King Arthur Movie Tristan

Finally, the name of this feature matches the reality. That is to say, I actually own an Apple i-pod for my personal music experience, instead of the RCA Lyra I have been using the past three years. There was nothing wrong with the Lyra, you understand, it's just that I called this feature "This week on my i-pod," and it has always felt false. Well now I have a shiny new 80gig video i-pod that Santa left under my tree, and I can get back to a bit of feature writing. The nice thing is, I can also now expand this feature to include videos, TV shows I may be watching, movies, music videos, take your pick, and I'm sure I will.

This week however, it's music I'm interested in writing about. More Led Zeppelin if you can stand it. Not long after the London concert on Dec 10th, recordings of the show started popping up in the usual places. So far, three recordings, and a couple of incomplete videos have turned up. The videos suffer from their incompletion, and being recorded on devices less suitable for that purpose than would be preferred. The audio recordings, however, have been the real disappointments. In an age when incredible live recordings are being distributed on the internet, when recording devices have gotten so good, the first two recordings of the Dec 10 Led Zeppelin show are worse than some of the shows people recorded with smuggled in tape recorders in the 1970's - even the early 70's in some cases.

The third recording, however, is a great improvement, if not a great recording just yet. It is extremely listenable, with fairly clear sound and little distortion. Called the trainspotter recording, it is this recording that made it's way to my i-pod (note: another apparently better, recording has since emerged).

It's a fun feeling listening to a live show that you were at, especially one so memorable as the Led Zeppelin reunion, which one critic called the greatest rock show ever. After the show you often try to remember some part, a song or what the singer said, and listening after allows you to review it in a calmer way. It also, however, helps you re-live the moment. And when a moment was as good, as special as Dec 10 at the 02 arena, it's great to be able to sit in work re-living it as often as possible (I even have some pictures from the show on my i-pod). That is the magic of modern technology.

And magic is the right word: The i-pod itself is magic, but the moment, the show was pure magic, and reliving it while drudging away my time at work, there's a trick I would be impressed if Harry Potter could duplicate.