.
-
OK.
Certainly they had Strobotuners behind the amps, back then.
Still, I've used those, and they're a pain in the arse compared to even the crappiest tuner pedal we have today.
I dont know, from the modern point of view, it seems weird to change the key of a song, because you dont want to tune 4 extra strings.
However, given the time frame, that may have been the case.
I also find it odd that in all the interviews he has given to guitar magazines, not once was this question asked...
oh well.
I agree. It's odd that despite all the interviews he's given for guitar mags etc. it's never once come up.
The only other thing I'd point at is the physicality of that double neck - those tuning buttons are damned close to one another between the 12 string and the 6 string. Changing the strings must be a bit of a bugger without scuffing your knuckles (you can't fit a string winder in that gap), let alone doing anything other than fine tuning. The newer versions seem to have changed the offset/angle of the necks so there's a (little) bit more space to get your fingers in there.
-
well said, and as good an explanation/speculation as I've heard.
BUT
Has Page ever spoken on why they did it this way?
Not that I'm aware of....
But for further evidence of my thinking I'd also point you at 'In My Time Of Dying' and 'Kashmir', which were both performed on the same guitar (until the Outrider tour).
Kashmir was always DADGAD
The Studio version of IMTOD was and open A (EAEAC#E), but live it was in open G - DGDGBD. Again, only two strings to re-tune, rather than 5 - I'd put money on it being the same reason. Add to that the fact that tuning the Danelectro could be a bit hit and miss, because of the crappy bridge.
Why was JPJ disinvited from Page/Plant?
in Pre / Post-Zeppelin Forum
Posted
...and that they called it 'no quarter'. I think that was what pissed him off the most.