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First Listen to New BOJ Album


kiss of fire

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Love the album. Have been listening to it on NPR, until it was pulled a couple of days ago. Just arrived today via U.S. Mail from Amazon. Also in the mail was my ticket to Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience in NYC in November. So, today was a good mail day overall! :thumbsup:

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Love the album. Have been listening to it on NPR, until it was pulled a couple of days ago. Just arrived today via U.S. Mail from Amazon. Also in the mail was my ticket to Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience in NYC in November. So, today was a good mail day overall! :thumbsup:

You can listen to Plant/BOJ concert from the Bowery below:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t%20=1&islist=false&id=129992517&m=130000995

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I find myself comparing BOJ with Raising Sand way more than to Zep material or Robert's solo material. Raising Sand is so musically and vocally outstanding to me! I really expected BOJ to be very similar, but it really isn't when you study the two albums. A casual listener/observer will throw them both in the twangy country/bluegrass music category and leave it at this.

BOJ is much edgier (is that a word? Ha Ha!), sharper, darker, and after listening to it many, many times now, I can finally understand why Robert calls it "psychedelic blues." Before I heard it, I didn't know what he was talking about. It is very bluesy, but not your typical blues music. There is an otherworldly sound to most of it. Of course, I love the 50's rockabilly sound thrown in there too! The songs are placed on the album in perfect order. You don't get too much of one sound before it is mixed up. And the last song...what can I say? Just when I thought I had the styles of music down pat and there could be no more surprises, he takes the listener to a totally different place with Even This Shall Pass Away. The album ends so lighthearted and just makes me want to dance. Well, I guess you could say it ends on a "joyful" note, hence the name Band of Joy. Ha Ha!

I love the direction/journey Robert's voice is on now. It's not that I don't worship the golden god's voice back in the Zep days or his solo work, but it really has aged well like they say with a fine wine. I expected Patti to sing similar to Alison and to complement Robert's voice like she did, but I did not find that to be so. The way their voices blend and/or contrast one another is very different from Alison and Robert, and I'm truly in love with this new pairing.

All in all I find myself totally immersed in this album every time I listen to it. There's so much to it to enjoy...the voices, the song selections, the genre, the instruments and the places it takes me emotionally. I don't find I can say that about a lot of albums.

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Thanks, but I'm actually the one who posted this link over on "The Bowery" thread in this News section. It was a great show and more so being there. I just got lucky I guess.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was reading elsewhere that the first week of release for the new BOJ album 49,000 units were sold. Then the second week only 25,000 units.

I don't know if this included downloads or not, but back when Led Zeppelin were putting out albums, new releases and not just theirs, would sell 100,000's or more in their first week and subsequently.

And the BOJ album was way up there the first week, was it number 5 or better? Music sales are but a fraction of what they were just 30 years ago. I'll bet the vast majority of sales were to an "older" crowd. What's with the younger generation? Music just doesn't have the same powerful impact (numbers wise) among them as it did back in the "classic" era.

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I was reading elsewhere that the first week of release for the new BOJ album 49,000 units were sold. Then the second week only 25,000 units.

I don't know if this included downloads or not, but back when Led Zeppelin were putting out albums, new releases and not just theirs, would sell 100,000's or more in their first week and subsequently.

And the BOJ album was way up there the first week, was it number 5 or better? Music sales are but a fraction of what they were just 30 years ago. I'll bet the vast majority of sales were to an "older" crowd. What's with the younger generation? Music just doesn't have the same powerful impact (numbers wise) among them as it did back in the "classic" era.

I have no idea how many units current 'major league' bands (eg Green Day) would expect to shift in the first few weeks, but I'm guessing it would be a lot more than 49k. In fact, I'm surprised BOJ sold that many.

The fact is that, despite his recent media love-in, RP's appeal is increasingly selective these days, even amongst his/LZ's older fan-base, many of whom find his new direction hard to swallow. One has only to read the comments posted on this forum to appreciate that. Will he care? I doubt it. He surely won't have expected massive sales. And who pays for albums these days anyway?

I have a very loose but probably realistic image of the demography of those who will actually have gone out and bought BOJ. But I won't express it, for fear of unleashing the vengeful Hammer of the Moirae.

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Sales are generally way down for all releases. Even including freebies, downloads etc., music's big heyday is past. I think video games far outsell music and even DVD sales are down even with the forementioned download phenomena going on. Life is so much more fragemented now, all the multitasking and multistimuli spread everything thinner.

It's crap.

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Sales are generally way down for all releases. Even including freebies, downloads etc., music's big heyday is past. I think video games far outsell music and even DVD sales are down even with the forementioned download phenomena going on. Life is so much more fragemented now, all the multitasking and multistimuli spread everything thinner.

It's crap.

Yes, crap's the word these days.

I blame it on i-tunes - it's now the 'Shuffle Generation', the age of the Random Man. Attention span of a gnat, the youth of today, and you can hardly blame them when Apple is fixing 'em up with Ritaliin for the ears. Seems nobody cares about albums anymore, least of all the artists concerned - one or two good tunes per album, sell millions of 'em on download, job done.

But I wonder what people are cherry-picking from BOJ?

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So that's it?

It's all about the money and not the music?

What a concept!

I quite like the album and the songs are well arranged with some fine playing too.

Like I said before on another thread, people who like it should be allowed to enjoy it without any bullshit flung at them and those who feel it is not their cup of tea, likewise.

All this constant bagging is becoming increasingly tedius ennui.

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I just read it and agree with much of it.

This is one of my pet peeves and wish others were as passionate about the sound quality of their music in bitrate and GOOD headphones, not these crappy earbuds that are so prevalent.

Sound quality will once again be a huge issue. People are cottoning on to a dark little secret of the digital age - MP3 files sound terrible. The online "lossless" audiophile movement is gathering strength with one label. Interscope, creating a new master source file, that will ensure that the efforts of musicians and producers in the recording process are not wasted when the sound gets to the listener. Jimmy Iovine and his team at Interscope/Beats Audio Sound Solutions hope this super-file will become ubiquitous. They are also working on a variety of headphones and better sound chips in HP computers to improve the listener experience. Most listening nowadays is through tiny ear-bud headphones.

^ taken from the article.

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Anyone read this?

How To Save the Music Industry

Thanks Jahfin. Great read. It makes so much sense, but its' a matter of the various aspects and heads of the music and online industry getting together and applying this the right way so it works. We'll see. We all like free music, but it really isn't fair to the artists. Especially, the ones just starting out and trying to build a music career. Pretty tough to do so these days.

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Sound quality will once again be a huge issue. People are cottoning on to a dark little secret of the digital age - MP3 files sound terrible.

Thanks jahfin for posting that article. I did read most of it, but it got a little too technical for me to finish. I totally have to agree with the above statement that fieryoceans keyed in on. A lot of MP3 files do sound like crap. I'm afraid that some of these young 'uns (the people the music industry is catering to) think that's OK. They don't know the difference, they have only heard the music on i-pods with tiny ear-buds and have never heard it live or full and rich on a great stereo system. It's sad it's come to that.

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Thanks jahfin for posting that article. I did read most of it, but it got a little too technical for me to finish. I totally have to agree with the above statement that fieryoceans keyed in on. A lot of MP3 files do sound like crap. I'm afraid that some of these young 'uns (the people the music industry is catering to) think that's OK. They don't know the difference, they have only heard the music on i-pods with tiny ear-buds and have never heard it live or full and rich on a great stereo system. It's sad it's come to that.

Absolutely! It's pathetic. They don't know how music should really sound!

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