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July 19, 2009

Just a note to announced that the unabridged text of my 33 1/3 book on the fourth Led Zeppelin album is now available from Audible.com. Though they don’t tend to keep authors in the loop, I knew this one was coming down the pike because they contacted me with a very important question: how should they refer to the title of the record? In my book I make a big deal about its unpronouncibility, arguing that the famous four symbols are the actual unspeakable name of the thing, and everytime the record is referred to in the text I substitute the actual four symbols. So what to do on an audiobook?  I will leave the answer as a dangling carrot for those who download the book.

From the sample they offer on the audible site, I can’t say that I am in love with the reader, Fred Berman, who seems to have mostly done kid’s books. But I guess that is appropriate for the storybook fantasia the underlies the text. Berman has a glib radio-ready smoothness that reminds me, not inappropriately, of classic AOR radio jocks. I mostly just wish I coulda recorded the thing myself!

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