Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-31-1969, Part 4: Led Zeppelin

Here is the fourth and last album I have of music from the second day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. This time, it's Led Zeppelin. According to die-hard fans, this often ranks in the top five in polls of their best live recordings, due to both sound quality and performance.

Led Zeppelin had only released their debut album at this point (in January 1969), but it was such a smash that they were one of the biggest stars of the festival. The two music acts that were paid the most, $10,000 each, were Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin, so that's a good sign they were the two most anticipated performances. That can also be seen in the fact that they had the prized closing spot on the second day. (I think they went on right after B.B. King, but I'm not sure.)

In 2024, the band's lead guitarist Jimmy Page posted some photos of himself at this festival. He also wrote a little bit about it, which I include here: 

"Festivals were starting to become well-established in the US and the Texas Pop Festival offered a substantial bill of performing artists. I watched Sam & Dave perform and hung out with Janis Joplin, whom I had hung out with at Steve Paul's Scene Club in New York in the Yardbirds days. Led Zeppelin played a good set on this day."

There also is an interesting story about events that led up to this performance. They played Fair Park Coliseum, in Dallas, Texas, on August 4th, a mere three weeks before the festival. Angus Wynne III, promoter for this festival, saw a chance for some publicity. Wynne later said, "We found [Led Zeppelin's] road manager, and we said we wanted to make sure the band recognized the festival from the stage. And he said, 'Well, the fellows think they're going to be on vacation then. They don't know about it.' The band gets on stage, and after a couple of songs, [lead singer] Robert Plant says, 'Anyone heard of the Texas International Pop Festival? We got into town today and saw the posters with our name on them. We've never heard of it. It's a classic ripoff, and if you have tickets, you need to get your money back.'"

Wynne had recently signed the band to perform at his festival, so he was furious. He found the road manager locked inside a limousine. He and some friends pounded on the windows and almost tipped the car over before the manager emerged. Wynne said, "He ran out there [on stage] and he pulls Plant over to the side and whispers in his ear. Then Plant grabs him by the lapels and starts shaking him. At the end of the song, Plant goes to the microphone and says, 'Yeah, we're going to play [at the festival]. Our weasel road manager just told us.'"

So that's why, if you listen to the banter between songs in this album, Plant says: "It's very nice to be back in Texas. Last time we were here, it was a near disaster when we said we weren’t doing the festival and everything. We'd like to, this is the last date before we go back to England. So we really want it to be, have a nice time."

It seems likely to me that the band was supposed to be back in England by the time of this festival, but the band's management couldn't resist the $10,000 prize for doing this festival, so they signed a contract for it without consulting the band members first. The band members were pissed because it meant their trip back home was cut short. Happily though, it all worked out in the end, and the band happened to perform one of their best concerts.

This performance was professionally filmed. Unfortunately, nothing was done with it, and it seems most of it was lost or destroyed. There are some short clips you can find on YouTube. Also, in the 2025 documentary "Becoming Led Zeppelin," a minute or two of "Dazed and Confused" can be seen from this film. But that supports the suggestion that most of the film no longer exists, because most of that song cuts to a different performance at a different concert. (One can tell by a sudden change in the clothes, and other factors.) 

If you want to know more about this performance, the website ledzeppelin.com has a webpage about it. It includes excepts from reviews in newspaper articles, as well as photos of the band, memorabilia, and photos of more newspaper articles about the whole festival. Here's a link:

Texas International Pop Festival - August 31, 1969 / Lewisville | Led Zeppelin Official Website 

Although this is the last of only four albums from the second day of the festival, I have ten albums for the third and final day of the festival. Those will be coming soon.

This album is an hour and four minutes long. 

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
03 I Can't Quit You Babe (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 You Shook Me - Rock Me Baby - You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
08 How Many More Times (Led Zeppelin)
09 The Hunter - The Lemon Song - Bye Bye Baby (Led Zeppelin)
10 How Many More Times [Reprise] (Led Zeppelin)
11 talk (Led Zeppelin)
12 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1kXJhtqa 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/oyVob9ClcUWrBAx/file 

I found two photos from this concert that I really liked, one of Jimmy Page and one of Robert Plant. Instead of picking one over the other, I used Photoshop to include both of them. Page is the one in the purple shirt.

Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary - Madison Square Garden, New York City, 5-14-1988, Part 5: Yes, Rufus Thomas & Led Zeppelin

Here's the fifth and final part of a six-hour long version of the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert. 

Yes had big success in the 1980s, especially with their massive 1983 hit "Owner of a Lonely Heart," so they were given a 25-minute long time slot in this concert. According to some accounts, such as setlist.fm, they also did the song "Changes." But I've seen claims that isn't true. I suspect they didn't, because 25 minutes already made their set the second longest set of the night.

I find it very odd if it's true that Rufus Thomas performed the song "Walking the Dog" between big sets by Yes and Led Zeppelin. The acts tended to get more and more famous the longer the concert went on, but Thomas was nowhere near as popular as the acts around his performance. It could be that he actually sang that much earlier and it was only shown on TV during a break between sets. I know this rearranging did happen some with the HBO TV broadcast. But all the sources I've seen have his song here, and I haven't seen anything to contradict it, so I'm leaving it here (for now, at least).

The thing this concert is best remembered for, by far, is the 32-minute-long reunion of Led Zeppelin. The band broke up in 1980 after their drummer John Bonham died. They reunited to play three songs at the massive Live Aid benefit concert in 1985. But that was widely considered a fiasco. Lead guitarist Jimmy Page was in a bad way with drug addiction at the time. Also, Phil Collins tried to play drums, but he was just winging it and discovered the songs were more complicated than he'd realized.

The band's reunion for this concert has also been criticized. Later, lead guitarist Jimmy Page called it "one big disappointment," and lead vocalist Robert Plant later said "the gig was foul." But I disagree. The band certainly played better than at Live Aid. A key change was the drums. This time, deceased drummer John Bonham's son Jason Bonham was old enough to replace his father in the band, and he did a good job of it. I saw some article reviews of the concert just after it happened, and the Led Zeppelin performance was praised. I think in retrospect opinions soured a bit because the performance was badly mixed. For instance, the bass playing of John Paul Jones could barely be heard at all for the first song and half of the second song. There were some other problems too. I attempted to fix this with the editing program UVR5. I think I made some improvements. However, the bass was so low for "Kashmir" that I couldn't make a fix there.

Also, I think one reason Page and Plant have bad memories of the concert is due to bad vibes happening off stage. Apparently, Plant was really, really sick of the song "Stairway to Heaven" by 1988, and didn't want to play it at the concert. But Ahmet Ertegun, the founder and long-time president of Atlantic Records, heard about this in advance and talked him into playing it the night before. Then, hours before the concert began, Plant changed his mind again and had big arguments with Page about it. Ultimately, the song was played, and understandably so, since it's one of the best and most popular songs of all time, overplayed though it is. And if you look at the cover photo I've chosen for this album, Plant and Page seemed genuinely happy during the concert.

The original idea was to have a final song with everyone from earlier in the concert brought on stage to perform together, which is the usual tradition for concerts like this. But ultimately it was decided that nothing could top the Led Zeppelin reunion, so there was no big finale after that. 

After this concert, Led Zeppelin reunited twice more. Once was for the band's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reunion in 1995. The other was a full concert in 2007. Interestingly, that was for a tribute concert for Ahmet Ertegun. Note Ertegun was one of the people to introduce Led Zeppelin in this concert. The 1995 and 2007 reunions were considered much more musically successful than the 1985 and 1988 ones.

Oh, by the way, I didn't mark it as such, but I severely edited down the introduction to the Led Zeppelin set. The bootleg version I found had Robert Townsend, Phil Collins and Ahmet Ertegun talking for five minutes, mercilessly teasing the audience about who was going to be the final act of the concert, when everyone already knew it was Led Zeppelin. They dragged things out so long that it was downright painful to hear, so I cut the intro in half. Even then, it's probably still too long. I'm guessing that the band wasn't ready - maybe last minute arguing between Plant and Page? - so they were stalling for time to a ridiculous degree. 

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

088 Hold On (Yes)
089 Make It Easy (Yes)
090 Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes)
091 I've Seen All Good People (Yes)
092 Roundabout (Yes)
093 talk (Paul Shaffer)
094 Walking the Dog (Rufus Thomas)
095 talk (Robert Townsend, Phil Collins & Ahmet Ertegun)
096 Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
097 Heartbreaker (Led Zeppelin)
098 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
099 talk (Led Zeppelin)
100 Misty Mountain Hop (Led Zeppelin)
101 talk (Led Zeppelin)
102 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
103 talk (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oWK5DxhD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3Qsjm78mYpHJKct/file

The cover photo of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin is from this exact concert.

Live Aid - JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, 7-13-1985, Part 6: Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Duran Duran, and Patti LaBelle

This is Part 6 of the Philadelphia portion of the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert. This one is notable for including a couple of big reunions. There's just one part to go after this. But then the London portion of Live Aid will follow.

Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980 when their drummer John Bonham died. They reunited for the first time for Live Aid. To fill Bonham's spot on drums, they used two drummers: Phil Collins and Tony Thompson (who was drummer for Chic, and then the Power Station). The set was considered something of a fiasco. Here's what the Wikipedia entry on Live Aid has to say about it:

"The performance was criticized for Plant's hoarse vocals, Jimmy Page's intoxication and out-of-tune guitar, a lack of rehearsal, and poorly functioning monitors. Plant described the performance as 'a f-cking atrocity for us ... It made us look like loonies.' Page later criticized Collins' performance, saying: "Robert told me Phil Collins wanted to play with us. I told him that was all right if he knows the numbers. But at the end of the day, he didn't know anything. We played "Whole Lotta Love," and he was just there bashing away cluelessly and grinning. I thought that was really a joke.' Collins responded: 'It wasn't my fault it was crap... If I could have walked off, I would have. But then we'd all be talking about why Phil Collins walked off Live Aid – so I just stuck it out... I turned up and I was a square peg in a round hole. Robert was happy to see me, but Jimmy wasn't.'"

Although there never has been any official album of Live Aid, a four DVD collection of video footage from the concert was released in 2004. Led Zeppelin was so upset at their performance that they didn't allow any of it to be used for the DVD. And they've avoided putting any of it on their own releases.

Personally, I don't think it's THAT bad. Yeah, it was a subpar performance, and the drumming didn't help, but I watched it live as a kid and I was very excited that Led Zeppelin reunited at all. They would reunite for another short set in 1988, which they also were disappointed with. Then they did a full show in 2007, which went well and eventually was released as an official live album.

The Led Zeppelin reunion was followed by a reunion of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY). Crosby, Stills and Nash did a set earlier in the show, then Neil Young had done a set. Their reunion set only lasted two songs, but it was better than nothing. The last time CSNY appeared on stage together was back in 1974. Young drifted away from the others mainly due to the serious drug addiction of David Crosby, which got really bad in the early 1980s when he became addicted to crack. At the time of Live Aid, Crosby was still in a bad way. I remember watching the reunion and being disturbed by how awful he looked. However, I suppose Young allowed the reunion because Live Aid was such a big deal.

It turned out 1985 was the lowest point for Crosby. He was arrested twice that year for drug and gun charges. He ended up serving nine months in prison later in 1985 going into 1986. During that prison time, he was able to quit drugs, and turned his life around. That led to another CSNY reunion in 1986, two shows in 1987, and then a new CSNY studio album in 1988, with lots more collaboration after that.

Duran Duran was super popular in 1985, explaining why they were billed even after big reunions by Led Zeppelin and CSNY. It would turn out to be the final time the five original band members would publicly perform together until 2003. Musically, the most notable thing about their set was a really bad note sung by lead singer Simon Le Bon during the song "A View to a Kill." This was dubbed "The Bum Note Heard Round the World" by various media outlets. Le Bon later said it was the most embarrassing moment of his career.

Personally, I don't think it was so terrible. It was only one note that lasted a second or two. But to spare you from having to hear it, I've done an edit to remove it. Since it took place during a chorus, I patched in a bit from a different chorus in the song, so it sounds fine now. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

The last act in this part of the song was soul singer Patti LaBelle. I must say I'm mystified why LaBelle got such a long set time - one of the longest of the whole concert - and why her set time was so prominent, late in the show. She sang lead vocals on "Lady Marmalade," which was a Number One hit in the US by the band LaBelle back in 1974. But she didn't even sing that song for Live Aid. Her solo career had only moderate success up until this point, with one gold album. (She would have a big hit record in 1986, but that was still a year into the future.) It's doubly strange when you consider all the musicians who weren't even allowed to perform at Live Aid because they weren't popular enough. For instance, soul singer Dionne Warwick, who sold way more records that LaBelle ever did, and had big hits in the early 1980s, was only allowed to introduce an act later in the show (Hall and Oates), and not sing at all.

But it is what it is. If I could wave a magic wand and change Live Aid, I think I could have made a lot of changes to make it an even better concert, especially including more famous musical acts who were willing and even eager to play, but this is what we have. LaBelle certainly did a fine performance. It's just strange that she got to play six songs when other acts much more famous than her only were allowed two or three.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

120 talk (Phil Collins)
121 talk (Led Zeppelin)
122 Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin)
123 talk (Led Zeppelin)
124 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
125 talk (Led Zeppelin)
126 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
127 talk (Bill Graham)
128 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
129 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
130 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
131 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
132 talk (Chevy Chase)
133 A View to a Kill [Edit] (Duran Duran)
134 talk (Duran Duran)
135 Union of the Snake (Duran Duran)
136 talk (Duran Duran)
137 Save a Prayer (Duran Duran)
138 talk (Duran Duran)
139 The Reflex (Duran Duran)
140 talk (Duran Duran)
141 talk (Bette Midler)
142 New Attitude (Patti LaBelle)
143 Imagine (Patti LaBelle)
144 Forever Young (Patti LaBelle)
145 Stir It Up (Patti LaBelle)
146 Over the Rainbow (Patti LaBelle)
147 Why Can't I Get It Over (Patti LaBelle)
148 talk (Bill Graham)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15699931/LveAidJFKStdiumPhladlphiaPA__7-13-1985_Part6.zip.html

As with most album covers in this series, I've made room for four pictures, all of them taken at this concert. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin are on the top left, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are on the top right, three members of Duran Duran can be seen on the bottom left, and Patti LaBelle is on the bottom right.

Led Zeppelin - Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 1-9-1970

I've been in a Zeppeliny mood in recent weeks, so I'm posting yet another bootleg concert from them. This one has many similar songs to other concerts I've posted, but it's too important and too good not to be posted here, as I will explain.

This isn't a BBC recording, but it ALMOST is, because it was recorded by the exact same BBC team that recorded the band's BBC concerts around this time period. However, instead of recording for the radio, that team was privately contracted to record the audio and video of this concert with the intention of making a live album and/or movie. But there were problems with recording several songs, as I'll detail below, so that didn't work well for a live album. And by the time the band got serious about making a movie a couple of years later, they decided this footage was too old to be used. However, when the band put out a DVD of film footage in 2003, they included all the full songs from the concert they had, but with some cuts, and none of the banter between songs.

Due to that background, this is one of the best sounding Led Zeppelin live recordings, period. In fact, it sounds so good that two songs from the 1982 studio album "Coda," "We're Gonna Groove" and "I Can't Quit You Baby," actually are performances from this concert with some edits and overdubs. Additionally, the band was in peak form, with Robert Plant's lead vocals in particular as good as they ever got. So if you're a fan, you really should give this a listen.

By the way, lead guitarist Jimmy Page later said this about the concert:

"Albert Hall was a massive gig for us, and we really wanted to do the best we could. On top of that, it was something of a homecoming for [bassist] John Paul Jones and I, because we had both grown up around there. So we were all really paying attention to what we were doing."

Another interesting tidbit: according to an article in a newspaper the next day, the band was extremely nervous before the show began, in part due to the fact that they'd heard musical stars like John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck had gotten tickets to the show.

However, there have been a number of problems marring this recording, until now. First off, there's the matter of the missing songs mentioned above, when something went wrong with the recording equipment. Those songs are "Since I've Been Loving You," "Organ Solo," and "Thank You." (A fragment of "Thank You" has been included on the DVD mentioned above, but it's not much use since it's only about 30 seconds long.) In order to give a listener an appreciation of what the entire concert sounds like, I've used versions of those songs from a concert in Montreux, Switzerland, on March 7, 1970. I had to rely on an audience bootleg for those, but it actually sounds better than many soundboards, and is a very popular Zeppelin bootleg. 

Another problem was that only the first four minutes or so of "Heartbreaker" survived. That's a shame, because the band was really wailing on that one. So again I relied on a version from Montreux to patch in the last two minutes. That's what that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I also noticed that the versions of "We're Gonna Groove" and "I Can't Quit You Baby" from the "Coda" album sounded a little bit better than any other versions. But both "Coda" versions had cuts of a minute or more each. Furthermore, I noticed the guitar solo in "We're Gonna Groove" was totally different - no doubt overdubbed in the studio years later. So I used the parts that were identical, which ended up being more than half of both songs. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Furthermore, I'm relying on editing work done by others. All the other songs are from a version made by Plumdusty. That person put together the best version possible from all the known sources. Some of the banter between the songs is at lower quality since those bits come from audience bootlegs. But I've done further editing on those to make them sound better. Using the audio editing program UVR5, I found that virtually all the hiss was put on a different track than the talking, so I just deleted that track in each case. Plumdusty also patched in some cuts to "How Many More Times."

Another problematic track is the last one, "Long Tall Sally." This was not included in the DVD, because a big chunk in the middle wasn't recorded properly. There was an audience bootleg for that, so Plumdusty used that as a patch. The sound quality there is noticeably worse. However, I used UVR5 again to boost the lead vocals for that section, and I think it sounds a lot better now, though still not as good as the rest of the song.

Regarding the performance, note that although this is a 1970 concert, it was only nine days into 1970. The band's album from that year, "Led Zeppelin III," hadn't been recorded yet, much less released. So the set list has much more in common with 1969 set lists. One exception is "Since I've Been Loving You." It had only been played in concert twice before, in the days just before this concert. (Although remember the version here is actually from Montreux two months later.) 

But, as usual from this time period, they did many interesting cover versions as well, often as parts of medleys. In some cases, I added the song names to the titles if I felt it was a significant enough inclusion. But in other cases I didn't, when there were just short snippets. For instance, there are two brief references to Neil Young's "Down by the River" that I didn't mention. Also, sometimes, I broke the medleys up into different tracks if I felt there were clear breaks between songs, but other times, I didn't.

So there have been lots of edits, some by me, some by others. (I could have put "[Edit]" in way more song titles, but I saved that just for the most drastic edits, and only the ones that I did.) But despite all that, the sound quality is excellent throughout, with only a couple of minor exceptions, and hopefully you won't even notice most of the edits. This really is one of the best live recordings of the band, period.

As an aside, I've included three songs from this concert on the album "BBC Sessions, Volume 4." In the near future, I plan on reconfiguring that, and eliminating those duplicates, while also posting an album of the band's live rarities.

This concert is an hour and 19 minutes long.

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 We're Gonna Groove [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
03 I Can't Quit You Baby [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Dazed and Confused - Cocaine Blues - Judy, Judy, Judy - Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 Heartbreaker [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 White Summer - Black Mountain Side [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
12 Organ Solo [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
13 Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
14 What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)
15 talk (Led Zeppelin)
16 Moby Dick [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
17 talk (Led Zeppelin)
18 How Many More Times (Led Zeppelin)
19 Boogie Chillun - Further on Down the Line - Bottle Up and Go (Led Zeppelin)
20 The Lemon Song (Led Zeppelin)
21 That's Alright Mama (Led Zeppelin)
22 How Many More Times [Reprise] (Led Zeppelin)
23 talk (Led Zeppelin)
24 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
25 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
26 talk (Led Zeppelin)
27 C'mon Everybody (Led Zeppelin)
28 Something Else (Led Zeppelin)
29 talk (Led Zeppelin)
30 Bring It On Home (Led Zeppelin)
31 talk (Led Zeppelin)
32 Long Tall Sally - Move On Down the Line - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Long Tall Sally (Led Zeppelin)
33 talk (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/X2wQaRGJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zYFxpRw5CorrPEa/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/mH9T7

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. Because this concert was filmed, I had a bunch of pictures to choose from. This one only shows lead singer Robert Plant, and he's a small part of the image, but I really liked the overall look of it anyway.

Led Zeppelin - Richfield Coliseum, Richfield, OH, 4-27-1977

I recently posted a 1975 concert of Led Zeppelin when they were touring to promote their album "Physical Graffiti." I said I also want to post a 1977 concert when they toured to promote their 1976 album "Presence." Here it is.

Like the 1975 concert I posted, I wanted to pick the best 1977 show, for those who would only want one from that year. Many die-hard Led Zeppelin fans will tolerate poorer sound quality in order to enjoy better performances. But I only considered the best sounding soundboard bootlegs. Luckily, for 1977, this concert is very well known as a bootleg because it's both an excellent performance with excellent sound quality. There are many versions, but most are given the name "Destroyer," for some reason. It's so well known that there's a Wikipedia page for it, which is here:

Destroyer (Led Zeppelin bootleg recording) - Wikipedia

As that webpage notes, it was the first professionally recorded mixing desk tape to be leaked to the public. The sound quality has been described as "almost perfect." I used the best quality version available, passed along by musical associate Mike Solof.

That said, there still were some big problems with this version. The biggest was that parts of different songs were cut off. For instance, the first couple minutes of the first song, "The Song Remains the Same," were missing. A big chunk of over 10 minutes of "No Quarter" was missing. Most of the "White Summer - Black Mountain Side" medley was missing. Finally, the first minute of "Rock and Roll" was missing. 

So I decided to fill in the missing bits. In all four of those cases, I drew on a recording of a concert in Seattle on July 17, 1977. Luckily, this also is an excellent sounding soundboard bootleg. With "White Summer - Black Mountain Side," so much of it was missing that I decided to just use the Seattle version in its entirety. But for the other ones, I patched in the Seattle versions to fill in the missing sections. Hopefully when you listen it will sound seamless.

But there were some other problems too, despite the overall great sound quality. For one, sometimes the lead vocals were a bit low. That seemed to be more of a problem on some songs than others, based on my analysis of the sound files using the program Audacity. "Kashmir," for instance, had the lowest lead vocals. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals relative to the instruments on all songs, but to varying degrees.

Another problem was that the soundboard was so good that there often wasn't much crowd noise at the ends of songs. This wasn't the case for every song, but it was for most of them. Luckily, there was enough for me to boost the cheering to a point where it sounded like a normal crowd reaction to my ears. I also boosted the banter between songs so that talking could be heard more clearly. Finally, the overall volume of some songs varied a lot. For instance, a couple (but not all) of the songs from the acoustic set in the middle of the concert were very quiet, especially "Going to California." I made adjustments to even all that out as well.

The end result is that this great bootleg sounds even better than before. Although there are many versions of this recording on the Internet, most people take a purist approach. Whereas I take more of a chainsaw approach, doing whatever it takes to fix what I consider problems. For instance, I couldn't find any other versions where someone filled in the missing sections of songs. (Although maybe such a version exists and I just didn't find it.)

Like the 1975 concert I recently posted, this is a very looooong concert. Lead singer Robert Plant would say of the tour:

"By 1977... that sort of wild energy that was there in the beginning had come to the point where we were showboating a bit. Unfortunately, we had no choice. We were on tours where places were going ape-shit. There was no way of containing the energy in those buildings. It was insane. And we became more and more victims of our own success. And the whole deal about the goldfish bowl and living in it, that kicked in."

So yeah, lots of excess and showboating (especially considering this was the year punk rock shook the music world by rebelling against all that). For instance, "No Quarter" is nearly half an hour long. But hey, by 1977, Led Zeppelin was arguably the biggest rock band on the planet, breaking records for playing in the largest venues for the most amount of money. They were the biggest for good reason, and on a good night like this they still kicked ass.

This album is three hours and two minutes long.

01 The Song Remains the Same [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
02 Sick Again (Led Zeppelin)
03 talk (Led Zeppelin)
04 Nobody's Fault but Mine (Led Zeppelin)
05 talk (Led Zeppelin)
06 In My Time of Dying (Led Zeppelin)
07 talk (Led Zeppelin)
08 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
09 talk (Led Zeppelin)
10 No Quarter [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
11 talk (Led Zeppelin)
12 Ten Years Gone (Led Zeppelin)
13 talk (Led Zeppelin)
14 The Battle of Evermore (Led Zeppelin)
15 talk (Led Zeppelin)
16 Going to California (Led Zeppelin)
17 talk (Led Zeppelin)
18 Black Country Woman (Led Zeppelin)
19 Bron-Y-Aur Stomp (Led Zeppelin)
20 White Summer - Black Mountain Side [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
21 Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
22 talk (Led Zeppelin)
23 Out on the Tiles - Moby Dick [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
24 Guitar Solo [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
25 Achilles Last Stand (Led Zeppelin)
26 talk (Led Zeppelin)
27 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
28 talk (Led Zeppelin)
29 Rock and Roll [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
30 talk (Led Zeppelin)
31 Trampled Underfoot (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DV8WJtUp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7maVHRnGWzGvN6c/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/moZVQ

The cover art is from a poster promoting a Led Zeppelin concert in Oakland, California, on July 24, 1977. I think it's really cool. I wish there were most stylish concert posters like this. As usual with posters, I had to do some cropping to fit the rectangular poster into a square shape. The purple text surrounded by a red circle had been below the bottom edge of what I've included. I moved that, and changed the text to fit this concert.

Led Zeppelin - Earls Court, London, Britain, 5-24-1975

Since there seems to be a lot of interest, I've resolved to plug the biggest remaining holes when it comes to live Led Zeppelin sooner rather than later. Most critically, I want at least one show from their 1975 and 1977 tours. Here's something for the 1975 tour.

There are lots of soundboard bootlegs from the 1975, but it was kind of a no-brainer to pick a concert from Earl's Court. They were the largest and most important concerts in the band's history up until that point. There's even a Wikipedia page on the concerts:

Earls Court 1975 - Wikipedia 

Here's what author Dave Lewis had to say about the concert, from a book he wrote about the band:

"When Led Zeppelin undertook the series of five shows at London's Earl's Court Arena on May of 1975 they were at the very peak of their creative powers. Spurred on by the critical and commercial success of their sixth album, the double set 'Physical Graffiti,' each show they played took on event-like proportions. The 17,000 capacity Earls Court afforded them the luxury to showcase in the best possible setting, the sheer enormity of their stage act. Over five nights of May 1975 Zeppelin delivered perhaps the most impressive series of shows of their entire career ... Photographic images from the shows still light up the pages of countless Zep features and books, bootleg performances are eagerly snapped up, and the official video footage of the gigs projects the sheer magnitude and power of Led Zeppelin in full flight more than any other surviving film of the group."

As mentioned in that quote, there were five Earls Court concerts, on May 17th, 18th, 23rd, 24th, and 25th. Die-hard fans consider the May 17th and 18th shows the best in terms of performance, but the only soundboards that have reached the public are from the 24th and 25th. Video footage of a few songs from the 25th show were released on the 2003 DVD "Led Zeppelin." I chose to feature the 24th here because fans generally consider that the better performance, and there are fewer problems with the recording.

The sound quality is excellent. The only problems had to do with the songs "Going to California" and "That's the Way." For some reason, the soundboard of all of the first song and the beginning of the second song doesn't exist. There is an audience bootleg, so people have used that to fill in the gap. However, in my opinion, the sound quality is way worse, and I didn't like it. So instead I used the soundboard versions from the next night, May 25th. 

There were a couple of problems with that though. Both versions of those songs began with lots of cheering, but the lead in from the previous track had no cheering. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to get rid of the cheering for the first ten seconds or so on each song. Also, lead singer Robert Plant talked some between the two songs on the 24th, but there was apparently no talking on the 25th. So I included the talking from the 24th, using the audience bootleg for that. I used UVR5 again to get rid of as much background noise and cheering during the talking as possible. Even so, the sound quality of that talking is noticeably worse than anything else here. For "That's the Way," I spliced the two versions together about twenty seconds into the song, so that vast majority of that comes from this show, the 24th. All of that is why three tracks have "[Edit]" in their titles.

I also edited down some of the cheering. For instance, after "Stairway to Heaven," there was an encore break of about seven minutes of cheering. That's way too much applause for me, so I cut that down to more like two minutes.

There are different versions of this bootleg circulating with slightly different mixes. I read up on what fans consider the best version. I ended up going with the "Watch Tower" version.

This album is a whopping three hours and 31 minutes long! This was a time of rock and roll excess, not long before punk rock came along and shook things up. So, for instance, "Dazed and Confused" is 33 minutes long, and "Moby Dick," which is basically a drum solo, is 28 minutes long. But the concert also has an acoustic set of short songs in the middle of the show.

01 talk by Nicky Horne (Led Zeppelin)
02 Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin)
03 Sick Again (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Over the Hills and Far Away (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 In My Time of Dying (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 The Song Remains the Same (Led Zeppelin)
10 The Rain Song (Led Zeppelin)
11 talk (Led Zeppelin)
12 Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
13 talk (Led Zeppelin)
14 No Quarter (Led Zeppelin)
15 talk (Led Zeppelin)
16 Tangerine (Led Zeppelin)
17 talk (Led Zeppelin)
18 Going to California [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
19 talk [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
20 That's the Way [Edit] (Led Zeppelin)
21 talk (Led Zeppelin)
22 Bron-Y-Aur Stomp (Led Zeppelin)
23 talk (Led Zeppelin)
24 Trampled Underfoot (Led Zeppelin)
25 talk (Led Zeppelin)
26 Moby Dick (Led Zeppelin)
27 talk (Led Zeppelin)
28 Dazed and Confused - Woodstock - Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
29 talk (Led Zeppelin)
30 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
31 talk (Led Zeppelin)
32 Whole Lotta Love - Turn On Your Love Light (Led Zeppelin)
33 Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
34 talk (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aLMcYYxU

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bZFecB2kDRK3HTW/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/a7Gxj

The cover is based on a promotional poster. Basically, the band had just played a tour of North America, and only played these five shows in Britain. They were then going to do a tour of South America (which ultimately got cancelled due to Robert Plant getting in a car accident). To appease British fans outside of London, the band arranged for special trains to pick up and return fans from other towns just for the concerts. So the poster was promoting that - you can see a map of the train lines towards the bottom.

I had to make some adjustments to get the rectangular poster to fit into the square space. I cropped off part of the bottom, but that wasn't enough. I had to stretch things a bit, so the band name and the little train illustration is a bit distorted. I kept the text mostly the same, but I replaced a mention of all five dates with just May 24, 1975, and I moved the mention of ticket prices from a section below that I cropped off.

Led Zeppelin - The Old Refectory, Southampton University, Southampton, Britain, 1-22-1973

How much do you value a spirited performance vs. sound quality? I recently looked at some Led Zeppelin social forums, and this is considered quite possibly THE best sounding live recording of the band, even though it's a bootleg. It's not just a soundboard; this was a professionally done multi-track recording that somehow got leaked to the public. I think the sound quality is freaking amazing. 

The downside for die-hard fans is that this was considered merely a good night for the band, not an outstanding one. But I think that's nitpicking. The band sure sounded "on" to me. I'd much rather listen to this than some supposedly great performance that's buried in hiss and muck.

As amazing as this sounded already, I think I made it sound even better. I used the audio editing program UVR5 to make a few changes. For starters, the lead vocals were a bit low, so I boosted them for all the songs. There also were occasional sections of songs when the vocals were especially low - perhaps lead singer Robert Plant wasn't singing close enough to the microphone. So I took care to give those spots an extra boost, sometimes adjusting line by line. I also boosted the banter between songs so the talking could be heard better over the crowd noise. Finally, the applause was rather low, which is common for soundboards. I also boosted that for most of the songs.

Oh, one more edit I made was that I cut the length of some of the applause way down. Towards the end of the show, there were several encore breaks with cheering that lasted for three or four minutes at times. It's boring for me to hear nothing but applause for that long, so I cut those down to a minute or two each instead.

One other great thing about this concert is that it was played in a small venue of only a few hundred people. That's extraordinary, because by 1973, Led Zeppelin was one of the biggest musical acts on the planet. Their 1971 album "Led Zeppelin IV" sold over 20 million copies, making it one of the top ten best selling albums of all time. I'm not sure why they deigned to play such a small place in 1973, but maybe it was part of a plan to record this for a possible live album. Whatever the case, that helped even more with the sound quality. It's as if the band was still playing small clubs like they did when they started in early 1969, only with a set list that included tons of classics like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Black Dog." Frankly, I don't understand why this recording isn't a lot better known, or even officially released.

At the time of this concert, the band's next album "Houses of the Holy" was still two months away from being released. But a few songs from that album were played anyway: "The Song Remains the Same," "Over the Hills and Far Away," "The Rain Song," and "Dancing Days." They also did a 23-minute long version of "Whole Lotta Love" that effectively have some full versions of interesting cover songs inside it, such as "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" and "Let's Have a Party."

I'm still working my way through understanding Led Zeppelin bootlegs. If anyone knows of other "best of the best" shows with outstanding sound quality like this one that you think I should post at my blog, please let me know. I'd especially like to fill in some gaps by finding the best shows from 1975 and 1977.

This concert is two hours and 28 minutes long.

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin)
03 Over the Hills and Far Away (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
06 Misty Mountain Hop (Led Zeppelin)
07 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 Dancing Days (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 The Song Remains the Same (Led Zeppelin)
12 The Rain Song (Led Zeppelin)
13 talk (Led Zeppelin)
14 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
15 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
16 talk (Led Zeppelin)
17 Whole Lotta Love - Everybody Needs Somebody to Love - Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
18 Boogie Chillun’ - [You're So Square] Baby I Don't Care (Led Zeppelin)
19 Let's Have a Party (Led Zeppelin)
20 I Can't Quit You Babe - Whole Lotta Love [Reprise] (Led Zeppelin)
21 talk (Led Zeppelin)
22 Heartbreaker (Led Zeppelin)
23 talk (Led Zeppelin)
24 Organ Solo [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
25 Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
26 talk (Led Zeppelin)
27 How Many More Times - The Hunter - How Many More Times (Led Zeppelin)
28 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JK3hXr6S

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/T4TS4YQhLpi9ECC/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fGJCg

The good news is, the cover photo shows Led Zeppelin at this exact venue. The bad news is, it's from the one previous time they played there, on March 11, 1971. So, two years earlier. But I figure the band members more or less looked the same, and this photo gives you a sense of just how small the stage was. I did find a few photos from the correct date, but they were only black and white (and not easily colorized), and none of them are as well composed as this one is.

Led Zeppelin - Copenhagen, Denmark, 3-15-1969 to 3-17-1969

The other day, I was in the mood to hear some early Led Zeppelin that I'd never heard before. But I wanted something with excellent sound quality, because I think sound quality matters a lot for a band such as them. I discovered that the band played a bunch of times in Copenhagen in the middle of March 1969. What makes these concerts stand out is the fact that some of them were recorded for local TV or radio shows. As a result, the sound quality is as good as it gets for live Led Zeppelin in 1969. 

I suspect these bootleg recordings haven't gotten as much attention as they deserve because they only played short sets of half an hour or less. But I've combined three different concerts, all recorded in Copenhagen on March 15th, 16th, and 17th, and combined them, removing a few cases of repeated songs. The result is a soundboard level quality live album that's just over an hour long.

The first three tracks come from a radio show played on March 16th. The sound quality is excellent. The next four tracks come from a TV show, "TV Bren," played on March 17th. Again, the sound quality is excellent. One nice thing about these recordings from a listening point of view is that the band was brand new, with the debut album "Led Zeppelin" only coming out two months earlier, and the audience was small and polite. So these are almost like studio recordings, with just a bit of applause when the songs are all over. Things would be very different a few months later, when the band was selling millions of albums.

The final five tracks from from March 15th. I've put them out of chronological order because the sound quality is little lower on these. So you could remove them and still have 41 minutes with great sound quality. But I doubt you'll want to do that, because these sound pretty darn good too. Originally, they weren't so great, but I made some adjustments to all five of them with the audio editing program UVR5, including boosting the lead vocals. I think that helped a lot. At the end of "The Train Kept A-Rollin'" the band immediately went into a different song. But that one already appeared earlier on this album from a different performance. So I patched in some applause from the end of a different song to give it a decent sounding finish.

This is practically a live version of the band's debut album, "Led Zeppelin." It has all the songs from that that they commonly played in concert. (I still don't get why they almost never played "Good Times, Bad Times.") But there's a few extra ones: "I Gotta Move," "The Train Kept A-Rollin'," and "As Long as I Have You." The cover song "As Long as I Have You" in particular is a really interesting 12-minute long epic. It's frustrating that no version of this has ever been officially released. 

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 I Can't Quit You Baby (Led Zeppelin)
02 talk (Led Zeppelin)
03 I Gotta Move (Led Zeppelin)
04 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
05 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
06 Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (Led Zeppelin)
07 How Many More Times (Led Zeppelin)
08 The Train Kept A-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
09 talk (Led Zeppelin)
10 As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
11 talk (Led Zeppelin)
12 You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15322997/LdZepp_1969ca_CpenhagnDenmrk__3-15-1969_to_3-17-1969_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from the "TV Bren" performance on March 17th. You can find the whole thing on YouTube in black and white. Luckily, there also were a few color photos taken, so I used one of those. I used Photoshop to move the bassist John Paul Jones a little closer to the others.

Led Zeppelin - Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany, 6-30-1980

I've posted a bunch of Led Zeppelin live material here, with the vast majority of it being BBC performances. But a problem with that is that it mostly just deals with the years 1969 to 1971, and the band stayed together until 1980. I've been looking for an excellent sounding concert from near the end of the band's career, but there are very few soundboards that sound good. Then I came across a version of this Frankfurt 1980 concert that was recently remastered by someone named Liriodendron. 

I thought that sounded better than the others, but I still felt Robert Plant's lead vocals were buried in this mix. So I used the X-Minus audio editing software to boost them up to a volume I liked better. Additionally, I boosted the talking between songs even more so one can usually actually hear what is being said.

The sound quality still isn't totally excellent, but it's very listenable, and I like it better than other 1980 concerts by the band that I've heard. If anyone else knows of something from that time that sounds better, please let me know and I'll consider sharing that one.

At the time, drummer John Bonham was having increasing trouble with alcoholism. (He would die later in 1980, ending the band.) Sometimes that affected his drumming during concerts. In fact, just three days before this concert, he collapsed after the first song in Nuremburg, Germany, forcing the concert to end early. So the band brought in a second drummer (Simon Kirke of Bad Company) to help out. In my opinion, I don't hear any problems. Either Bonham was having a good night, or the second drummer covered up his flaws.

Bassist John Paul Jones later had this to say about the short European concert tour this show was a part of: "Morale was very high. We were in really good spirits. We were stripped down a lot, musically, and as an act, we remember back to what we were doing. Punk kind of woke us up again. 'Oh yeah, I remember what we are supposed to be doing here.' It was about to go for a change of gears and round two ... By the time John [Bonham] died, we all had sorted it out and were ready to go again. He died in rehearsals for an American tour."

This was the fifth to last concert Led Zeppelin ever did, not counting later reunions.

This concert is two hours and nine minutes long.

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Train Kept a Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
03 Nobody's Fault but Mine (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 In the Evening (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 The Rain Song (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 Hot Dog (Led Zeppelin)
12 All My Love (Led Zeppelin)
13 talk (Led Zeppelin)
14 Trampled under Foot (Led Zeppelin)
15 talk (Led Zeppelin)
16 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
17 talk (Led Zeppelin)
18 Achilles Last Stand (Led Zeppelin)
19 talk (Led Zeppelin)
20 White Summer [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
21 Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
22 talk (Led Zeppelin)
23 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
24 talk (Led Zeppelin)
25 Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin)
26 talk (Led Zeppelin)
27 Money [That's What I Want] (Led Zeppelin)
28 talk (Led Zeppelin)
29 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gMCeZ7ws

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NExPK4NoTecHnQa/file 

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/gAuJ2

The cover photo comes from a concert in Munich five days after the concert featured here.

Robert Plant - Acoustic in Europe - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1993)

Robert Plant has often dabbled with acoustic music. The general vibe of the 1970 Led Zeppelin album "Led Zeppelin III" is a good early example. However, he never really put out an all-acoustic album. (The 1994 Robert Plant and Jimmy Page album "No Quarter: Unledded" has an acoustic-ish feel at times, but it's more of an attempt to redo Led Zeppelin songs with either orchestra backings and/or non-Western music styles.) 

That said, in the early 1990s, acoustic music trended strongly, due mostly to the "MTV Unplugged" TV show. When Plant released his 1993 album "Fate of Nations," he wasn't entirely unaffected by this trend. He never did an entire all-acoustic concert then (or at any other time, as far as I can tell). However, he did perform songs in acoustic style from time to time, especially during short radio station appearances while on a tour of Europe that summer. This album collects a bunch of his acoustic performances from that tour, while trying hard to not include any song more than once. Additionally, he did some acoustic songs around that time on singles or later as bonus tracks, and I've added those as well. The result, in my opinion, is the best collection of Plant in acoustic mode in 1993 that you're likely to find on the Internet.

In the early 1990s, Plant rediscovered his love for folk rock music from the West Coast of the US in the late 1960s. He also was increasingly reconciling himself with his Led Zeppelin legacy, which would result in reuniting with his fellow Led Zeppelin leader Jimmy Page for the "Unledded" album and tour the next year. So the songs here are a mix of covers of some 1960s West Coast songs he loved, Led Zeppelin songs, and new songs Plant did. (The classic blues song "Hoochie Coochie Man" doesn't obviously fit into those categories at first, but it is a song Led Zeppelin occasionally did in concert.)

The first four songs here, plus the second to last one, are the only officially released ones, from singles or bonus tracks. I generally tried to avoid including any song more than once, as mentioned above, but I made two exceptions: for the Moby Grape cover "8:05" and for the Led Zeppelin classic "Whole Lotta Love." In the first case, Plant did an acoustic version for a non-album single released only in Britain, as well as an acoustic version done in concert. I thought they were different enough for both to merit inclusion. Similarly with "Whole Lotta Love," he did an acoustic version for a B-side as well as a concert version. In that song's case, the two versions are even more different from each other, because the B-side version was done in collaboration with guitarist Rainer Ptacek (who unfortunately died young), and Ptacek added a very interesting dimension to that version, in my opinion.

One other song worth mentioning is the version of "Stairway to Heaven" that ends this album. It's the only song here from 1994, and it's a collaboration with Jimmy Page. From what I understand, Plant and Page were very tired of this song by the 1990s, because it's a great song but it also is arguably one of the most overplayed songs of all time. As a result, they never played the song during the 1990s collaboration, with this one exception. This recording was done for a Japanese TV show, apparently due to a special request from their Japanese hosts. I like this performance a lot since it's done in a unique acoustic style, with just Plant singing and Page on a solo acoustic guitar. The downside is that the studio version of the song is about seven minutes long, and this one is only three minutes long. They did most of the acoustic first part of the song, but skipped the hard rock build up and soloing, going straight to the last line. Still, half of this classic song done in this style is better than none at all.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Great Spirit [Acoustic Version] (Robert Plant)
02 Dark Moon [Acoustic Version] (Robert Plant)
03 8-05 [Studio Version] (Robert Plant)
04 21 Years (Robert Plant)
05 talk (Robert Plant)
06 Whole Lotta Love (Robert Plant)
07 29 Palms (Robert Plant)
08 I Believe (Robert Plant)
09 Hoochie Coochie Man (Robert Plant)
10 Thank You (Robert Plant)
11 8-05 (Robert Plant)
12 If I Were a Carpenter (Robert Plant)
13 Going to California (Robert Plant)
14 talk (Robert Plant)
15 Bluebird (Robert Plant)
16 Whole Lotta Love [Acoustic Version] (Robert Plant & Rainer Ptacek)
17 Stairway to Heaven (Robert Plant & Jimmy Page)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697033/ROBRTPLNT1993_AcustcinErope_atse.zip.html

It's been a few years since I put this album together for myself, and it was that long since I found the cover art photo. I don't remember where it's from exactly, but I'm pretty sure it dates to 1993.

Led Zeppelin - Koseinenkin Kaikan, Osaka, Japan, 9-29-1971

When I posted the last part of my five-album Led Zeppelin BBC series, that was a complete, but short concert from 1971. I hinted that there was an even better recorded concert of them from later in 1971. Here it is. This is considered one of the best Led Zeppelin bootleg concerts, if not the very best.

Bootlegs of this concert have been around a long time. But in 2018, a new soundboard version of the show emerged. Unfortunately, the soundboard isn't perfect, and it doesn't cover the whole show. So what fans have done is take the soundboard and audience versions and make a matrix version that combines the best of both. There are some parts where the sound declines noticeably, especially in the middle. I'm guessing that's where there's no soundboard portion. But still, as I've mentioned before, there actually aren't that many Zeppelin bootlegs that sound fantastic, so this is still one of the best even with some flaws.

In addition to sound quality, this concert also excels in terms of performance, song selection, and sheer length. Many fans believe that the band peaked as a live unit in 1971. After that,lead singer Robert Plant's voice was still great, but couldn't always reach the high notes, and guitarist Jimmy Page's drug problems started to take a toll. This concert happened not long before the classic album "Led Zeppelin IV" was released, and it includes four songs from that.

 But what's even better is that it includes the only good sounding live version of "Tangerine," and the only live performance, period, of "Friends." At this time, the band had a short acoustic set in the middle of their show. If you listen to the recording, you'll hear Plant complain that when that set came to an end, drummer John Bohnam was still nowhere to be seen. So they played "Tangerine" without him. When that ended, Bohnam finally showed up. But they played another acoustic song, "Friends," anyway, with Bohnam adding some light drumming.

In terms of length, the BBC concert from earlier in 1971 that I mentioned above is slightly over an hour and a half. This concert is slightly over three hours! So it's basically double in length.

If you're a Led Zeppelin fan, but not a super fan of their live shows, I think that the five BBC albums, the Fillmore West 1969 concert, and this one, are the best of their live material for their early years, and probably all the live material from those years that you need. If anyone feels there are other "must have" concert recordings from them, please let us know in the comments. Also, if anyone thinks they have a better recording of this show, especially for the sections that don't sound as good, please let me know so I can update this.

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin)
03 Heartbreaker (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
12 talk (Led Zeppelin)
13 Celebration Day (Led Zeppelin)
14 talk (Led Zeppelin)
15 That's the Way (Led Zeppelin)
16 talk (Led Zeppelin)
17 Going to California (Led Zeppelin)
18 talk (Led Zeppelin)
19 Tangerine (Led Zeppelin)
20 talk (Led Zeppelin)
21 Friends (Led Zeppelin)
22 talk [Including 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' Snippet] (Led Zeppelin)
23 What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)
24 talk (Led Zeppelin)
25 Moby Dick [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
26 talk (Led Zeppelin)
27 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
28 talk (Led Zeppelin)
29 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
30 Organ Solo [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
31 Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
32 talk (Led Zeppelin)
33 Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xA7VZYXf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZKHmN17CkcEXNsE/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/e3QmV

The cover art photo here actually comes from the very concert in question. It's one of only a couple to emerge from the show. It's rather blurry, but I like it anyway, due to the red / blue contrast, as well as the giant gong, which seems evocative of Japan, where the concert took place. Sadly, it seems Robert Plant is out of the frame.

Led Zeppelin - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 4-27-1969

I recently posted a bunch of Led Zeppelin BBC albums. But I'm still going through a Zep kick, so here's some more.

As I've mentioned previously, the number of truly excellent sounding Led Zeppelin concert recordings is relatively small, in my opinion. It certainly is small in comparison to the huge interest and sheer number of bootlegs. There are a handful of recorded shows that tower above the rest, and this is one of them. Outside of the BBC stuff I posted, this has to be the best sounding concert of theirs from 1969, and their performance is pretty great as well.

The show is almost two hours long. It contains all the usual suspects you'd expect from a 1969 concert by them, such as "Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed and Confused." But it contains some interesting rare choices as well. It starts with probably the best sounding recording of the Yardbirds song "Train Kept A-Rollin'." It also has "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and "The Lemon Song" (actually the blues song "Killing Floor"), which were on Zeppelin albums, but few excellent sounding live versions survive. "Sittin' and Thinkin'" is a Buddy Guy song that they literally played only this one time. (I've included it on one of the Zeppelin stray tracks albums I made.) Plus, there's "Pat's Delight" which is a drum solo showcase for John Bonham, similar to "Moby Dick."

But probably the crown jewel of this show, and one of the best things they ever did live in my opinion, is their cover of "As Long as I Have You." This was a minor hit by Garnett Mimms in 1964, but Led Zeppelin totally transformed it, and supersized it into a long medley. I've included an edited version of this very performance on one of my stray tracks albums, which is 10 minutes long. But this concert contains the full 18-minute-long medley, and it's worth hearing it that way.

This album is an hour and 51 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On December 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. Commenter Mar Gras pointed out the vocals and guitars on "Communication Breakdown," the guitars on "Dazed and Confused," and the vocals on "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" were all out of balance. So I ran those songs through the MVSEP program and fixed the balances on all those things.

01 The Train Kept A-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
02 I Can't Quit You Baby (Led Zeppelin)
03 talk (Led Zeppelin)
04 As Long as I Have You - Fresh Garbage - Bag's Groove - I'm a Man - No Money Down - As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
05 You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
06 How Many More Times - The Hunter - Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush - How Many More Times (Led Zeppelin)
07 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
08 The Lemon Song [Killing Floor] (Led Zeppelin)
09 Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 Sittin' and Thinkin' (Led Zeppelin)
12 Pat's Delight [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
13 talk (Led Zeppelin)
14 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E6RsjnS9

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/0cjOc7Yhi68nQAR/file

The album cover art is pretty weird at first glance. Why the avocado with eyes?! That's because this is a cropped version of the concert poster for the series of Fillmore West shows that this concert comes from. I made a few changes to get the rectangular poster art to fit into a square space. Most bootlegs use the same artwork, which is why one of the most popular ones is known as the "Dancing Avocado." Let's just say that rock concert posters were weird and interesting back then. ;)

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Sunday in Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 4-1-1971

Here's my final album out of the five albums I've made of Led Zeppelin playing for the BBC.

This one is a full concert that lasts an hour and a half. By around 1970, the BBC did a lot less of having bands play a few songs in their studios each time, and did a lot more of simply recording bands playing live for half an hour, an hour, or even longer. So this fits in with that trend. The good news is, the sound quality is excellent when there really aren't that many Led Zeppelin concerts with pristine soundboard quality. Unfortunately, it was the last time the band recorded anything for the BBC.

In November 1971, the band released "Led Zeppelin IV," surely one of the greatest albums of all time by anybody. This concert was held in April, but it contains three songs from that album, "Black Dog," Stairway to Heaven," and "Going to California." "Stairway to Heaven" had only been played live twice before this, in two shows the month before in Ireland. Since this was broadcast by the BBC a few days later, this was the de facto public unveiling of that song. It's weird to think there was a time when that was just considered another new song, with an uncertain future.

Anyway, in addition to "Led Zeppelin IV" songs, and songs from "Led Zeppelin III" (sadly, just three of them) and earlier, this show also features some rare cover versions. There's a couple I missed for my stray tracks collections, because these are all buried as snippets within a long version of "Whole Lotta Love." I've broken them up into separate tracks, since they're often played that way. "A Mess of Blues," a song made famous by Elvis Presley, is particularly interesting in that it's essentially played whole, with a clear start and finish.

This concert was officially released as part of the "Complete BBC Sessions" album, but there was a couple of problems with that. One was that the show was broken up, with some songs on the second disc, and then a few more added to the third disc, which contained all the songs they'd left out on the original two disc version. This presents all the songs in their correct order.

Furthermore, the 20-minute long "Whole Lotta Love" medley was shortened by seven minutes, removing some of the snippets of cover songs. (Maybe that was done for copyright reasons, I don't know.) I found the longer version, and patched in the missing minutes. The sound quality is basically the same, so I don't think you'll notice the difference.

Another problem I'm only guessing exists is that virtually all of the between-song banter has been cut. I'm assuming this is the case because it would have been extremely rare for Robert Plant to never speak between songs, since he would usually at least say something. The only significant dialogue is the first track, and I took that from a bootleg. The official version just has a few seconds of DJ John Peel's comments as a lead in to the first song. I'm guessing the BBC were pushing their usual limits in having an hour-and-a-half long show aired, and they edited out all the banter to keep it as short as they could. If anyone knows of any bootlegs that include more of the talking, let me know and I'll add that in.

In terms of Led Zeppelin live, this is about as good as it gets, in my opinion. I prefer this, and their other material from 1971 and earlier, than their official live album "The Song Remains the Same,"  or even "How the West Was Won." I feel Plant's voice was a tad stronger, and the band didn't get quite as carried away with long song lengths. However, there's another concert from later in 1971 that's arguably even better, and twice as long, that I'll be posting later.

This album is an hour and 42 minutes long.

UPDATE: On June 28, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I found a version mixed by Prof. Stoned that is about eight minutes longer than the official release. It seems the official version made some edits here and there, though the number of songs is the same. In particular, this version includes a lot more of the talking between songs, including an introduction by BBC DJ John Peel.

01 talk (Led Zeppelin)
02 Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin)
03 Heartbreaker (Led Zeppelin)
04 talk (Led Zeppelin)
05 Since I've Been Loving You (Led Zeppelin)
06 talk (Led Zeppelin)
07 Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
08 talk (Led Zeppelin)
09 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
10 talk (Led Zeppelin)
11 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
12 talk (Led Zeppelin)
13 Going to California (Led Zeppelin)
14 talk (Led Zeppelin)
15 That's the Way (Led Zeppelin)
16 talk (Led Zeppelin)
17 What Is and What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)
18 talk (Led Zeppelin)
19 Whole Lotta Love Medley (Led Zeppelin)
20 Boogie Chillun - Bottle It Up and Go - Fixin' to Die - That's Alright Mama - For What It's Worth (Led Zeppelin)
21 A Mess of Blues (Led Zeppelin)
22 Honey Bee - The Lemon Song [Killing Floor] (Led Zeppelin)
23 Whole Lotta Love [Reprise] (Led Zeppelin)
24 talk (Led Zeppelin)
25 Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
26 Communication Breakdown - Feel So Bad - Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
27 talk (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/duZ4zEqR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ISPgFwPF1HXngqO/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/hFitM

There are no photos that I know of from the show in question. So instead, for the cover art, I've used a photo from Montreux, Switzerland, on August 7, 1971. Unfortunately, like the last cover in this series, drummer John Bonham didn't make it in the frame.

Led Zeppeln - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1970

Please check out my previous post, in which I explained that I've had some trouble making new Zippyshare links, so I'm going to try the Yandex file sharing service for a while and see how that goes. If you have any trouble, please let me know.

As I mentioned previously, I've taken Led Zeppelin's, officially released 3 disc collection "The Complete BBC Sessions," and turned it into five albums. So far, I've only added a few extra songs on volume one. But on this volume, I've basically created the entire thing out of nothing. Furthermore, there are only two BBC performances on it at all, and those remain unreleased.

In my opinion, 1970 was one of Led Zeppelin's greatest years, both because they released "Led Zeppelin III" that year (which ties for my favorite album by them, along with "Led Zeppelin IV"), and also they were firing on all cylinders as a live unit. In particular, people say Robert Plant's voice declined at some point in 1972, but it was still in peak form in 1970. But unfortunately, no live tracks from 1970 have ever been released, and when it comes to bootlegs, there are virtually no soundboard recordings, just a few songs here and there.

So this is my attempt to gather the best of 1970, which an emphasis on songs that haven't appeared on the previous three BBC albums I made, as well as picking only songs at the highest sound quality for what's available from that year. The two actual BBC performances are "White Summer" and "Black Mountain Side," though that was really just guitarist Jimmy Page playing with his acoustic guitar.

Other than that, the vast majority of the songs come from two sources. The first is the Royal Albert Hall concert in London on January 4, 1970. This is probably the best sounding concert from 1970 tht I could find. The only downside is that it was only four days into the new year, and the setlist is pretty similar to 1969 setlists. So I only used the first three songs from that.

The other big source is the LA Forum show on September 4, 1970. This is commonly known as the "Blueberry Hill" concert, since they played that Fats Domino song as an encore, the only time they ever played it. It's one of the most popular bootlegged concerts by the band. Unfortunately, I've found the sound quality to be just okay, since there's no soundboard of it. But at least six different audience members independently bootlegged the show. In the years since, many people have created matrix versions of the show, basically merging multiple sources together to get better sound quality than any one source. I listened to what are considered the few best versions. Each one sounds slightly different. I found the "Graf Zeppelin" version sounded best to my ears, so five of the songs here use that as a source. It's very close to sounding as good as a soundboard.

By the way, one thing that's really interesting about that show is that it kind of includes a performance of "Good Times, Bad Times." This is a big deal, because that was one of their most famous songs, and the only single released from their first album, and yet they stubbornly refused to play it in concert! They only played it about four times, and each time, it was done within a larger medley. Luckily, one of those times was at the "Blueberry Hill" concert. I've extracted it out of a much longer medley. However, it slowly morphed into a cover of "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield, which is interesting, so I've kept that as well.

Unfortunately, the band was even more reluctant to ever play "Ramble On" in concert, even though it's one of their most beloved songs. They only played a few short snippets of it in the 1970s, and I didn't find any of those worthy of inclusion. The one and only time they played both "Good Times, Bad Times" and "Ramble On" as proper songs from start to finish was in their 2007 reunion show, released as the "Celebration Day" album. But by that time, Robert Plant's voice wasn't what it used to be.

Anyway, the other songs I've included here from different sources are "Thank You" and a medley of "The Girl Can't Help It," "I'm Talking about You," and "Twenty Flight Rock." The sound quality for the medley is a bit worse than the rest here, I think. But I figure it's worth inclusion because they're all songs that band otherwise never performed. (Arguably, a few of these covers should have gone on one of my stray tracks albums for the band, but I wasn't aware of them when I made those, and I figure they fit just as well here.)

So, the bottom line is, even though this is kind of cheating in that most of the songs here weren't actually performed for the BBC, I figure this is an important missing link between all the 1969 BBC stuff I've posted already, and the 1971 BBC album I plan on posting next.

01 We're Gonna Groove (Led Zeppelin)
02 Somethin' Else (Led Zeppelin)
03 Bring It on Home (Led Zeppelin)
04 Organ Solo - Thank You (Led Zeppelin)
05 White Summer [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
06 Black Mountain Side [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
07 Good Times, Bad Times - For What It's Worth (Led Zeppelin)
08 Roll 'Em Pete - Some Other Guy - Think It Over (Led Zeppelin) (Led Zeppelin)
09 Bron-Yr-Aur [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
10 Out on the Tiles (Led Zeppelin) (Led Zeppelin)
11 Blueberry Hill (Led Zeppelin)
12 The Girl Can't Help It - I'm Talking about You - Twenty Flight Rock (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693860/LEDZPPLN1970a_BBSssonsVolum4_atse.zip.html

The photo for the cover art comes from the famous "Blueberry Hill" concert. In fact, it's basically the one good color photo from that show that's available. I couldn't find any photos from the Royal Albert Hall show, so this one was the logical choice.

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: BBC Rock Hour, Playhouse Theatre, London, Britain, 6-27-1969

Here's the third album in my five-album series of Led Zeppelin playing for the BBC. See my post of the first album for a general explanation.

This is the third album of BBC performances recorded in just a few months in 1969. As a result, the song list has a lot of repeats from the songs on the first two albums in this series. But on the plus side, this is a single performance of 51 minutes, done for an hour-long BBC radio  show. Unlike the previous BBC performances, which were played in a studio, this was played in front of a small audience. Yet because it was recorded for the BBC, the sound is as pristine as can be. There are a zillion Zeppelin bootlegs out there, but in my opinion, the vast majority of them have poor sound quality. So any performance of the band recorded this well is a special treat.

All the songs here have been officially released on "The Complete BBC Sessions." But they'd been out of order, including having four of the songs on one disc and the other two on another disc. I've sequenced them all in the order they were played.

01 Communication Breakdown (Led Zeppelin)
02 I Can't Quit You Baby (Led Zeppelin)
03 Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin)
04 White Summer - Black Mountain Side [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
05 You Shook Me (Led Zeppelin)
06 How Many More Times - The Hunter - The Lemon Song [Killing Floor] (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693852/LEDZPPLN1969e_BBSssonsVolum3RockHurPlyhuseThetre__6-27-1969_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I couldn't find any photos from the concert in question. But I found a nice one from the same month. The photo was taken at the Birmingham Town Hall on June 13, 1969.

Heart - Heart Plays Led Zeppelin - Selected Cover Versions (1975-2017)

I'm proud to present this album, because I think it's really good. If you're a fan of Heart and/or Led Zeppelin at all, you should give this a listen. It kind of plays like Led Zeppelin's greatest hits, but with a famous kickass female vocalist.

A few days ago, while looking for some Led Zeppelin material for the BBC series I'm currently posting, I came across an album a fan created called "Heart Plays Led Zeppelin." (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the name of the person who did it.) I liked the idea, but the problem was that pretty much all the songs on it came from average sounding audience bootlegs. I've redone it with totally different sourcing. It's all live performances, but some are from official albums and all the others are from excellent sounding soundboard bootlegs. So the entire album sounds as good as an official release, in my opinion.

The reason this album is possible is because Ann and Nancy Wilson, the sisters who lead the band Heart, absolutely love Led Zeppelin. From the start of their career, they've been called "the female Led Zeppelin," and with good reason. Except for the 1980s, when they went for a slick pop sound, their music has closely followed the Led Zeppelin model, with their band capable of writing and playing everything from mellow acoustic songs to hard rock songs, just like Led Zeppelin does.

So it's no surprise that they've played covers of Led Zeppelin songs in concert. What is surprising is how many different ones they've played, and what songs they've chosen. Generally speaking, they've boldly played Zeppelin's most famous and best songs. Who would dare cover legendary songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Kashmir?" Heart, that's who.

Does Heart try to put their own unique spin on these songs? Not really. They pretty much follow the original arrangements. But what's great about these is that Ann Wilson has one of the best female voices in rock (and Nancy Wilson is no slouch either), and she can belt these out in a way that probably even impresses Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant. In fact, it turns out that the members of Heart and Led Zeppelin have been friends since the 1970s, as a kind of mutual appreciation society.

I really love how this album came out, because I was able to find virtually every song I was looking for at a really good sound quality. The only one I found at lesser quality is "Four Sticks." I left that off so the sound could stay at a high level throughout.  Heart has also played "Whole Lotta Love" and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You," but only a few times at most, and I couldn't find any of their versions of those songs at all.

The first five songs come from 1975 and 1976. Heart played some of these songs lots of times, especially "Rock and Roll," which they've done hundreds of times, and still do. But it wasn't until the 2000s when they decided to go bazongas and cover many more Zeppelin tunes. In 2013 and 2014, they toured with Jason Bonham, a drummer who is the son of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. After John died in 1980, Jason has been the drummer for most of the brief Led Zeppelin reunions, and his ability to channel his father's drumming style is uncanny. Five of the songs here feature him on drums. For those two years, they played entire sets of up to an hour with him, doing just Zeppelin tunes.

One other song here, "What Is and What Should Never Be," feature former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

This ends up being an unusually long album. At 120 minutes I could have easily split it into two albums. But I liked it better as one long album. I generally ordered the songs chronologically, except I made a couple of slight tweaks to have fitting starting and ending songs.

"You Shook Me" comes from the 1977 Heart album "Magazine." It's from a concert in 1975, and was performed as part of a medley with "Mother Earth Blues." However, the "Magazine" album was released without the band's permission, and it was quickly withdrawn. It was rereleased that same year with some band-approved changes, and that's how it's been ever since. "You Shook Me" was only on the early withdrawn version, so it's very rare. I've edited the medley to remove the "Mother Earth Blues" section, which started the song.

My only other comment is that while Heart has played "Immigrant Song" a lot since the 2000s, I found a version of Ann Wilson singing it with Gov't Mule that I like much better. Wilson did a version of it for a 2007 solo album that made the hard rock song more mellow, and Heart generally followed that version. It was an interesting experiment, but I much prefer it in its original hard rock style, which is how Gov't Mule plays it.

Oh, one more thing. Thanks to an excellent comment by Uncle Dan, one day after I first posted this, I've decided to include Heart's 2012 Kennedy Center Honors version of "Stairway to Heaven" as a bonus track of sorts at the end. It's different than the 1976 version also included here in that it features a full orchestra and choir, as well as Jason Bonham on drums. You should check out the video of it on YouTube, which has over 20 million views. It's touching to see the reactions of famous people in the audience, including Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, President Obama, and more.

01 Rock and Roll (Heart)
02 You Shook Me (Heart)
03 Stairway to Heaven (Heart)
04 The Rover (Heart)
05 The Battle of Evermore (Heart)
06 What Is and What Should Never Be (Heart with John Paul Jones)
07 Black Dog (Heart)
08 Misty Mountain Hop (Heart)
09 Going to California (Heart)
10 The Ocean (Heart with Jason Bonham)
11 Kashmir (Heart with Jason Bonham)
12 The Rain Song (Heart with Jason Bonham)
13 The Song Remains the Same (Heart with Jason Bonham)
14 Immigrant Song (Gov't Mule with Ann Wilson)
15 No Quarter (Heart)
16 Stairway to Heaven [Orchestral Version] (Heart with Jason Bonham)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693291/HERT1975-2017_HrtPlysLedZppln_atse.zip.html

For the cover photo, I used a publicity photo of Ann and Nancy Wilson from around 1976. Nancy is the blonde in front.