I’m very late to the party in picking up these deluxe edition remasters of the Led Zeppelin albums, but I will get to them all eventually. I won a copy of the deluxe 2xLP of the fourth album through a quiz on New Zealand radio station The Sound, and a couple of weekends ago, I walked into JB HI-Fi and picked up this 2xLP edition of PRESENCE for $26, less than a third of the list price it was originally going for.
I’ve written about their seventh studio album before, it’s not my favourite of theirs by a long stretch, but it makes for an interesting listen and for me it feels like their last great album (I do like IN THROUGH THE OUT DOOR, but that album always feels much weaker than its predecessors). PRESENCE is a bleak listen, very serious, and missing a lot of the humour that crept into their prior work. Plant was recovering from injuries sustained during a car accident on the Greek island of Rhodes, and recorded the album sat in a wheelchair. So, yes, it’s difficult to not hear some of this come through in the writing and recording.
I wanted to pick this up for the additional disc of alternate takes and extra bits and pieces though. Mostly, these ‘reference mixes of works in progress’ sound very similar to the finished product, to the point that they almost sound unnecessary, a barrel scraping collection of additional material.
There is one completely unreleased song presented though, and it’s worth the price of admission alone. The almost seven-minute long, bizarrely titled 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod) is a beautiful piano-led instrumental, co-written by John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page. It’s probable that the song was left off the album due to running time limitations – they had just released a double-album in PHYSICAL GRAFFITI, itself partly a barrel-scrape of leftover material from earlier album – and anyway, the tone of the song, playful and light-hearted, feels the polar opposite of what ended up on the album. My wife said the ‘new’ song sounds like cafe music, but everybody’s a critic. I love it, and it just goes to show, there’s always gold in them there vaults.
Hit: Achilles Last Stand
Hidden Gem: 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod)
Vinyl Stylus 