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.imagenetz.de/htEFM
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.
Can you find another posting place for this instead of Yandex, please/ Norton says they're based in Russia. Open drive and mediafire seem to work well.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with them being based in Russia?
DeleteI'm concerned about viruses.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete