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://www.imagenetz.de/mUDu4

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.