Led Zeppelin - Sunshine Woman - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

It's time for me to tackle the great Led Zeppelin with my usual approach of gathering all the quality stray tracks I can find from the group's career. I was surprised at just how much I could find - this is the first of five albums I've made, each of them about 40 to 50 minutes long.

As I usually do, my approach is to find songs not done on their official albums. But I considered anything on the rarities album "Coda" fair game, since those songs need to be reordered and fit in chronologically with other rarities. I also considered songs on "BBC Sessions" fair game if they weren't on any of the studio albums.

I started this album with four songs that aren't Led Zeppelin songs at all. Robert Plant didn't have much of a recording career before joining the group, and much of what is available from that time sounds very dated now. But I've found four quality songs that all sound very Led Zeppelin-esque to me. The three of them recorded with the Band of Joy actually have future Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham on them as well. The first three of these four songs are found on a popular retrospective of Plant's solo career, but the fourth one is just as good and remains officially unreleased.

Note the song "Sunshine Woman" was released on "BBC Sessions," and this is that performance. However, the officially released recording sounded strangely muffled and hissy. Some Zeppelin fans tweaked with the sound to fix it, and I've used their version, because to my ears it sounds noticeably better.

The last song on this album, "Pat's Delight," needs some explanation. From the very start of Led Zeppelin's live shows, they played this song, which is mostly a Bonham drum solo with some guitar riffing at the beginning and end. This would later turn into "Moby Dick" on the "Led Zeppelin II" album, at which point "Pat's Delight" was retired. The intro and closing guitar work would be totally changed.  However, I'm no drumming expert, but I'm told the drum soloing was basically the same.

I found a well-recorded live version of "Pat's Delight" that was 15 minutes long. I didn't want to bog down this album with a super long drum solo, especially because I hear it's virtually the same as live versions of "Moby Dick." So I cut the drumming way down, allowing one to hear the guitar parts that make this song unique. Note that the drumming fades out into a brief silence after the intro guitar ends. That's not an edit by me - that's how it is on the actual recording. But then I cut out about ten minutes of drumming after that point and have the drumming come back in from a quiet point near the end of all the drum soloing.

I'm excited about this series of Led Zeppelin stray tracks, because I've looked high and low for bootlegs that do the same thing, and I haven't found any that really get the job done. I've seen one or two things that boiled the best rarities down to an album or two, but there actually are about five albums' worth, as I've said. I think that's because the band did a lot of unique songs only in concert, usually cover versions, and I'm including those in this series too. You can see one example on this album, a live cover of the Yardbirds' hit song "For Your Love."

By the way, I'm not quite sure what the title to the seventh song here is. It's an instrumental outtake from the band's first album. Some people claim it's called "Do What Thou Wilt," but other people dispute that. It's most commonly known on bootlegs as"Pipes and Flamenco," but that appears to just be a creative name given to it by bootlegger many years later. I've included both of the known names.

01 Operator (Robert Plant)
02 Hey Joe (Robert Plant & the Band of Joy)
03 For What It's Worth (Robert Plant & the Band of Joy)
04 I Gotta Find My Baby (Robert Plant & the Band of Joy)
05 Baby Come On Home (Led Zeppelin)
06 Sugar Mama (Led Zeppelin)
07 Do What Thou Wilt [Pipes and Flamenco] [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
08 For Your Love (Led Zeppelin)
09 Sunshine Woman (Led Zeppelin)
10 Pat's Delight [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mvPmk

Peter from the Albums I Wish Existed blog made the cover art.