8.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.6 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
The concert film of Led Zeppelin's legendary 2007 reunion at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at London's O2 Arena.
Starring: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Jason BonhamMusic | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: LPCM 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Four-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD, 2 CDs)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
For many, many years in my guise as a club and cruise line pianist, I had a little framed cartoon up on my piano that
featured a lounge pianist with a little sign on his piano that said: Requests: $5.00, “Feelings”:
$500.00. (If you’re not familiar with the lachrymose Morris Albert tune, sorry for depriving you of a great punchline.)
Some of the strangest requests I’ve received over the years, though, have had nothing to do with these more “casual”
gigs, but instead have been courtesy of extremely formal occasions, notably weddings. I played the wedding of one
guy who owned a local movie theater and who was a huge James Bond fan, and he and his bride wanted all of the
seating music to be themes from Bond films. I can’t recall what the bride’s processional was (maybe “Nobody Does it
Better”), but the groom entered—replete in white tux jacket and twirling and crouching as if he were dodging bullets—
to Monty Norman’s legendary 007 Theme.
Another kind of funny request came from parents of a bride in
another wedding I played. These parents were obviously ex-hippies (I think even they would describe
themselves that way), and they were huge Led Zeppelin fans. They had arranged for their daughter to be
married outside in Portland’s gorgeous Washington Park, right in the Park’s famous Rose Gardens. And they wanted
more than anything for their “little girl” to walk up the grassy aisle to the strains of “Stairway to Heaven”. So I found
myself on a beautiful summer day in the middle of a bunch of rose bushes pounding out the immortal Robert Plant –
Jimmy Page tune and wondering if I’d ever be playing “Good Times Bad Times” or “Communication Breakdown” if the
marriage faltered and ended in divorce.
“Stairway to Heaven” is perhaps ironically the one song that non-Zeppelin fans
think of most often when asked about the band, even though it was never released as an official single, probably due
to its extended length in its original version. And rather surprisingly (and perhaps even appallingly), Zeppelin, for all
their innovation and overall success, had an astounding paucity of charting singles in the United States, until relatively
recently. A lot of Zeppelin’s popularity during their initial heyday was due to the band’s relentless touring, but once
original drummer John Bonham died unexpectedly in 1980, the group disbanded and many probably thought live
performances were a thing of the past for an assemblage that regularly was able to fill stadiums and arenas in the tens
of thousands. But occasional reunion performances have reignited the Zeppelin flame over the ensuing years, and this
2007 concert, part of a tribute to legendary Atlantic Records producer Ahmet Ertegun, was host to another screaming
horde of Zeppelin fanatics who poured into London’s immense O2 arena to hear Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Jimmy
Plant and John Bonham’s son Jason roar through a visceral set of Zeppelin songs.
Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Music with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. Director David Carruthers covers the action with an incredible panoply of cameras from a variety of angles, and he has further offered up visual delights by processing some of the footage with added grain and various other effects. The concert does have a certain ADHD quality, with a lot of quick cutting, but it's not as bad as many other contemporary concert outings have been in that regard. The image here is very nicely crisp and well detailed, at least in the close-ups. There are some passing issues with shadow detail and crush (especially with Plant, who is wearing black), as well as some very minor quasi-moiré that crops up when the lighting and projection array behind the band is all one color and the camera pans or zooms. Otherwise, though, this is a very sharp and clear presentation that should easily delight Zeppelin fans.
Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day features both a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix as well as an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Both of these tracks offer really vigorous sonic clarity, although the 5.1 track makes Plant's occasional thinness more apparent, as he tends to get just ever so slightly buried in the ambient hall noise and onslaught from the band. The midrange and low range of the 5.1 track is its most outstanding feature, offering supreme clarity without losing any of the aggressive force of Bonham's drums or Jones' bass. There's probably going to be too much audience noise for some listeners, but perhaps that was one of the mixing challenges that Plant alluded to when he mentioned several years ago that release of Celebration Day wasn't imminent. Dynamic range isn't huge here, since the band tends to favor more high octane material, but when things do quiet down, as in the opening sections of "Stairway to Heaven", there's still a very appealing clarity and precision to the audio.
Bonus DVD
Has it been worth the wait? Most definitely. This amazing performance has been captured with a wealth of high definition imagery from a variety of angles, and with overall superb sounding lossless audio. Celebration Day is being released in several different editions, so you probably want to check through all of the options before deciding which one to get, but if you're a Zeppelin fan, there's no question you are going to want this. This particular edition offers the entire concert on two CDs as well as a really fantastic bonus DVD with great (if hard to see) rehearsal footage. Highly recommended.
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