Nine Lives

by

Robert Plant

Edit

This remastered career-spanning career retrospective box set is titled NINE LIVES, to coincide with the nine studio albums released by Robert Plant between the years of 1982-2005. These twenty-three years are twice as long as his tenure in Led Zeppelin, and they help the listener to imagine what could have been had John Bonham lived. One of the most tantalizing morsels of what could have been was found within the PAGE AND PLANT UNLEDDED project, which was part of the MTV Unplugged series, which took place in the mid-1990's. Plant teaming up with Jimmy Page for the album, tour, and the Clarksdale album that followed is the reason why there was a nine year gap in between 1993's FATE OF NATIONS and 2002's DREAMLAND.

Each of these nine solo albums contain either B-Sides, Live tracks, demos, remixes, or songs formerly released in special territories, such as Japan-only bonus tracks. This material had either never been released on CD before, or was difficult and expensive to obtain. The NINE LIVES box, coupled with 2005's SIXTY-SIX TO TIMBUKTU provides a veritiable smorgaborg of bonus material, over which all true long-time fans are certain to salivate.

The remastering was tasefully done, and wasn't the usual fader-pushing into the red-zone, which has a habit of abusing audiophiles and the care and expense that we have taken to assemble high-end multimedia systems right in our homes. I was very pleased to hear this, and none of the resultant over-compressed frequencies fell victim to the usual audio abuse.

THIS IS PLUS NUMBER ONE OF THIS SET!

Next, there are TWENTY-SIX bonus tracks in this complete set, and with the exception of two of the NOW & ZEN live tracks (Billy's Revenge and Tall Cool One), these are all high-quality gems. These include the hard to obtain B-Sides FAR POST and OOMPAH (WATERY BINT), and the wonderful remixes of LITTLE BY LITTLE, TIN PAN VALLEY, THE ENCHANTER, and SHINE IT ALL AROUND. For those of us who simply cannot get enough of the musicians we love and who have become such a deep part of our lives, this box set is well worth the cost, which comes out to about eight dollars a disc.

Then, after the listener has taken in all that aural greatness, there is a two and one-half hour DVD to wade through. It begins with a sixty-two minute documentary/interview with Plant and a melange of his fellow musicians, admirers, and those who have felt his influence in some way.

Finally, there are the twenty full-length music videos that have been shown on the MTV, MTV2, VH1 and VH1 Classic music channels. It is ALL here, including an excerpt of the 1990 Knebworth performance, when Robert Plant received the Nordoff-Robbins Silver Clef Award for his lifelong committment to music AND charity. Perhaps someday THAT entire performance will be released on DVD, as it features Robert's high-energy MANIC NIRVANA band, who were also responsbile for NOW & ZEN and the politically charged FATE OF NATIONS.

I highly recommend this set to anyone who loves and appreciates HIGH QUALITY music, and those who may have missed what all the fuss was about, because of their young age. This NINE LIVES set documents an important sector of music history, featuring the lead singer from the greatest band of all time, Led Zeppelin.

Rating: 100 stars (out of five)

This was a bargain because I owned only 4 of the 9. Also there's the dvd that's not sold seperately. BUT..... THE reason I bought the set was for the REMASTERING. Unfortunately, the difference is NOMINAL. There are however enough unreleased or unavailable in the U.S. tracks to make up a cd of their own, plus there's lots of good live tracks and at least 1 enjoyable remix. The packaging looks great and is original, but it's also very cumbersome putting a disk back in it's sleeve. The sleeves are bound in book form, but the style of binding keeps the front pages from staying out of the way when you access the rear sleeves. You almost need one hand to hold the top pages back, one to spread the carboard sleeve open so it doesn't scratch the disk, and a third hand to put in/take out the disk. The best thing for me has been discovering everything released after Manic Nirvana. It's possible Mighty Rearranger could become my favorite Plant cd. So....... Pros: Fair price, great music, nice extras, sounds a little better than the original releases, VERY attractive and high quality packaging. (The guy that wrote the booklet was a bit gushing, but nearly all of these retrospectives have the same "feature". I remember after reading the booklet in The Babys anthology, I nearly believed they were the biggest band in the world.) Cons: Only a LITTLE better sounding than the original releases, inconvenient packaging.