Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin (Deluxe Edition)
(Atlantic Recording Company)

Opening with that classic stuttering bass drum from John Bonham, you knew you were well into a completely other stratosphere of rock with “Good Times Bad Times,” the very first Led Zeppelin track from the very first Led Zeppelin album. Jimmy Page, the hard rock quartet’s architect/wizard guitar player/producer/songwriter, has remastered the heavy tunes we all know so well, added a bunch of stuff for fans and classic rock junkies and generally begins a whole new saga in releasing Led Zeppelin music.

From that killer set-the-standard “Good Times Bad Times,” this first album has Led Zeppelin in its entirety. The sound here is pristine and you’re hearing stuff like you’ve surely never heard it before, like the fantastically warm and clear acoustics on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Bonham’s snare and John Paul Jones’ bass, plus the full “longs” of Robert Plant’s “You shook me all night long” in the naughty blues shaker of the same name. Then there’s the side-to-side headphone spikes of Jimmy Page’s opening guitar on “How Many More Times.”

The other half of this first album, a full seven songs, is from an unreleased oft-bootlegged 1969 concert of Led Zeppelin in Paris. There’s Plant practically screaming to the heavens on “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” a fiery “Heartbreaker,” a scary “Dazed and Confused” with not only Page performing his wizardry, but Bonham behind him providing heavy tom tom answers, and the amalgamation of the Jimmy solo, never-released (at least with this title and in this way), “White Summer/Black Mountain Side.”

As a historical document alone, this mini concert is worth the price of the record.