Led Zeppelin - Down The Tracks: The Music That Influenced Led Zeppelin

Chrome Dreams’ recent Led Zeppelin’s Jukebox, or Castle’s Your Time Is Gonna Come (a flawed but intriguing collection of releases in which the individual members were involved prior to the group’s formation) may prove useful companion CDs to this exploration of some of Led Zeppelin’s diverse influences. Both will add missing detail to a DVD to which Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham make no direct contributions. But Down The Tracks is as well constructed as it could be within its regrettable limits. Unfortunately its contributors do display a tendency to deal in outlines rather than specifics. In the skiffle section, for example, Chas McDevitt’s comments could be applied to almost any rock-star-in-waiting growing up in a country where bomb sites still served as unofficial playgrounds. Indeed, Down The Tracks might be of as much interest to the general pop historian as devotees of this particular act. Sadly, however, this DVD is not brave enough to address the schmaltzy chart fodder that two of LZ helped create as mid-60s session musicians.