Zep in Japan

[no9mg017@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

but what`s got you baffled even more...

Greetings from downtown Kyoto where it`s dark and wet outside. And pleasant. 
Soon this list will be renamed yet again to the `Japan 24 hour weather channel`.
The BBC disk has been available in Japan for about at least two weeks and it`s 
#1 in the rock charts. Yay! The Japanese version comes with a booklet of some sort... 
I haven`t bought it as I don`t have a CD player these days. However I gave it a listen
at in a record store and I was really impressed by the `71 material. It`s by far 
better than any of the 400 versions I own. The `69 stuff does`t seem to be much better 
than what I have. "Something Else" has been cleaned up a fair bit, but still sounds 
like it could`ve been a lot nicer. Maybe it`s from the session the master tapes 
were lost/erased.

Two music mags feature Zep on the cover this month here. One has a `75 Page interview 
(in Japanese... remarkable man that Jimmy) and the other magazine has... well, I don`t
 know as I`m not as gifted as Mr.Page. However, both mags had some pretty nice pics that 
I haven`t seen before. A shot from the side of the stage at Bath, and one in Jimmy`s 
bedroom (?) circa `69. Page in a chair playing guitar, Jones sitting on the bed playing 
a guitar and Plant is on the bed fuckin` some chick. Actually, he`s on the bed doing something 
he`s not as talented at: playing guitar! And Bonzo is on the floor looking extremely uncomfortable... 
constipated again?

That WLL vid is over here as well. Finally got to see it in a reord store that was playing it 
non-stop in celebration of the BBC release. Fav part would have to be Bonzo twirling his drumstick 
over his head. It seems Jones hardly ever appears in the video... maybe he wanted it that way.

All the Zep studio CDs are available in paper cases, resembling the record covers. PG has all the 
movable parts, III has the fly-wheel/pin-wheel(?) things, IV folds out with the picture of Satan, etc...

One other thing... on the back of the BBC disk after all the song selections, it`s written `unedited`. 
What a load of crap. It`s one thing to edit the material, but quite another to lie about it.

Japan of course is a good place for the bootleg enthusiast. I picked up a used copy of 
`Mobile Dick` for 600\, which is less than $5 US. It`s companion piece `Upwardly Mobile`
is going for 1,000\ so I`ll have to wait for that to go on sale...

Does anyone know of any good bootleg shops in Osaka? Especially ones with large Zep collections?

Ciao