Aerosmith with Jimmy Page - BBC in Concert, Monsters of Rock, Donington Park, Castle Donington, Britain, 8-18-1990

This is really the combination of two concerts, though they are closely connected, taking place just two days apart from each other. The first and main part comes from the Castle Donington show mentioned in the title. Led Zeppelin's lead guitarist Jimmy Page guested on two encore songs, "Train Kept A-Rollin'" and "Walk This Way." Then the last six songs are from a concert at the Marquee Club in London two days later, August 20th, 1990. Five of those six songs also have Jimmy Page as the special guest.

The sound quality of both shows is very good. The main show was broadcast on the BBC. For whatever reason though, the sound quality wasn't up to the usual BBC high standards. Perhaps there was some sound loss while recording it off the radio or something like that. But I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost the lead vocals, and that helped a lot. It appears to be the full show (according to the set list at setlist.fm), even though it's only about an hour long. The Marque Club songs sound even better. These were the last songs to a longer concert, but apparently the rest of the show is only available as an average sounding audience bootleg, while these songs are from a soundboard source. Clearly, someone was interested in the extensive Jimmy Page guest spot.

Speaking of Page, it's a bit odd that he makes two appearances, so he gets introduced twice. Also, one of the songs, "Train Kept A-Rollin'" appears twice, once from each show's encore. Hopefully you can roll with that. There's one song from the Marquee Club without him, "Milk Cow Blues." It's a song made famous by Elvis Presley that Aerosmith never put on record, so I figured it was worth keeping in, even though that meant the two Jimmy Page appearances couldn't be merged into one.

The songs done with Page are interesting choices. Clearly, Aerosmith listened to Yardbirds records, because they did three Yardbirds covers ("I Ain't Got You," "Think about It," and "Train Kept A-Rollin'") and only one Led Zeppelin cover ("Immigrant Song"). I'll bet Page got a kick out of doing obscurities like "Think about It" for the first time in years. By the way, it's amusing to note how lead singer Steven Tyler totally botched the lyrics to "Immigrant Song." He got maybe a couple of lines correct and the rest he did more based on the sounds of the words.

By the way, there was a problem with "Red House," which is why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. This Jimi Hendrix cover from the Marque Club encore was going along nicely when it seems lead guitarist Joe Perry's amplifier blew out in the middle of his solo. The band came to a halt for a couple of minutes until the problem was fixed. I edited out this interruption almost entirely. You'll only hear the band stop for a couple of seconds in the middle of the song. But if you listen closely right before that, there's a fraction of a minute with no guitar soloing due to the amp problem.

Although it's a bit weird at times, especially with Page getting introduced twice, I think this combination of shows works well. The Castle Donington portion is an hour and five minutes long. The Marquee Club portion is 33 minutes long. So if you add them together, it makes for a concert that's an hour and 38 minutes long, which was probably typical for most Aerosmith concerts at that time.

01 Young Lust (Aerosmith)
02 F.I.N.E. (Aerosmith)
03 talk (Aerosmith)
04 Monkey on My Back (Aerosmith)
05 Janie's Got a Gun (Aerosmith)
06 Rag Doll (Aerosmith)
07 Voodoo Medicine Man (Aerosmith)
08 talk (Aerosmith)
09 Love in an Elevator (Aerosmith)
10 Dude [Looks like a Lady] (Aerosmith)
11 Sweet Emotion - Peter Gunn Theme (Aerosmith)
12 Toys in the Attic (Aerosmith)
13 Dream On (Aerosmith)
14 talk (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
15 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
16 Walk This Way (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
17 Milk Cow Blues (Aerosmith)
18 talk (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
19 I Ain't Got You (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
20 talk (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
21 Think about It (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
22 talk (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
23 Red House [Edit] (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
24 Immigrant Song (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
25 talk (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)
26 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Aerosmith with Jimmy Page)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jbWyL

The cover photo comes from the Marquee Club show featured at the end of this album.  It mainly shows just Joe Perry and Jimmy Page (you can see the drummer Joey Kramer in red between them). But I figured what makes this album stand out is the presence of Page, so it's good to have him on the cover.