A study of the Led Zeppelin film and album The Song Remains The Same
by Eddie Edwards
The Garden Tapes » The Song Remains The Same » Two-Disc Special Edition DVD Menus
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Slip disc one of the new Song Remains The Same Two-Disc Special Edition DVD into your player and the action immediately begins, appropriately enough, with the opening bars of the title track playing over the main menu. This is a 90-second edit that loops round in the usual DVD menu fashion.
The available menu options are: THE FILM : SONGS : AUDIO & SUBTITLES. The first option, of course, takes you straight to the main feature. The 'Audio & Subtitles' option takes you to a sub-menu, over which plays a 60-second edit of Over The Hills and Far Away. As you'd expect, this is an extract from the version used in the Bonus Features on disc two, part of which was also previewed in one of the menus on the 2003 DVD.
The 'Songs' option takes you to the first of a series of menus from which you can jump to any song you wish. Standard DVD functionality, of course, but the audio accompaniment here is very intriguing. It's a 90-second edit of the theremin section of Whole Lotta Love, but it's from the second night, the 28th. This piece of music was not used in the actual song on any release, old or new, so the only place to hear it officially is on this menu!
The second "Songs" sub-menu features a series of sewn-together extracts from No Quarter, totalling 65 seconds. The third is accompanied by a further clip from Whole Lotta Love, and it's another interesting selection. It's 50 seconds of the funky interlude that follows the opening verses, from the 27th. This was on the original album but missing from the original film. Because of the necessity of fitting the new soundtrack to the original visuals, it's still missing from the new DVD main feature, but here it is (or most of it, anyway) on this menu. A nice touch.
The fourth and final 'Songs' sub-menu features yet another interesting clip from Whole Lotta Love. This is from the laid-back section of the Boogie guitar solo, and it's another clip from the 28th, which does not appear anywhere on any official release other than on this menu.
Any more little gems of this nature on disc two? Swap discs and, sure enough, the main menu, listing the special features, is accompanied by another otherwise-unreleased clip from the 28th version of Whole Lotta Love. This one's from the riffy section between the funk and the theremin. The playing length is 56 seconds, but it's actually a 28-second clip joined together with itself. Most of the vocal ad libs have been removed from the first pass, but left in on the second pass, so it doesn't sound like a repeat!
The other menus on disc two are a little more mundane. The 'Credits' sub-menu features the same 90-second edit of The Song Remains The Same as is used on the main menu of disc one, and the 'Audio & Subtitles' sub-menu uses the same edit of Over The Hills and Far Away as on the corresponding disc one sub-menu.
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