FOR Zep fans, eight hours of new live footage and concert recordings must be rather like crawling from a desert to find Perrier's bottling plant.

Years have passed since the last official release of live material so it's impressive the debt to fans has been repaid at such a generous rate.

Cleaned up film of Page, Plant, Jones and, of course, Redditch's own John Bonham sees them hitting their stride at the Albert Hall in 1970 and pretty much keeping up the pace until Knebworth in '79.

And boy, did they have fun on the way.

Other footage is taken from gigs at Madison Square Gardens in '73, Earls Court in '75 and extras like rare TV appearances, interviews and even "bootleg" cine footage.

How the West Was Won, on the other hand, catches a mean sounding, full tilt Zeppelin at two 1972 gigs in LA.

It's exciting stuff and a fine pointer as to why the band have built such a legendary following.

If you like your riffs (Heartbreaker, Black Dog, Whole Lotta Love etc) and you like them heavy - then here is your tonic. It's just a shame there's no post-'72 material.

But a word of warning for the purists - according to Zep internet anoraks, these are cleaned up, partially edited or amalgamated songs from both LA concerts.

But it's more than enough to remind a new generation why Zeppelin were the daddies, so who cares?

JS