re: Ramblin down the road

[Jeremy Mixer <mixer@xxxxxxxx>]

Ah nothing like a good debate......I had to think a bit about this before
responding because you do have some good points

On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Buddy Boy Page wrote:

> >Well folks- these days, AOL-Time/Warner doesn't
> >really care about the consumer...They want money.
>
> You do a nice job of contradicting yourself, mixerman.
>
> Okay, so the big bad corporate companies want money,
> that's all they care about.  Let's agree on that.

ok agreed.

> On the other hand, you imply that
> AOL/Time/Warner/Atlantic doesn't care about the
> consumer, and that the live recordings won't be
> catalogued and released to the public.
>
> But wouldn't doing that, making the live material
> available for sale MAKE MONEY?  Use your brain on this
> one everyone, keeping those tapes in the vaults for
> eternity make no money.  Making them available - ie
> "caring about the consumer" to use a play on words -
> makes money.

That is a valid point, and I will elaborate a little more on what I am
saying- maybe it will make sense to you, maybe it won't, but I AM
interested on hearing (reading) your reaction.

Now, if Atlantic turned around and released at once every live Zeppelin
show that was in the vaults (assuming Robert actually let them) would this
be profitable? I'd think that even us- the hardcore Led Zeppelin fans,
would, in this case, only buy what we are interested in. A CD is an
investment, usually $15-$20, more for a double CD. Money doesn't just grow
on trees as we all know. If Atlantic weere to do this then only those of
us with a LOT of money would be able to buy all of the live material. And
that is not many of us. So just releasing everything all at once is
obviously not the answer.

So then there is the arguement that they could release something else, but
I'd say that won't happen for at least anbother 4-5 years. Because they
care about money. The longer they make us wait, the bigger it will  be. If
they wait 7-10 years to release more live zep material it is going to sell
better then if they released something next month.

We might be due for something actually- but I'd like you to take a look
at this, hich you could say contradicts my points about how much money a
consumer is willing to spend on Led Zeppelin.

In 1990 the first box set comes out
In 1994 the second box set with everything not on the first box set came
out
Also in 1994, a complete package with all of the Zeppelin albums in their
original order was released all digitally remastered.

Slowly after that, the remasters of the entire Zep catalog came out.

Sopeaking of Remasters, THAT box set came out in 1990 as well.

OK so we have one box set that is smaller then another one that contains
an interview disc (Remasters), a Box set with 54 songs (Box Set), the
songs not on the box set (Box Set II) and "The Complete Studio Recordings"
which contains everything excccept the Moby Dick/Bonzo's Montreaux remix.
None of the box sets contain the interviews. Only Remasters does. It is
impossible to have a complete Zeppelin collection as it is without dishing
out at least $150-$200.

FOUR YEARS after the last and most recent studio outtake came out on Box
Set II (Baby Come On Hom) Atlantic releases BBC sessions. However, it is
CUT DOEWN dfrom it's original version because they could not get the
RIGHTS to include some of the song snippets. Is it really an issue of the
rights? Or is an an issue of them not wanting to spend too much money? A
question only Atlantic can answer. The fact is, most of us already had the
sessions on bootleg, and this offered them to us in much better sound
quality and as an official release. Personally, I feel that if something
you own on bootleg comes out as an official release, if it is a bootleg
you enjoy, you are obligated to buy the album. It's a moral issue with me.
Just as I don't think anyone should start buying live material until
they've bought all the studio albums and commercially available live
albums. For two reasons I feel this way- #1- a moral obligation to the
people who brought us the music in the first pklace and #2- if you are
obtaining unreleased live material and haven't even purchased everything
that is commercially available, then you really have NO RIGHT to bitch
when Atlantic Records takes down a web site such as Project Ballentine,
because you are only proving them right in their arguement that
bootlegging and tape trasrading are taking money out of their pockets.

Another thing might be that they would not be sure how well another live
Zeppelin release would do. How did the BBC sessions sell? Anyone got the
statistics on that? I don't think it sold that badly, but I'm sure it's
sales aren't anywhere near as good as TSRTS. And which has the better
performances? BBC sessions most would argue. I am SURE that there are
several people who did NOT buy the BBC sessions because they KNEW WHAT
THEY WERE GETTING and they KNEW ABOUT THE EDITS and it wasn't worth it to
them. I'd actually be interested (I won't flame you I promise unless you
flame me!) in hearing from someone who owned the bootleg and DID NOT BUY
the commercial release, and what reasons they had for not doing this. If
you are uncomfortable posting this to the list, please email me privately
and I will remove your name and address and repost it to FBO. Because I
think it will be a very interesting amount of writing. And something I
would like to hear.

I still say tyey only csaare about money, and that is why they are so
quick not to jump the gun.

They probably have people researching what the best release would be. As I
said, I GGUARENTEE YOU that there are people from Atlantic Records
monitoring this list right now. Monitoring the tape trees. Monitoring the
people offering silvers for sale. Monitoring all the  offfers for trades,
and most importantly, MONITORING DISCUSSION ABOUT LIVE SHOWS.

The happy medium for selling a live show would be something that the
general public would go for, not just the hardcore fans like the 1000 of
us that are here on FBO, the who knows how many that are on the newsgroup,
the few hundred (?) that are on the zeppinhood newsgroup, the 1400 that
are on Don's trading list, the 250 that are on the Physical Grafitti list,
the 7 poeople that are on the Yahoo Group that calls itself "FBO", the 20
exclusive people that are on Bill McCue's exclusive list that bans people
who like me, etc. THESE ARE NOT THE PEOPLE ATLANTIC IS TRYING TO PLEASE,
it is the general public. THIS is how I do not feel I am contradicting
myself.

THere is a lot of live material that while we might love it on FBO, the
general public might not be very interested. They won't want somethign
that has all the same damn songs that are on the BBC sessions. At  the
same time, would the general public go from something from say, 1975 tour?
1977 tour? 1980 tour? All these tours that while the fans love things from
these tours, you have to be open minded enough to recognize the fact that
tours in the late 70's were not the raw energy that Zeppelin had in the
early years. At the same time, the early music was so expirimental live
and unpredictable it is hard to sell too many songs to the general public
that varyt that much from the original studio releases. I know more people
who hate live music because it never sounds like the original. I get
requests at the radio station all the time where people request the song
and then say "oh, and please don't play the live version"

Exceptions to this rule are Bob Seger's "Turn the Page", J. Geils "Musta
Got Lost", and Frampton's "Do you feel like we do."

But that's drifiting from the point. Live music is hard to sell to the
general public, especially when it is not true to it's original version.
People like what they know. And the other thing we have to remember about
Zeppelin is this- this is a band who has not done anything as a band since
1980. (with a couple exceptions but nothing too big)

If Atlantic Records only makes a small profit from an album then they
might not be interested, especially when it is concerning a band like Led
Zeppelin which are one of their biggest money makers.

Explain to me this- Capitol Records signed the Butthole Surfers to their
label, and released "Independent Worm Saloon" which was their first album,
after being around since 1978, that got a lot of attention. The biggest
thing this album had going for it was being produced by a certain JPJ.

The album had a single that got some airplay- a band like the Butthole
Surfers are a band that only the right type of person can handle. They are
not for everyone. Their album was mildly successful, didn't become huge
but it sold some copies. And then came ElectricLarryLand.

This spawned the number #1 Alternative hit "OPepper" and this album sold a
lot more copies.......but not as many copies as they wanted it to. I don't
know what happened, but the band was dropped from the label. AFTER
recording an albuim.

It all comes down to money.

Atlantic doesn't want to make a little money, they want to make a lot of
money. It could be years before we see another live release because by
then the general public might be interested again.

That and until Robert gets over his insecurities about his often unstable
voice during the Zeppelin days, or he unfortunately leaves this worls, I
have a feeling we won't see much.

 > > Caring about the consumer is not at odds with making > money in this
case.  I suggest Mixer has bias against
> the large-type corporations, and is trying to tie our
> angst about this situation it his bias.


I will say this, however let me add this- I do not know the name of the
label, but who is releasing all of the live Pearl Jam shows? A small
label, they only make a small profit doing this, but hell.....they see it
as an oppertunity. Atlantic would se eit as a waste of time, resources and
money as they could be printing other CD's with the same money that it
costs and be making more from those. THAT is where the money issue comes
in.

They don't care about the fans, they just want to sell albums. Or CD's I
should say. Period. I am interested in your and anyone else's thoughts on
this.

And let me also add- yes I am veryt anti-corperate. I don't look down on a
company because they are corperate, I look down on them for their
money-grubbing ways and how the companies get to the point of not caring
about the consumer and caring more about the largest profit that they can
get.

I worked for corperate Wendy's...... do you thik they care about their
employees as much as they say they do? No not at all, and the smae goes
for McDonalds and Burger King. Don't get me started on Clear Channel
communications. Or Cumulus that flasified their earnings information to
help their stock prices go higher, they are lcuky they still exist when
their stock prices went down to almost $1 a share from $65 a share once
their bad practices were exposed.

The big companies exist to put the little ones out of business. And usonly
way to do that is to be dirty. And when a company is dirty in their
practices I lose respect for them. Period. I ahve not yet found a
corperate company that I like, and I approach them all with an open miond.
They all do whatever they can get away with it seems. Our country allows
this because it just gives them more money. Because technically the
government owns everything so who can say you blame them?

OK I am going to shut up now, but I am REALLY interested in hearing others
comments about this.

Jeremy