THE COMPLETE STUDIO RECORDINGS

Led Zeppelin: kings, pioneers, and legends of Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Rock, and just about any other kind of rock you can name. They spewed out a number of great albums, but stumbled a little on their way out. Hard, nay, impossible is it to ignore this iconic, revolutionary, and incredibly successful band. From their bluesy beginnings, to their more experimental days, all the way up to their shameful In Through the Out Door, and their mediocre redemption of Coda, it's all here. Every moment of their musical career: on audio, but also in written format. The extensive bio/interviews that come with the album, in addition to the bonus tracks (which can, actually, be found on just about every CD version of Coda) to the fancy album art/packaging/production, this box set is essential to 1) those of you who have yet to upgrade/downgrade your vinyl collection to CD format, and 2) those of you who have never owned any Zeppelin. Unfortunately, as Zed Leppelin never managed to fill that gaping hole in their sound, and never managed to do anything painfully interesting (compositionally, or in terms of arrangements), and because most of their music is simple and unsophisticated, this is certainly nowhere near essential as a prog album. Don't get me wrong, they're music is excellent rock, and essential for hard rock fans, but is poor when compared with prog. It is much more convenient (and not much more expensive) to acquire their entire studio discography in a single purchase.

Review Nº 593

'The Complete Studio Recordings' is a compilation of Led Zeppelin that was released in 1993. It's a ten compact Box set with the eight Led Zeppelin studio albums, placed in chronological order and digitally remastered, and an expanded version of 'Coda'. This version of 'Coda' included four bonus tracks, which are all previous unreleased tracks, 'Baby Come Home', 'Travelling Riverside Blues', 'White Summer/Black Mountain Side' and 'Hey, Hey, What Can I Do'.

The album's cover depicts the inside structure of a Zeppelin. This Box set also includes a booklet featuring an extended and nice impressive essay by the very well known rock journalist Cameron Crowe and a bunch of photos of the band.

As I've already reviewed all these albums previously on Progarchives, in a more extensive way, I'm not going to do it again. So, if you are interested to know, in more detail, what I wrote about them before, I really invite you to read all those reviews. However, in here, I'm going to write something about them in a more short way. So, of course, I'm not going to analyze them track by track, as I made before, but I'm only going to make a global appreciation of the albums.

'Led Zeppelin': 'Led Zeppelin' is an excellent and a powerful debut album, very strong and well balanced without masterpieces but also without weak points. It's a blues rock oriented album, the band's rawest and most bluesy based studio recording. For a debut, it has a very interesting powerful collection of songs, full of originality and invention.

'Led Zeppelin II': 'Led Zeppelin II' is another excellent album, very well balanced and without weak points too. It has many great songs, especially 'Whole Lotta Love'. On it the band developed the ideas presented on their previous album, with elements of blues and folk music. It's an album that also displays some of the greatest guitar riffs ever.

'Led Zeppelin III': 'Led Zeppelin III' is one of their best and most fine works. It shows a great emphasis on the folk and acoustic sounds. With this album Led Zeppelin shows they were more than a merely conventional rock band and that they could go out into new musical territories. They proved they were one of the best and most complete rock bands.

'Led Zeppelin IV': 'Led Zeppelin IV' is their greatest masterpiece. It was a big commercial and critical success and became as one of the best selling albums worldwide and in one of the best albums ever released till now. It's also considered one of the most important Rock'n'Roll albums ever. It represents the band's commercial and artistic peak.

'Houses Of The Holy': 'Houses Of The Holy' was their first album to be officially titled with a real name. It was also their first album to be composed completely by original material. We can say this album represents a musical turning point for Led Zeppelin, as they began to use more layering and production techniques in recording their songs. In my humble opinion, this is their most underrated album of their first six studio albums and it's one of my favourites too.

'Physical Graffiti': 'Physical Graffiti' contains new songs and some left over songs from their previous sessions. It's their most ambitious album that covers a vast amount of musical territory. It's a real tour the force and a perfect test to Led Zeppelin's musical versatility. 'Physical Graffiti' touches all the bases. There are blues, heavy ballads, acoustic songs, hard rock and some Eastern musical influences, for instance on 'Kashmir' that is the best track on the album.

'Presence': 'Presence' represents a return of the band to the hard rock but on a new level of complexity. It also marked a change to a bit less elaborate sound. While the previous albums contained hard rock with acoustic ballads, 'Presence' is the only album that uses no keyboards and no acoustic tracks. It became as the forgotten Led Zeppelin album. It's unfair because it's an excellent album and has one of the best tracks from the band 'Achilles Last Stand'.

'In Through The Out Door': 'In Through The Out Door' represents a significant departure from anything that had come before. It marks a mix of sounds and rhythms from different styles. It has a great use of keyboards and synthesizers by Jones beyond the usual chords of Page. It's the most controversial, unloved and misunderstood album of the band.

'Coda': 'Coda' consists of unreleased leftovers and that must should only purchased after obtaining all the band's original studio albums. It's not Led Zeppelin's best musical work, despite being not a bad album. It's non-essential, but as a posthumous work for Bonham, it's a very emotional album. It's an album for fans and to complete discographies.

Conclusion: 'The Complete Studio Recordings' represents, in a certain way, the final testimony of one of the greatest Rock'n'Roll bands. Of course, as many other Box sets with the same purposes, the interest in purchase compilations like this is very subjective when we have all the original albums from the band. The only thing really new that we can get on this Box set is the four bonus tracks on 'Coda'. It's true they're very impressive but to buy a compilation so expensive like this only because of four tracks is completely insane. So, this compilation is for people who don't want to spend many time and patience looking for every album individually. Anyway, this is an excellent compilation album.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)