Just Back from DVD Preview Screening (warning: SPOILERS and FAIRLY LONG)

[TangerineMan <tangerineman@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Unfortunately I hafta make this quick and dirty--it's nearly 3 a.m and I
have work to finish. This was definitely worth losing sleep over tho (and
maybe risking the wrath of a client or two on Friday!).

The local classic rock station sponsored the screening, and a good friend
with connections scored us tix at the last minute (thanks, bud!). Heineken
was the beer sponsor (très approprié). The event was extremely low-key; no
fanfare on the sidewalk outside. They showed it on the IMAX screen. The
sound was a complete disaster for the entire first hour. Left channel
cutting out all the time, horrible crackling whenever the music got loud.
They finally paused it and some bright spark got the idea to change DVD
players. Duh. Out went RCA, in came Zenith, and the problem was fixed.
Problem was, we were already up to Bring It on Home... The theater
management and the projectionist should be ashamed, and if word gets back to
the Zep camp about how shoddily this thing was set up tonight, there won't
be any similar Zep-related events going down in this town anytime soon.

First impressions: the mood really was like going to see TSRtS at the
midnite movies in the '80s. Coupla folks even snuck some tokes; I couldn't
believe it.

Albert Hall was tasty despite the poor sound. The highlight for me was
probably Moby Dick (despite the poor sound). WIaWSNB perfectly epitomizes
the mellow/heavy, light/shade thing.

Plant still seems so humble in the Early Days--no real posing. In fact, as
people have noted, there's very little effort at stage presentation from the
whole band; it's just four guys grooving. Jonesy easily wins the
best-dressed at RAH award, btw.

The MSG footage is very exciting, especially The Ocean. Man, they were
having so much fun up there. There's some amateur Super 8 stuff thrown in.
They've really done some fine work to fill in the gaps that sometimes exist
in the raw footage (for both RAN and MSG), by doing pans across still
frames, step-printing, slo-mo, and even fast-mo. There's some cheating
apparent (bits "flown in" from other songs or other parts of the same song)
but I didn't mind much. Let's see Eddie Edwards dissect this stuff! MMH is
great, and at the end, when it went straight into the SIBLY segue, I
couldn't believe it. I thought we'd get SIBLY. Unfortunately, it cut right
there and went straight to The Ocean.

The Earls Court footage is strangely disappointing. At some points it really
doesn't look like master video--there's some horizontal interference,
general fuzziness... At times it's barely an improvement from the bootleg
DVDs! People with more tech knowledge than me will know exactly what's up
with the scan lines, but it ain't always pretty. So, slight disappointment.
There has also been some "texturing" done to the video footage at times,
making it look grainy and color-saturated. Nicely done, but it probably
wasn't done to fill gaps, as with RAH and MSG--it's strictly and esthetic
choice. 

GtC is beautiful; the stereo separation of guitar and mandolin is beautiful,
and there are some nice glances from Page over to Jones as they pick away.
IMToD absolutely slays. The Stairway solo is a good one, and unless I'm
mistaken, it's the well-known version from the 24th. As has been mentioned,
the first part of Stairway (up to "If there's a bustle...") is very dark
because the stage lighting is primarily blue.

I suppose all these imperfections are largely due to the fact that the image
was blown up onto most of an IMAX screen--that's pretty frickin' big. It'll
look better next week on my Trinitron, I trust.

Knebworth is Knebworth, but it looks and sounds better than any version I've
ever seen. Having said that, though, I was again somewhat disappointed by
how much the video seems to have deteriorated in some spots.

There's again some great use of Super 8 shots from fans in the crowd, often
capturing the giant video screen image (which is how they were able to sync
it to the audio).

And NFBM did make me a believer. I wrote yesterday that I've always viewed
Knebworth nostalgically as the "faded glory" era. But they really did still
"have it" in '79, to quite a degree.

The most exciting thing in the preview, however, to my eyes and ears, was
the so-called Splodge Edit of Immigrant Song. The color footage from the
Sydney Showgrounds (WHERE did this come from? It's not the faraway b&w TV
footage we're familiar with) is beautiful and vibrant; it's very quickly
edited (not much effort to try to sync it since the audio is the HtWWW '72
version of Immigrant); the boys look happy and youthful, and the sound is
absolutely devastating.

I'm not sure if Splodge is being shown at the other premieres but for some
reason it was definitely the highlight for me tonight. A revelation. Pure
magic. 

Oh yeah--there was a draw to win a trip to NYC next week for the big preem,
plus a copy of the DVD and HtWWW, and spending money. I didn't win.

For the record, here's what we saw:

RAH '70

We're Gonna Groove
I Can't Quit You
Dazed (up to about 2 min into the bow solo)
White Summer (about the first half)
Moby Dick (last part)
WIAWSNB
WLL
Bring it On Home
Communication Breakdown

Australia (visuals)/USA (audio) '72

Immigrant Song

MSG '73

Black Dog
MMH
The Ocean

EC '75

GtC
IMToD
Stairway

Knebworth '79

Rock and Roll
NFBM
Kashmir
WLL

Oh, my Jeezus. It's 3:30. OK, I really gotta work.