Rocker vi 2014

Rocker Music & lifestyle Magazine

II(VI) 2014

Things You Didn’t Know About Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin The Stairway to Heaven Story

Special Recommendations: Tribute Albums and Greatest Covers

SPECIAL EDITION - FULL LED'S LEGEND STORY!

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969's Led Zeppelin I+II and 1970's Led Zeppelin III remastered!

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Jimmy Page This History of Legend

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Ten Things You May Not Know About Jimmy Page

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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Led's

Graphics:

Alex Bowl

Editor in Chief:

Tony Nunc

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Tom Purus

Author:

Cris Lorenc

Author:

Bart Semper

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Special Recommendation: Led zeppelin Box Set Editions of First Three Albums Remastered by Jimmy Page

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Special Recommendation: Stairway to Rock A Led Zeppelin Tribute - Various Artists

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Special Recommendation: The Led Zeppelin Chamber Suite: A Classic Rock Tribute to Led Zeppelin

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Special Recommendation: Pickin' on Zeppelin: A Tribute CD

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Greatest Rock Song - The Stairway to Heaven Story

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1969's Led Zeppelin I+II and 1970's LZ III - remastered!

On June 3, the first three Led Zeppelin albums will be reissued in deluxe remastered editions: 1969's Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II and 1970's Led Zeppelin III. Guitarist Jimmy Page handled the remastering. The reissues will be available in a range of digital, CD, vinyl, and deluxe box sets through Atlantic/ Swan Song, accompanied by previously unreleased bonus tracks including rough mixes, backing tracks, alternative versions, and new songs.

This marks the beginning of a Led Zeppelin reissues campaign that will see the rerelease of all nine of the band's studio albums, each remastered by Page with eraappropriate bonus tracks.

The Super Deluxe Boxed Set for each album will feature both discs on CD and vinyl, a download

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card of all audio, a 70+ page hardcover book with rare and unseen photos, and a print of the original LP cover. The Led Zeppelin box set will also include a reproduction of their first press kit. Read the full details here.

T h e b o n u s material f o r L e d Z e p p e l i n includes an unreleased live set recorded in Paris on October 10, 1969. Led Zeppelin II features alternate mixes, backing tracks, and a previously unreleased song called "La La". And Led Zeppelin III is accompanied by studio outtakes and three unheard tracks: the instrumentals "Jennings Farm Blues" and "Bathroom Sound", plus their cover of blues classic "Keys to the Highway/Trouble in Mind".

Guitarist Jimmy Page handled the remastering!

10 Things You May Not Know About Jimmy Page

In November of 1968, Led Zeppelin signed a record deal with Atlantic Records, leading to the first of many decisions, handshakes and recording sessions that helped the group become one of rock 'n’ roll’s most enduring bands.

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s such, we’ve got a whole lotta love for Led Zeppelin especially riff machine, Jimmy Page. His guitar work and musicianship has long been considered the band’s signature sound, making him one of the most significant and influential guitar players in rock.

To honor the man who gave the world Stairway to Heaven, Black Dog, and Dazed and Confused, here are ten things

you might not know about 50th anniversary. However, Jimmy Page! unfortunately just a few years later all one hundred of the stars were removed.

He wants to release a rare Yardbirds recording…

He played with two maybe.In a 2012 interview with Zeppelin members before Rolling Stone, Page revealed that he had found the tapes of forming the band Back when the Yardbirds’ lost 1971 record he was a session musician, Live Yardbirds! – and that he Page actually collaborated might release it to the public. with future bandmates John The short-lived but innovative Paul Jones and John Bonham band was the launching point on Donovan’s recording Hurdy for the careers of three of Gurdy Man. our favorite guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy His commitment to Page. We’d love to get our perfection led to hands on that recording. some of Zeppelin’s most collectable releases. A known .He once received an honor perfectionist, Page is said to that was later revoked. have been very meticulous In 2004, Page was the first when approving the design of musician to be honored by Led Zeppelin’s physical music the British Avenue of Stars in releases. In that regard, the London, a special exhibit set unique album packaging of up in commemoration of ITV’s Presence and Led Zeppelin

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III’s original vinyl releases are the results of Page’s creativity and collaboration. While he didn't actually design the covers, he was the decision maker when it came to final approvals and even came up with the idea of using the volvelle on Led Zeppelin III.

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He made his TV debut at a very young age. In 1957, a 13-year old Jimmy Page made an appearance on the BBC1 program All Your Own, showcasing local skiffle bands in the London area. His group played “Mama Don’t Want to Skiffle Anymore” and “In Them Ol’ Cotonfields Back Home”.

Shortly afterward he left school to join another band, and the rest is history.

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He lent his skills to another prominent U.K. band for their debut album. As Page was a frequent collaborator with music producer Shel Talmy, he participated in the recording of the Kinks’ 1964 debut album, contributing acoustic and twelve-string guitar work on a few songs.

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He inspired the official scientific naming of a fish. In 2010, an American graduate student named a new species of fish the ‘Lepidocephalichthys zeppelini’, since one of the fish’s fins resembled Page’s double-neck guitar.

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He recorded much of his Led Zeppelin material with a guitar given to him from a notable friend. According to

legend, Page used a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard sold to him by Joe Walsh for some of the in-studio work for Led Zeppelin II and onward – of course, he owned and used many other guitars as well.

Cocker’s timeless cover of the Beatles’ classic With a Little Help from My Friends.

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“Legendary guitarist” wasn’t exactly his first career goal.

W h e n he was young, J i m m y w a s interested in studying biology – so much so that it was a career goal of his to one day find the cure for cancer.

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H e recorded guitar on a very memorable Beatles cover.

Another of P a g e ’ s successes as a session musician was his contribution to Joe Cocker’s 1969 debut With a Little Help from My Friends.

Page laid d o w n guit ar tracks on five songs on the record, including

At 2012 he had found the tapes of the Yardbirds’ lost 1971 record Live Yardbirds!

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n this date in 1968, former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, and session musicians John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time, rehearsing in a West End studio space in London, England. The first song they played together was a version of "Train Kept A-Rollin," a song written by bluesman Tiny Bradshaw that had been kicking around dance halls and rock shows since 1951.

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bviously, the band would go on to change the face of heavy rock for the rest of time as they moved on from that first rehearsal. They are constantly gaining new devotees even today, with kids whose grandparents were original fans, still discovering their albums and songs like "Stairway To Heaven" on classicrock radio.

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he makeup of the group, the mighty Bonham on sticks, Plant the banshee out front, the quiet mastermind in Jones, and the demonic guitars of Page, still manages to inform hevay metal and blues-rock.

Look at bands like The Sword, Wolfmother and the collected works of Jack White.

All touched by the hands of the band.

Jimmy Page The History of Legend

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ut there things you may not know about the band's career, which we have collected here. If you are a superfan or an avid reader of the plethora of Zep books on the market, like Hammer of the Gods, you no doubt know all of this by heart like your email password and your mother's birth date.

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immy Page has said that the first self-titled Led Zeppelin album only took 35 hours to produce and mix, and cost ÂŁ1,750 to produce, including the artwork. That's roughly $2,800 at today's exchange rate.

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immy Page is credited, or actually credits himself, with creating reverse echo as a studio device while recording a Yardbirds song in 1967. As Page says, "I said, "Look, turn the tape over and employ the echo for the brass on a spare track. Then turn it back over and we'll get the echo preceding the signal. The result was very interesting.

It made the track sound like it was going backwards." You can hear this on "Whole Lotta Love" and "You Shook Me," and the most every rock album from there on out.

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he band's 1976 album Presence was recorded in just three weeks in a Munich studio, with Robert Plant singing from a wheelchair. He had been injured in a car wreck and was convalescing in France and Malibu, Calif. If you read Zep road manager Richard Cole's book, Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored, he describes the great pain that Plant was in at the time, from the physical injuries and missing his young family in England.

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Led Zeppelin Forever

"...Who shines white light and wants to show how everything still turns to gold. "

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hris Dreja was the bassist in the Yardbirds, Page's first group, and he was to be the bassist of The New Yardbirds, but he declined Page's offer and instead went into a career in photography.

John Paul Jones would take his place. He took the band photo of Zep on the back of their first album.

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tairway To Heaven" is the only song to have its lyrics inside the sleeve of Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV, or ZOSO, or "The Runes," or whatever the hell you feel like calling it.

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t the beginning of "Immigrant Song," the weird series of clipped noises are the sounds of the count in and the tapes beginning to record the tracks for the song. We always thought it was a bad rip when we

first heard it online when we were young. It also shows how crude, but beautiful, the band's recording techniques were.

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n "The Rain Song," "Over The Hills and Far Away," "Ten Years Gone," "The Crunge," and "Dancing Days," you can hear drummer John Bonham's squeaky drum pedals on each cut. We checked each track, and yes, the people who spent time listening to Zep songs just for the squeaks really like drugs.

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n "The Ocean" from Houses of the Holy, you can hear a phone

audibly ringing about 1:38 into the song.

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hen Physical Graffiti was released, all five of Zeppelin's previous albums reentered the record charts, making them the first band to have six albums chart at one time. In Rocks Off's humble opinion, Physical Graffiti is the hardest and funkiest Zep album ever, and the one we would take onto a desert island with Emma Stone and Christina Hendricks.

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onham was Page's second choice for the band's drummer, as B.J. Wilson from Procol Harum was originally tapped as the skinsman. We shudder to think of how quiet and shitty the band would have been without Bonzo behind the kit.

We more than likely wouldn't be writing this blog. Some of you wouldn't be alive, since we are sure at least a few of you were conceived with the help of a Zep album.

As Page says, "Look, turn the tape over and employ the echo for the brass on a spare track..."

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he fit-looking, sharply dressed and quick-witted Page also participated in a highly entertaining Q&A following this listening session. He took us all the way back to the band’s formative days, recalling that when he, Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham first played together, “We knew we’d never heard anything like this before.” e went on to praise both the individual talents of his former bandmates (“each of us were musical equals”), and Led Zeppelin’s collective chemistry, noting “we played so well as a band and that’s what’s reflected” on these new collections. Page also revealed that no actual restoration was needed for the tapes of the first three albums, as the masters were still in good condition.

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s far as the painstaking amount of work Page put into this massive project, he said that he listened to every single one of the group’s recorded tracks and used only complete takes for the new versions of songs. That means there was no afterthe-fact Beatles ‘Anthology’ cut-and-pasted “jiggerypokery” to create the illusion of completed tracks out of different partial versions.

“They’re all the real deal,” he assured us. hich doesn’t mean we’re not in for some big changes. For example, ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ has what Page called “a completely different drum take,” while the guitars used on the new versions of that track and ‘Heartbreaker’ are “much cooler” and laid

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back than their fiery original album counterparts. Page sees these different versions as a natural reflection of the band’s musical openmindedness. “I recall having many different approaches to the guitar. … We pushed things. … Everything was supposed to sound different.” lways known for his innovative producing skills as well as his songwriting and guitar-playing wizardry, Page told us that the music of Led Zeppelin is now as prepared as possible for whatever the future of audio playback brings. Although he wouldn’t give away his “trade secrets,” he assured us that his work was done in such a cutting edge, high-resolution format that it’ll be ready for future formats Apple and Neil Young haven’t even dreamed of yet.

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On "The Rain Song," "Over The Hills and Far Away," "Ten Years Gone," "The Crunge," and "Dancing Days," you can hear drummer John Bonham's squeaky drum pedals on each cut.

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Did you know?

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Led's 01. Robert Plant’s unknowns to major celebrities. recording, an instrumental number entitled “Beck’s Part For “Stairway Bolero”.

03. Robert Plant To Heaven” Was Written On The Spot Sang An Entire Led 05. “Led Zeppelin Zeppelin Album IV” Was Partly From A Wheelchair Recorded Released in 1976, Zeppelin’s In A Haunted “Presence” was somewhat Mansion underrated in its day. Though hardly a flop, the album failed to achieve the standard of success set by previous releases.

Known as a showcase for Jimmy Page’s virtuoso skills, this song features one of the most celebrated guitar solos of all time. However, it is arguably Robert Plant’s voice and mystical lyrics that have endeared this song to generations of fans.

02. Led Zeppelin Evolved From A Band That Included Eric Clapton

04. “Beck’s Bolero” Was The First And Only Song From A Led Zeppelin That Never Was

When Led Zeppelin arrived on In 1967, English guitarist Jeff the public scene in 1969, they Beck released his first solo instantly transformed from total 12

Over the years, a number of self-serving moralists branded Led Zeppelin as a group with diabolical intentions.

Some even went so far as to identify hidden satanic messages in the band’s records, messages that only became clear upon playing certain songs backwards.

In 1967, English guitarist Jeff Beck released his first solo recording, an instrumental number entitled “Beck’s Bolero”.

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Special Recommendation Led zeppelin Box Set Editions of First Three Albums Remastered

by Jimmy Page

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ed Zeppelin, one of the most popular and influential rock bands in history, are issuing box sets of their first three albums. Deluxe editions of ‘Led Zeppelin,’ ‘Led Zeppelin II’ and ‘Led Zeppelin III’ will be available June 3 (see artwork above and below). It’s the first installment of the planned reissues of all nine of their studio albums. he albums have been remastered by guitarist and producer Jimmy Page. In addition to the tracks from the original albums, they have gone to the vaults and uncovered previously unheard live and studio material. Each album will have a second disc made up of unreleased music related to that album. he material on the companion discs presents a portal to the time of the recording of Led Zeppelin,” says Page. “It is a selection of work in progress with rough mixes, backing tracks, alternate versions, and new material recorded at the time.” ach album will be released on CD, digital download and 180-gram vinyl.

In addition, there will be a Super Deluxe Boxed Set for each album priced at $134.75 that contains the Deluxe Edition on both CD and vinyl, with a card for highdefinition digital download. Also included are a hardcover book about the album and a print o f the original album cover, with the first 30,000 individually

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Special Recommendation Stairway to Rock S A Led Zeppelin Tribute - Various Artists

Track Listing 1. Whole Lotta Love 2. Dazed and Confused 3. Heartbreaker 4. Immigrant Song 5. All My Love 6. Black Dog 7. Good Times Bad Times 8. No Quarter 9. Communication Breakdown 10. Kashmir 11. Stairway to Heaven

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tairway to Rock (Not Just) A Led Zeppelin Tribute features an eclectic cast of characters (Tracii Guns, George Clinton, Gilby Clarke, Robert Trujillo, and Killah Priest) having a whole "lotta" fun playing classic rock.

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he problem is, it's about as exciting as a bowl of Grape Nuts to listen to. Everything is filtered through the same Pro Tools plug-ins, resulting in a crisp, well-recorded, but ultimately demo-sounding collection of what producers and engineers do after their clients leave.

Special Recommendation The Led Zeppelin O Chamber Suite: A Classic Rock Tribute T to Led Zeppelin

K, it's no longer novel and it's not really that daring, but this is still a pretty entertaining album at times, and as a tribute from one group of virtuosi to another, it's not bad.

he Classic Rock String Quartet, consisting of Anna Kirpatrick on violin, Emma Parker on violin, Emma Owens on viola, and Laura Anstee on cello, with arranger Steve Oakman playing the piano, do have a certain feel for the components of the music, though little of what's here will resonate with most Led Zeppelin fans. "Dazed and Confused" sort of works, but "Thank You" is little more than a piece of chamber Muzak, and "Tangerine" isn't much better. "Stairway to Heaven" and "Kashmir" do work, mostly because they were built on highly contrasting instrumental textures to start with, and "All of My Love" is listenable and even interesting at times.

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nd there's no complaint with the playing, which is far more precise and virtuosic than anything ever intended for this music -- it's just that with the music shorn o f i t s amplification and male swagger, it's difficult to imagine this CD appealing to anyone who doesn't want Led Zeppelin waiting room music.

1. Dazed And Confused 2. Thank You 3. Tangerine 4. That's the Way 5. Stairway To Heaven 6. Going to California 7. No Quarter 8. Kashmir 9. Achilles Last Stand 10. All of My Love 17

Special Recommendation Pickin' on Zeppelin: A P Tribute CD

ickin' on Zeppelin: A Tribute album for sale by Pickin On was released Aug 22, 2000 on the CMH label. Pickin' on Led

Zeppelin is a continuation of the quirky tribute series from the CMH label that applies bluegrass instrumentation to classic rock tunes. Pickin' on Zeppelin:

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Tribute songs The music of Led Zeppelin translates to this form better than most of the previous attempts, but is still recommended for Zeppelin fanatics only.

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he most interesting tracks are "Kashmir," "Black Dog," and "All My Love." Pickin' on Zeppelin: A Tribute CD music contains a single disc with 12 songs.

Track Listing Disc 1: 1. Dyer Maker 2. Kashmir 3. Ramble On 4. Black Dog 5. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You 6. Going To California 7. No Quarter 8. The Song Remains The Same 9. All My Love 10. Battle Of Evermore 11. Rock And Roll 12. Stairway To Heaven

Disc 2: 1. Gallows Pole 2. Misty Mountain Hop 3. Whole Lotta Love 4. Your Time Is Gonna Come 5. Over The Hills And Far Away 6. Nobody's Fault But Mine 7. Trampled Underfoot 8. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp 9. Black Mountain Side 10. Jed Zeppelin 19

My hand was writing out the words “There’s a lady is sure (sic) all that glitters is gold and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

G r e at e s t R o c k S o n g -

The Stairway to Heaven Story S

tairway to Heaven was the most requested song on FM radio in the 1970s. Given that, surprisingly, the song was never released as a single.

(Radio stations did, however, receive promotional singles of it, which have now become collector’s items.) ecorded from December 1970 to March of 1971, the album and song were released on November 8, 1971 on the untitled fourth Led Zeppelin album (usually referred to as “Led Zeppelin IV”).

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ne of the most discussed and dissected facets of Stairway to Heaven is its actual meaning.

Robert Plant has touched on the subject on more than one occasion. According to Plant: y hand was writing out the words “There’s a lady is sure (sic) all that glitters is gold and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.” I just sat there and looked at them and almost leapt out of my head… It was some cynical aside about a woman getting everything she wanted all the time without giving any

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thought or consideration. That first line begins with that cynical sweep of the hand… and it softened up after that.” air enough, but in a later interview, Plant is less nebulous and fairly clear that Stairway to Heaven has no actual meaning. Plant: “Depending on what day it is, I still interpret the song a different way- and I wrote it.” s to the song’s haunting music and beautiful guitar solos, Jimmy Page elaborates, “I had these pieces, these guitar pieces, that I wanted to put

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Plant: “Depending on what day it is, I still interpret the song a different wayand I wrote it.” together.” Page always carried a tape recorder around with him and says he composed the song “over a long period”. ed Zeppelin first played the song in public on March 5, 1971, at Belfast’s Ulster Hall.

At the song’s original public rendition, the reception wasn’t very encouraging. Led Zeppelin’ bass player John Paul Jones recalls the fans at this concert “were all bored to tears waiting to hear something they knew”.

It has even been reported that the song was actually booed by a few fans at this first public

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performance of it. his obviously changed and, over time, the song caught on. By 1975, because of public demand for Stairway to Heaven, the band almost always saved it as a concertender. However, because of boredom and monotony by lead singer Plant, he would often indulge himself and change the lyrics, singing such nonsense verses as: “Does anybody remember laughter?” / “Does anybody remember forests?” / “Wait a minute.” / “I hope so.”

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