CODA

1982 Jimmy cobbled together eight outtakes that total about thirty-something minutes to make some more money. The fact that a lot of it blows should come as no surprise, since it's a freaking outtakes collection, and on top of that, much of Physical Graffiti was actually composed of outtakes, too, so they didn't have too many left. Anyway, much of it is not very good, and two songs from from side one that fall into this pattern are "Walter's Walk" (a Houses outtake that sounds like an ITTOD outtake) and "We're Gonna Groove," which was recorded live somewhere. There's also a completely useless version of "I Can't Quit You Baby" which was recorded during SOUND REHEARSAL wherever the hell they played "We're Gonna Groove" at. What the hell? A crappy recording of a song that's not even very good to begin with does NOT count as an "outtake!" Anyway, there is one good song on the first side, "Poor Tom" which has a realy neat drum intro and some mad-PHAT acoustic pickin'. A worthy track on Coda! And side 2 has THREE more worthy tracks! None are more than "good," but I'll settle for that here. "Ozone Baby" and "Darlene" are VERY poppy ITTOD outtakes, and they're both pretty enjoyable. "Ozone Baby" wouldn't have fit, since it's got no keyboards, goddammit, but I think "Darlene," which is easily the catchiest thing here and has a neat piano part, would have fit right alongside "South Bound Saurez," since they're very, VERY similar. "Wearing And Tearing" (also an ITTOD outtake) is Zeppelin's stab at PUNK, but they sort of miss the point, since it's FIVE AND A HALF minutes long, the length of two actual punk songs, and it sucks. HARD. The best (and only really interesting) track here is a drum instrumental (what does that say about this record?) called "Bonzo's Montreaux" which, despite being ONLY PERCUSSION, manages to rule. It's not a drum solo, it's a drum composition, and it's obvious Bonzo carefully overdubbed every instrument, including some of those cool Jamaican reggae drums! Listening to this, you'd think Zeppelin HAD to have better outtakes lying around, and guess what? THEY DID! As I mentioned before, I have The Complete Studio Recordings box set, and the copy of Coda on it has four bonus tracks, three of which are awesome. However, I don't count them in my record rating, since they weren't on the original release. Anyway, "Baby Come On Home" sounds like a carbon copy of "Your Time Is Gonna Come" and is not good. "Travelling Riverside Blues," however, is, and has some of the neatest slide guitar I've heard Jimmy play. "White Summer/Black Mountain Side" is an eight-minute instrumental that's mostly just Jimmy playing some REALLY complicated stuff, and it's a LIVE BBC recording (he rules! He played that shit live!), just like "Travelling Riverside Blues." "Hey Hey What Can I Do" is the last bonus track, and is seriously one of the ten or fifteen best Zep songs I've heard. Remember ALLLLLLL the way back in my III review how I mentioned Jimmy could have made ONE change and changed the rating to a 10? Well, this is it. It's a III outtake, which I can tell from where and when it was recorded. Oh, and it was the fucking B-SIDE to the "Immigrant Song" single, which is just more proof. Now, it's all acoustic, it's absolutely AWESOME, plus it serves as the closing track to the version of Coda I have, and does an excellent job of it. So WHAT THE FUCK prevented Jimmy from throwing "Hats Off To (Harpo) Marx" in the trash bin, inserting this awesome tune at the end, and releasing it like that? What? WHAT????!!!! This question haunts me every day. Damn him to the fiery pits of Hades.

In conclusion, Coda's not very good. The CD release doesn't have these bonus tracks on it (they're only on box sets) so it's pretty much useless to buy it for three good songs and a cool drum thingy. If you're able to download, though, by all means go ahead. I never buy music anymore, and I certainly wouldn't spend money on THIS.