“A new Led Zeppelin-dedicated label was announced. The Chronicles Of Led Zeppelin is established as an original successor to the now legendary The Diagrams Of Led Zeppelin label and is set to release many uncirculated sources from the Led Zeppelin live catalogue. From what is reported, the main intention of this newest effort from the Far East is to release all the tapes without any heavy equalization or editing. The label is planning a big series of albums sourced directly from the masters dedicated to the collectors that are looking for unaltered and straight copies of low gen tapes. Their first two titles will include the Seattle March 21st, 1975 alternate source and the Atlanta April 23th, 1977 tapes. The date of release is planned for sometime in mid June this year. While the Seattle source was previously used as a filler to the original (basic) tape on H-Bomb’s No Quarter many years ago, Atlanta seems to be the debut of this rather very good sounding material. All in all, it seems this is the beginning of something much larger than we could have expected before and I hope this newest budget label will be a correct and definitive answer to the highly overrated Empress Valley Supreme Disc and Tarantura labels.”
This is very good news, and it looks like this label will avoid the “limited to one hundred numbered copies” crap that plagues the elitist Led Zeppelin labels. The past couple of years have seen some labels rise to continue the great tradition of TDOLZ but were either heavily remastered or didn’t have the knowledge of which tapes to release for collectors. We’ll have full reviews of the new TCOLZ titles when they arrive here next month.
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initially it’s easy to make the straightfoward connection between the new tcolz and tdolz. they only differ in one letter and the concept is the same… generally speaking…
except that in the days of tdolz there were many many better tapes to choose from, not yet pressed to silver disc. the label that comes to mind most resembling tcolz (imo) is image quality.
i’m not sure about the remastering/equalizing issue as iq might have played with the tapes, but the real juxtaposition or perhaps parallel between tcolz and iq (and earlier tdolz) is that many fewer tapes are now available for silver debut. …that… in addition to the the budget nature of the tcolz/iq labels. leading me to believe that iq was an underappreciated and therefore underrated label at the time and even today.
tcolz serves a purpose for the collector, but not really one for me. i just don’t really care about the bottom of the barrel SQ tapes. oh well.
but what an attempt to either fill an available niche or make a bit of cash off the hardcore collector. there’s something in common with evolution or the free market in here somewhere…
Er, and all I wanted to know was is Atlanta ’77 as good a performance as the rumour(s) suggest. What next – boot reviews in The Economist?
gsparaco, I couldn’t agree more. In this day and age of imploding economies, rising food and gas prices, earthquakes, cyclones and all around doom and gloom, people quibbling over an insignificant uncirculated Led Zeppelin concert…they obviously have way too much free time on their hands. MANY more important things out there to be focusing on, folks. And on that note…
I’m aware of the rumor floating around on the ledzeppelin.com forms. As far as I know it isn’t true and was started by a lonely soul who wants some attention. Freezer said he’ll be buried with the tape (God bless him) and TCOLZ know nothing about a Baton Rouge tape.
It is weird how everything associated with Led Zeppelin tapes has to be an elaborate cloak and dagger mystery. There is currently a big conspiracy theory floating around about Freezer sharing the tape with a select few and how one of the “insiders” leaked the tape to the label. If this were true, I say God bless the “betrayer” for liberating the tape from the few and offering it to everyone.
This story seems to circulate with every big Led Zeppelin tape. What tells me it is false is the themes it shares with all the other stories and all are grounded in primordial archetypal mythology. Most creation myths tell the story about how god created the world and pronounced it “good.” But some force sneaks into the creator’s good creation to corrupt it. There is normally some sort of combat in which the creator god subdues the adversary and righteousness is following the law prodcribed in creation. Hints of this can be found in the book of Genesis but is very obvious when considering the mythology of Greece (Saturn, Ouranos), Sumer (Marduk and Tiamat), and ancient Egypt.
How it started is anyone’s guess. These are only tapes people, and who cares what comes out and what doesn’t. Sure Baton Rouge 1977 would be nice to hear, but honestly it will not be any different than the thousands of other tapes from Zep’s eleventh tour and will be nothing special.
The only point of TCOLZ, as far as I understand, is to offer low generation tapes without the horrendous mastering violence inflicted on the tapes like what is done by Empress Valley and Tarantura. Simple as that.
The Atlanta ’77 show IS supposed to be one of the better performances of that tour, but the source that is currently in circulation is so distorted it’s hard to tell really. If TCOLZ is putting out an alternate source of that show, it’ll certainly be welcome!
I heard (possibly just a rumour) that TCOLZ has also gotten their hands on the previously uncirculated May 19 1977 Baton Rouge show as well…wonder how they pulled that off, especially since the taper of the show has apparently gone on record a few times saying that recording would NEVER see the public light of day…
Interesting to read they are going to release the Atlanta ’77 show. Somewhere – and I can’t recall where now – I read that this show was the best of the entire 77 tour, even better than the LA Forum shows. As I’ve never heard the Atlanta show I can’t comment myself, but can anyone verify this?
TDOLZ was a great label, though a medium percentage of the titles were about 1 gen higher than the best tape available at the time. They were indeed “pre-remastering” days.