The VHS version of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same was the tribal campfire around which my friends and I ritually gathered every other Friday and Saturday night in my late teens and very early 20's. We had stumbled into Led Zeppelin in various ways, and at the time their 1973 concert movie (released in 1976) was the only chance we had to view our new heroes. It was slow-paced with horrible edits, but that was part of it's charm. It was a picture of the early `70's rock world that we had been to busy crawling around and bottle feeding to know about.

Those who were around when Song was a regular midnight movie in theaters witness that the surround sound mix was considered a Holy Grail of mixes at the time, with Jimmy Page's violin bow echoing off the back wall of the theater. The VHS version that I became accustomed to, though, was a different story. Robert Plant's voice was very dry and on top of the mix, and I believe the particular version my group wound up with was in mono.

Crude as it may have sounded, this was The Song Remains the Same to me. I finally got my own personal copy at the used DVD store a couple of years ago for about $6, and found that in the DVD version a new glitch had been added: when the police are arresting the acid tripper during "Dazed and Confused," a flanged effect come on that makes the music sound like it's coming out of an a.m. radio for about a full minute.

As mentioned here before, a couple of weeks ago I saw this movie on Blu-ray on a 65" TV at a friend's house (the same guy who had purchased the mono VHS for our crew to enjoy in the `90's). He had expertly installed a surround sound system in his ceiling, and Jimmy Page's touches on the remastered Song were more pleasing than I had expected. There was now a concert hall ambience around the music, rather than sounding like it had been recorded on a four-track with blatant bad edits. Best of all, Robert Plant no longer sounded like he was singing inside a sonically-dead cardboard box, but had a little reverb to smooth out his "Aaaahhhhs!" Though I don't have a Blu-ray, I made a point to grab the new-and-improved DVD version at the first chance.

Upon watching the new version...I'm going back to the old one. For some reason the new mix was novel on a surround sound system, but on second listen I'm finding the added reverb and delay/echo distracting. Just a dab would do ya, but they've ladled it on thick, taking this show from a garage to a giant, echoing tunnel. The garage sounded more natural. There are also musical edits; I've watched this concert enough to have every note memorized, and there are little things I've come to expect that aren't there, like when Robert Plant says, "You push, push, push me darlin'," I expect to hear Jimmy Page do a short pick slide to add an exclamation point, but instead he plays a little B.B. King lick that doesn't drive the point home the same.

Somewhere on this new DVD, which I'm trying to find now, I'm hearing something that sounds like Page's theramin, his wizardly noise box, going off where it shouldn't be. I was thinking it was "Since I've Been Loving You," but maybe it's somewhere else.

Also, effects have been added where they weren't before. Right now I'm hearing "No Quarter," and there's phase on Plant's voice. There was phase on the album version of that song, but there was no phase on the vocal at Madison Square Garden in 1973. This effect has also been added to John Bonham's drums in spots where it wasn't on the original, like this vacuum-cleaner flange I just heard in the keyboard solo in "No Quarter." EDIT: Oh - and Jimmy's guitar! Did chorus pedals exist in 1973? I'm sure they didn't, yet you hear one so loud on Jimmy's guitar in "Stairway to Heaven" you would think this concert was from 1983, not `73.

The new version is worthwhile to get the second disc, though, because it has a lot of material featuring Zeppelin's legendary manager, Peter Grant.

Picture-wise, the original DVD, the new DVD and the Blu-ray all look the same. That's what you're going to get from 1973 low-light film.

Truthfully maybe I'll watch the old version sometimes and the new version others, but that digital delay on everything really is distracting.