Ooooooh, I have been wanting to get my hands on those 1972 Nassau and Seattle shows for years, but have never been able to find them at the places I go for live shows. I am assuming these shows are both sourced from audience tapes...or is there a SBD? Is there a particular audience source that is better than the rest? What titles should I look for?

I don't know where you are getting your $60 figure, as I never paid more than $25 for my Genuine Master boots, and usually it was around $15 to $20, depending on if it was a single or double disc. And okay, maybe they were just re-EQ'ed from exisiting tapes, but compared to the EQ travesties I have heard from Tarantura, Empress Valley and other companies, GM always sounded way better than the other boots and the original tapes even. They had a warmth and presence and depth that made it easy to listen to at high volume without getting ear fatigue. Just because you have the ability to digitally alter or EQ a tape doesn't mean you know what the hell you are doing. GM's Black Dog seemed to be one of the rare few who did. And from what I have heard from other fans(not having had the chance to listen for myself yet), this Winston Remasters guy also seems to know.

and Back to the topic, I think it was all just part of the overall plan of the band to demystify things a bit, to come off a little more human and less like gods. Especially with Jimmy speaking! I remember when I first heard the 80's boots and how stunned I was hearing Jimmy introducing Black Dog. All through the 70's, Jimmy was the guitar player with mystique and Robert was the golden god front man. You never heard Jimmy say anything during a show, with the exceptions of his doing backing vocals on Whole Lotta Love, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, and Tangerine...he just played. Oh sure, you could see him chatting with the rest of the band during concerts, but unless you were right up near the stage, you couldn't hear what he was saying. And while he did give interviews during the 70's, it was mostly print, not broadcast, so you still never heard what his voice sounded like. I think after punk and after the big Knebworth shows, the band said okay, let's try to ramp things down a bit and reconnect with the fans on a grassroots level. Out went the drum solos and violin bow solos and the lasers and the big epic 30-40 minute jams and hey, why not have Jimmy say a few words! That's just what I think. Or I could be wrong...which I am sure some of you won't waste any time in pointing that out.

Whoa... I just saw this and at first I thought it was somebody posting an archival article about Plant's 1975 crash. My heart skipped a beat when I looked and saw it was contemporary...good to see that nobody was hurt. BTW, I was under the impression that Plant and Krauss were in Nashville recording the new record; now that Plant's been in jolly old to pick up his CBE and now this car crash, does this mean that the record is finished, or is there more recording to be done? Would love it if we get a new Plant & Krauss record before the end of the year.

LOL! Creem's photo captions ruled!

Well, I don't download any music, offiical releases or live boots, at all. For one thing, I have just basic computer capacity to begin with...so I can't download anything even if I wanted to. But, from what I've heard from friends' mp3 files and whatnot, I don't like the sound quality from dowloads anyway. I would rather have a show on vinyl or cd or cassette. Plus, the couple times in the past I've searched through someone's file-sharing site, I found many shows mislabeled with wrong dates, venues, song titles, etc. And one time when I did a trade with someone, I got a cd with clicking sounds throughout and those annoying 2-3 second pauses between tracks; which is fine for a studio cd, but it absolutely ruins a live recording for me when the cd pauses and cuts off the opening seconds of the next track. So I am sorry if it offends your moral compass, but I don't mind paying $5-30 for a live concert recording that I can preview at the swap meet to check out the sound quality and make sure the show is what the label says it is; plus you get some cool art work and photos in the bargain. If I had someone to trade with I would, but I lost track of the guy I used to trade with back in the old days, and haven't been able to find anyone that was competent and trustworthy in the interim. All of the bands that I collect live shows of(Zep, Stones, Floyd, Radiohead, Cure, Wilco, Bruce...) are bands that I already own ALL of their official releases, some many times over. So it is not like the band is losing money...I've given more than my share of money to them over the years. Most of these shows are never going to be released, and if they are, even if I already have a boot of the show, I dutifully go out and buy the official release...i.e. "How the West Was Won".

One of the bands that made the 1970's such a great, fun decade!!! The "Kimono My House" album was when I first heard and got into them. Their look didn't bother me at all...I was already long into glam, T. Rex, Bowie, Roxy Music, Sweet, etc...to me, Ron was referencing Charlie Chaplin more than Adolf Hitler with his mustache. Sparks have had several periods where their fortunes would rise and fall..."Angst In My Pants" was a huge hit in 1982; KROQ(influential LA new-wave radio station) played it all the time. Lately, they seemed to have been on the upswing again as younger generations have discovered their brand of smart idiosyncratic pop. 2002's "Lil' Beethoven" kicked off their resurgence in recent times. Probably not for everyone...if all you listen to is Cream or heavy metal, you probably won't get what Sparks are about...but the little girls understand.

I'm not sure what you're on about.

Yes, that was surprising glicine. But Nick Kent had a sly way about him...he also drank and drugged as much as the rock stars he was covering, so that might have helped put his interview subjects at ease. Another item of note about this interview is "Bonzo's Montreaux" is obviously being referred to when it is mentioned that Jimmy has just returned from Switzerland producing a percussion track by Bonham and that he felt certain that it would be on the next album. When I read this the first time back in 1977, I couldn't help but wonder what it would sound like, and when "In Through the Out Door" finally was released I recalled this bit from the interview and wondered where the Bonzo piece was; Jimmy couldn't have meant the small bit of tympany at the beginning of "In the Evening". Sure enough, when "Coda" came out 2 years after Bonzo's death, "Bonzo's Montreaux" finally made its appearance, 5 years after this interview first mentioned it.

I am not surprised Page intimidated her, Chicago, as he was ferocious on the 1971 tour. Especially at Orlando, where Jimmy is seemingly adrenalized even more than usual, to the point where between nearly every song he is throwing down these licks left and right...check out the slinky riff he plays leading into "Celebration Day"! Man, I can't help but crack a smile every time I listen that...it is just a CRYING SHAME that the soundboard doesn't include "Celebration Day". 1971 "CD's" were spectacular, especially for Jonesy and Bonzo's interplay, and it's always a loss whenever a chance is missed to hear a good quality CD. For instance, I weep for what is missing from the 9.14.71 "Going to California" show; how could this taper leave off "Celebration Day"? Back to topic: yes, Orlando 71 was another magic show from that period...the soundboard I've heard is good, but not spectacular. To my ears, the audience recording of 9.14.71 sounds better than the Orlando sbd. But at least we get "Celebration Day" albeit in muddy audience tape sound, whereas the 9.14.71 "CD" appears to have been lost forever.

Awww...I'm blushing. Thanks for the compliment.

Okay, as promised in the Jimmy Page Circus 1976 thread, here is the Jimmy Page interview published in the April 1977 issue of CREEM magazine, written by Nick Kent, well-known NME scribe in the '70's. Along with talking about the upcoming 1977 US tour and Kenneth Anger, this interview is where I first read about his desire to do a chronological live album. Enjoy! Jimmy Page: Shy Rock Star Almost Unburdens Himself Nick Kent, Creem, April 1977 I'VE KNOWN Led Zeppelin professionally for probably 4 years now, starting back in the winter of I972 when I was sent out on the road with them only to find myself ending up in a fairly ludicrous but nonetheless highly tense argument with Jimmy Page in the dressing-room on the very first night. I immediately took a dislike to the band personally, but found myself so blown apart by their live gigs of that time, that whatever vitriol I might have harbored from such unfortunate encounters was dissipated into instant "rave-review" time when it came to actually putting pen to paper. The resulting piece was, in retrospect, a quite horrendous piece of well-meaning gush, the memory of which I'd prefer buried for an eternity but anyway... For some unknown reason, thereafter I became accepted by the band and co., and recall one night, maybe six months later, running into Page by chance and spending a most enjoyable evening ensconsed in informal chitchat with the gent. From then on, I seemed to run into the guitarist and other members of his band regularly and always found them to be thoroughly pleasant human beings, particularly Peter Grant and Page, who both seemed to me the very paradox of the images that had been served up by certain factions of the press, i.e. Grant, the fearsomely uncouth semi-gangster type, and Page, the hedonistically depraved Crowley fanatic, scourge of the groupies and all-purpose heavy-duty evil presence. The main aspect of Page the interview subject that has always become apparent to me as soon as the trusty cassette is turned on, has been the man's overriding reticence, his distinct fear of actually being probed for copy, his at times desperate concern for privacy at-all-costs in regard to topics that seem so totally innocent and lightweight to the on-looker. I've been slotted in at the end of what appears to have been a day of fairly gruelling gang-bang interview scheduling. As the photographer and I enter the Swan Song offices, a Japanese journalist is being shown out, and an American writer is about to be led up for his shot, while the guy from the London Evening Standard is still waiting his half-an-hour's worth. After an hour we're led up to the interview room to encounter a Page obviously torn and frayed by the day's verbal duties. He's been left rather unsettled by the last caller. Well, nothing much has changed in that respect – if anything Page has become even more reticent, constantly checking himself in the middle of what seems the most mild utterance, to work out whether what he is saying could jeopardize some aspect of the band's communal year-away-as-working-tax-exiles. A single question, for example, referring to the number of times the four band members have come together for whatever reason in the past year, takes Page a good seven minutes of checking and counter-checking before the answer can be given satisfactorily. "I just don't trust those sort of writers. You never know what they're after. It's useless trying to explain Crowley and all those things to them..." His manner is wired-up, slightly uncomfortable to behold. The first topic, of course, is The Song Remains The Same. It's a late Wednesday afternoon, and I've worked it out to strict 50-50 odds as to whether Page and the Swan Song reps will have got hold of the NME issue with my highly derogatory review of the film. No one has, in fact, so I'm safe in one respect. Still I decide to voice a number of my criticisms straight off. I didn't really like it. I don't think it did you as a band, justice. "How do you mean?" Page is coiled up, listening, nervy. I think you undersold yourselves, I say, quickly attempting to counter the vagueness of the accusation, by zeroing in on the live album and voicing my dissatisfactions there. Before I can specify, Page leaps in. "Ah, well that's just one of those unfortunate things, because if you start picking that apart... well first and foremost it's a soundtrack album and as such simply has to be available. As for an actual live album... well my idea, prior to Robert's accident which dictated virtually everything we've done since was to do a chronological affair with tracks dating back to I970 with 'Communication Breakdown', say, and going through the various incarnations right up to tracks we'll be doing on the next tour for Presence." That would be great, I mutter. "It will be great," Page counters. BUT TO return to the film; Page is fairly defensive about it, concerning himself with those aspects that have to be taken into account to gain what he considers the fullest appreciation of the affair. "There's a lot of points to be weighed up. It's a musical, yes, but it's also a documentary. For example, the robbery ...you've got to take that into account... the fact, for example, that when we were onstage playing those gigs, half the band actually knew about it and half the band didn't know. So the playing isn't totally... Plus it was right at the end of a tour. "You're saying we're underselling ourselves, O.K., well we weren't going to put anything about the robbery in, but then again it is relevant. It's all pretty honest, I think." Further points worth taking into consideration concern the minimal amount of footage actually shot during the tour. Out of a fairly mammoth U.S. tour, only one date in Baltimore and two nights at Madison Square Garden were filmed. Backstage footage was coincidental with the concerts. "Oh, forget about it as a film of the tour! As regards the gig, well it's not a terribly good night and it's not terribly bad. Certainly not a magic one but not... tragic." The fantasy sequences were all filmed some three months after the tour itself had been finished in the late summer of '73. Bonham's scene seems to be Page's favorite, and when discussing the amount of thought that went behind the conceptualizing of each member's fantasy, Page is at least candid. "Let's just say that when we weren't viewing the thing as a tax write-off (laughs), there was as much commitment and dedication involved as goes into anything we do. "There's no point in us making excuses. The facts are there to be understood. ' "I just see it... it's not a great film... just a reasonably honest statement of where we were at that particular time. That's all it can be, really. "I mean, it's still very difficult to view even now, particularly with this build-up. I'd like to see it in a year's time, just to see how it stands up. "Because it's extremely relevant to the band, because simply, for us, it sums up a certain era. "In a nut-shell, the film sums up an era when the band finished its sets with 'Whole Lotta Love.' That doesn't mean anything now, does it? It's only the Top of the Pops signature tune, now, anyway (laughs)..." On the tour following the '73 Song Remains The Same epic the band virtually dropped all reference to 'Whole Lotta Love', except for the occasional few bars thrown in at encore-time. Instead the finale was given over to 'Stairway to Heaven'. SO THINGS are looking healthy again for Zeppelin after what can only be described as a fairly disorientating year for the collective, as well as certain individuals within the group, it appears, Page being paramount amongst them. Again there is great hesitancy regarding the subject's talking about the year's more intimate troubles. The past I2 months, though, have seen Page return to Charlotte, his old lady of longstanding and the mother of his daughter, Scarlet, and therefore a more domestically ordered existence. "The troubles... well for a start, Charlotte's been very ill but that's something one doesn't need to go into, really, only that...if you've been with someone for a long time and they get ill, then you immediately have that responsibility ...I don't really need to say anymore." Page seems a changed man from the days that seemed to reach their hiatus during the '74 tour of America. Then, the guitarist, at once unattached, was staying up for days and nights on end in some kind of mortal combat with the forces of Nature, pushing virtually everything to the limits and cultivating some potentially bad habits in the process. According to Page, though, the pressures I witnessed him testing himself on back then were nothing to what went down during the recording of Presence in Munich. "That was the ultimate test of that whole... lifestyle. I mean, that was I8 hours a day at a real intensity every day. You just plunge in and, I mean, you don't start thinking about three meals a day." Presence, by the way, is Page's favorite Zeppelin album, "Or at least the one which, when I think back on the sessions, I consider the most fulfilling. I mean, but maybe that's a rather bad yardstick to use for what one's favorite album is. Every record had had its moments." So what happened after Presence's completion? "Well, as far as I was concerned, it was a case of sorting out a year's problems in... say, a month, and not finding the whole process as simple as that. I mean, suddenly I had time to look around and suddenly I became aware of certain people who'd been taking incredible advantage of me in the year I'd been away." Page shies away from going into any great details but makes mention of a couple whom he let stay at his main home of residence and who, apparently, immediately "assumed the identity of me and Charlotte. That got very ugly." And then there is the case of one Kenneth Anger. Two days after Page had returned from Switzerland where he'd been producing a lavish total-percussion track dreamed up and executed by John Bonham (which Page reckons is a cert for inclusion on the next Zep album), he was faced with a copy of a British rock paper carrying possibly the most snide vitriolic attack in recent years to appear in a music periodical. Anger's beef was that Page hadn't finished the soundtrack to his movie, Lucifer Rising. Anger made all sorts of wild accusations, implying that Page was possibly having drug problems ("Page's affair with The White Lady"). amongst other things, which for starters is complete fabrication. Page, in fact, almost brightens to the thought of putting his side of the Anger epic into print. "I must start by saying that I've lost a hell of a lot of respect for him. I mean, the level of pure bitchiness he was working on...at one point he was writing silly little letters to everybody he thought I knew so that they would naturally bring it up in conversation when they saw me. "This whole thing about 'Anger's Curse'; they were just these silly little letters. God it was all so pathetic. I mean, I've got to get my side across now because it's just gone too far. Hell, you know that I did the film music and you know when I did it, so you must have thought it odd when Anger came out against me like that, right?" (Page in fact rented a rough cut of Lucifer Rising and showed it to an informal gathering, yours truly included, complete with his soundtrack, in L.A. early in I975.) "Well, he's implying that he'd received nothing from me, which is totally untrue. I gave him everything in plenty of time, OK." What Page also claims is that he helped Anger personally locate a screening/editing room in London and that Peter Grant was also interested in maybe investing something into the completion of the film, and offered him accommodation in London's chic Gloucester Place Mews. "So OK, I'm a mug! Cos one day this whole thing just blew up. And that's all I knew about it. This bitchiness is just an extension of Anger's Hollywood Babylon." Anger had apparently been angling for a further backer for the film, Page claims. "Now whether he thought in his mind that he was indebted to me somehow and that he felt he had to get me off his back I don't know. I mean I didn't start hassling. I just wanted to see the bloke finish the bloody film, I mean its whole history is so absurd, anyway. I just assumed that it was unfinished because he was such a perfectionist and he'd always end up going over his budgets. All I can say is: Anger's time was all that was needed to finish that film. Nothing else!" Anger also made allegations that his belongings had been held – impounded by Page and sundry cohorts. "What a snide bastard. His stuff was just all over the place and I just got some roadies to get it all together for him. Christ, he even turned that one round against me. "I mean, I had a lot of respect for him. As an occultist he was definitely in the vanguard. I just don't know what he's playing at. I'm totally bemused and really disgusted. It's truly pathetic. I mean, he is powerless – totally. The only damage he can do is with his tongue." Page has somehow relaxed now, the saga of Anger having been completed (and there are more details but enough is perhaps enough for now). "So much of this year has been taken up with petty little time-consuming things. It's not been a static period so much as an unsatisfying one. There have been so many niggling little things to take care of – things so petty readers would never believe Jimmy Page rock guitarist would need to involve himself with (laughs)." A final shrug: "It's changing now though. I mean, playing live – that whole stimulus – has been missing, and Christ, when we did that first rehearsal it just clicked all over again. I just feel that I've cleaned out a load of problems and now I'm ready to get back in the fray, so to speak. "Something epic is going to happen musically anyway. That's what I feel. This next tour... you'll see." © Nick Kent, 1977

The Nick Kent interview with Jimmy Page you are referring to appeared in the April 1977 issue of Creem magazine. As Creem often reprinted Nick Kent's(and other's) articles from NME, it is possible this interview appeared earlier in NME. I will post the 1977 Nick Kent interview in a seperate thread. As to this particular 1976 Circus interview, this issue is one of the ones I lost in an apartment fire I had years ago, burning lots of my rock and roll memorobilia. Luckily, I still have a few of the Circus poll winner issues, one with Robert Plant and Linda Ronstandt on the cover, another with Plant and Ann Wilson as Man & Woman of the Year, and the Nov. 1980 issue with the Cars' Ric Ocasek on the cover that had John Swenson's article about Bonham's death. Hey old-time Circus readers, remember Lou O'Neill Jr., the "Rona Barrett" of Rock 'n' Roll? He always had that "Back Pages" column...on the back page, natch! Still, I always was a "Creem" man myself...best rock mag of the 70's! But I always found time to also read Circus, Crawdaddy, Trouser Press, Rock, Audio, Zig Zag, NME and Melody Maker. Rolling Stone(with the exception of Hunter S. Thompson's articles) was good for wiping your ass or house training your puppy.

Thanks for that link cookieshoes...damn that's a shame nobody taped more of it. I started taping shows in the 80's and I usually started my tape 5 minutes or so before listed show time just so I could make sure I would get the intro music...I also did it because the first two minutes or so on a cassette are susceptible to wow and flutter. Still odd that they only used the drone for 5 shows, don't you think? Why wouldn't they have used it on the entire US tour?

When I got the "Houses of the Holy" album I thought NQ was okay...it definitely was different...but it wasn't my favourite song on the album, and something about the way the vocals were recorded bugged me. Then when I saw them on the 1973 tour, (May 31, June 2, and June 3), I was stunned by how NQ had become a complete beast of a song and wondered why they hadn't recorded the studio version like that. By the 1975 tour. it had become one of my favourite Zeppelin concert songs and even surpassed Dazed & Confused as my favourite concert jam. And the way cool visuals added to the effect...the dry ice flooding the stage...the dancing blue lights...the lazers.

I hope you'll indulge me but I just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to talk about "Kashmir". Not the studio version, which is great enough as is, but "Kashmir" as experienced in concert. For those of you too young to remember, "Physical Graffiti" exploded on the scene like a nuclear bomb. It had been two long years since "Houses of the Holy"; the album and the tour, and expectations and demand for a new Zeppelin album were stratospheric. When it finally dropped that February day, there was, for all intents and purposes, no other album in existence...if you were a rock music fan, you bought "Physical Graffiti" plain and simple. All other albums could wait. Plus, just the physical nature of the album's packaging demanded your attention...it wasn't just that the music was "heavy" in the vernacular of the time, but that the record was really heavy in the literal sense, haha. I remember buying it at the 7-11 on my way to school that morning PG was released...just picking the album up and holding it in my hands for a few minutes before purchasing it...the pleasure I felt holding a brand new Zeppelin album in my hands and how I couldn't wait to show my friends at school. Of course, what I failed to also realize is that I would have to endure that agonizingly long wait for school to let out so I could get home and listen to it on my stereo. Now, I had heard a few tracks from PG on the radio before and, like most people, was immediately struck by the song "Kashmir". I even remember one dj from KMET(94.7 FM in LA) describing "Kashmir"'s sound as "cinematic"...and after repeated listenings to PG after I got home from school(I must have listened to PG 4 or 5 times in a row that afternoon and evening), "Kashmir" indeed struck me as being cinematic in scope. About two weeks later, Zeppelin was in town for the Long Beach Arena shows of March 11 and 12. I only had tickets for the 12, which I was taking my girlfriend to, and my dad was driving us to and from the show at the Long Beach Arena. I also had tix for the later LA Forum shows of March 24 & 25. Now by the time of the Zep concerts, judging by what I gathered talking amongst Zepheads outside the arena and elsewhere, "Kashmir" had rapidly become a favourite among us, and one of the PG songs we were most looking forward to hearing the band play. There were some Zepheads who had seen either the March 10 San Diego or the March 11 Long Beach shows and gave us a little clue as to what to expect...letting us know that "Kashmir" indeed was part of the set list. But no mere words told by some mere person could have prepared one for the actual experience of hearing "Kashmir" live! Immense! Powerful! Earthshakingly shattering! These somehow seem puny. "Kashmir" on record is a wonderful thing...exotic, epic in scope, colourful, powerful, transcendant even. But live in concert...it was all those things and yet also so so much MORE! First off, apart from the sound, you had the visuals of Robert, Jimmy, Jonesy and Bonzo right there in front of you playing this song with the dramatic lights and the backdrop screen, with Percy and Jimmy throwing shapes and their shadows projected on the backdrop. Then, there was the overwhelming sound itself...let's face it, no matter how expensive a stereo system you had, it's never going to be as loud as what you hear at a concert. I consider myself lucky to have seen "Kashmir" performed 9 times during the 1975 and 1977 tours...and was always blown away by each one. Even when I knew it was coming, that opening attack always struck me like a canonball to the gut. Whether played as a stand alone song in 1975, or coming out of "White Summer/Black Mountainside" in 1977, the effect of Bonzo's drums, Jonesy's Mellotron and Jimmy's guitar(Les Paul in '75, Danelectro in '77) marching in lockstop set your hairs on end and always drew one of the loudest cheers of the night. Mike Millard's recordings are excellent, but by their very nature of being close to the stage, you can't really hear how much the audience would explode when "Kashmir" would start after "Black Mountainside" in 1977. But what really seperated the live "Kashmir" from the studio version for me was the middle section after the breakdown...that part when Plant would "scan these wasted lands". Again, it is perfectly awesome on record...but live in concert it would positively sound deranged, as if you were actually in the middle of a sandstorm and you were being driven mad. Those chords that Jimmy and Jonesy were playing and the way the sound of the guitars and drums and mellotron, especially Jonesy's mellotron, would coalesce and seemingly swirl around in your head at such a volume and intensity that you feared your brain would fry under the attack. And of course, there were the swirling lights and Bonzo's kick drum battering you at the same time. On top of that was Plant's haunting voice trying to "find out where I've been". And when Percy went into that long drawn out "beeeeeeeeeeeen" and Bonzo brings the band back into the main riff, again, there are just no words to describe it. It was like a musical orgasm. It sounds like a cliche...hell, it is a cliche...but I am sorry: YOU REALLY HAD TO BE THERE to truly understand what hearing "Kashmir" was like in concert. The best bootleg, even an official release, doesn't come close to representing what the actual "Kashmir" experience was like. And, if by some chance you are one of those small percentage of people who don't like the song "Kashmir" as recorded, I bet you would have changed your mind if you had seen the band play it in concert. I know that doesn't help much if you were born in 1980 or later, but if you want to know why some of us oldtimers say that there was nothing like Led Zeppelin in concert, the way "Kashmir" would sear itself into your mind is one reason why. To this day, when I am among music fans and someone asks what Led Zeppelin was like in concert, I immediately flashback to those 9 amazing "Kashmir" performances I was privilaged to witness and my eyes glaze over until I finally shrug and say my vocabulary skills are insufficient to properly convey to them the impact of a Led Zeppelin concert. All I know is that I wish those of you who never had a chance could travel back in time to experience "Kashmir" live in concert just once.

Don't forget July 7, 1968...an equally important date in Led Zeppelin history! I am almost ashamed to admit this but I STILL haven't bought the July 7, 1980 Berlin gig. And I see it all the time at the swap meet...but just when I think I'll get it, I'll end up picking up another 1970 or 1971 or 1973 show instead.

After being knocked out by hearing the 1972 Tuscon show, I've got a craving for more 1972 shows. I've got two of the Australian shows, 2.19 and 2.27, and they're terrific, if sadly incomplete. I've also got one 1972 Japan show on vinyl("My Brain Hurts")...again only a partial show. More importantly they are missing the drone that Zeppelin used to introduce the band on the 1972 US summer tour concerts...or at least they used a drone on the LA, Long Beach and Tuscon shows. I remember going to the LA shows and being mesmorized by that introductory drone that went on for 5, maybe even 10 minutes or so...time seemed to stop as you listened. My boot of the June 25, 1972 show only has a minute and a half of the drone. Unfortunately, the "Get Back" Tuscon boot has even less, around 45 seconds. I REALLY LOVED that drone and would like to hear more. You can't imagine what it felt like to be a 10-year-old boy in the LA Forum that night of June 25, 1972, anxiously awaiting my first Led Zeppelin concert and hearing that music come on and being caught up in that swirl of sound...my unbearable anticipation being heightened by the drama that drone created as the minutes ticked by, wondering when the band was coming on, then the fever pitch of excitement of the audience as the taller people around me spotted the band coming on stage and then the sudden wallop that hit you as the band exploded into Immigrant Song! There are few things, if any, better than sex...but that moment might have been one of them. So hear is my question(s): Was the drone used at every concert on the 1972 US tour? Was it used on any other 1972 tours: Japan? UK? Are there any boots out there that have the complete drone, or at least more than the 1 and one-half minutes of "Burn That Candle"? Which boot has the longest drone available? Even if it is just 3 or 5 minutes, that would be cool. Thanks for any helpful info anyone can provide.

A few years back, I started noticing this new label popping up at the record swap meet I go to where I buy most of my Zeppelin live swag: Genuine Masters. They seemed to put out mostly DVD-Audio discs and after consulting the Underground Uprising site and seeing how highly rated their releases were, I started picking up a few of them. "Texas Pop", "Watch and Listen to this, Eddie", "For Badgeholders Only", "The Rover's Return". These all sounded great and often had fun visuals to match. Lately though I've noticed that I haven't seen any new Genuine Masters releases and after asking one of the vendors about it, I received a very cryptic reply...something about the Japanese hating them and driving them out of business. Was wondering if there was anyone(calling SteveA.Jones?) here who could objectively tell me what the deal is...are they out of the boot business? If so, that would be a shame as on the whole, I was always pleased with their work; unlike Godfatherecords, Empress Valley, Beezlebub, TDOLZ, and a whole host of others, I was never dissapointed with a Genuine Masters boot.

I am pretty sure Ritchie Yorke's bio with the Pez cover is the first hardcover book published about Led Zeppelin...maybe even the very first book period that dealt exclusively with the band; certainly the first one by a recognizable rock music writer. Circus put out a cheapie paperback in 1973 on Robert Plant to take advantage of the hype and hysteria of Zep's 1973 U.S. tour, where they broke the Beatles' attendance record, but it wasn't a "real" book in any objective sense...more like a fan's mash-note. Published in 1976, Ritchie Yorke's Zep bio has since been updated and republished...alas, without that distinctive Pez cover design. Stacilayne, I recognize a lot of the other books and magazines you have in your collection...many of which I lost in an apartment fire, along with tons of other Zeppelin paraphenelia. That 1973 Circus Robert Plant paperback which you could order through the magazine...they also did little books on Elton John, Rod Stewart and a couple others. I still have some of my old Creem, Circus, and other rock mags with Zep on the cover...but not as much as I used to have and certainly not as much as you appear to have. But looking at your photos I am having major flashbacks, haha! Good luck with packing them up...fortunately everything seems to still be in good condition and not falling apart.

Okay, I just had a listen to Scorpio's "GET BACK", which is the audience tape of the June 28, 1972 concert in Tuscon, Arizona...the last gig of the 1972 U.S. tour. And while, sure, the sound quality isn't as good as "Burn That Candle" from the 6-25-72 LA Forum show...and definitely not the SBD from 6-27-72 Long Beach or the official release of the Long Beach/LA shows "How the West Was Won"...the performance itself is blazing hot! In fact, is it blasphemous of me to say that the Tuscon concert might even be better than the LA Forum/Long Beach Arena shows? The only negative is the shorter setlist...the acoustic set was cut drastically down to only one song and there weren't the crazy encores that we got treated to in LA. Only one encore in Tuscon: "Rock and Roll". Unless of course, there were more songs played at Tuscon but the taper didn't tape them or ran out of tape. But what is there is astounding...Immigrant Song to Since I've Been Loving You comes on a storm, with the band playing even more insanely intense than the LA shows. Dazed goes on for half an hour and I heard a couple additional jams added to the middle part that weren't in any of the LA versions. Whole Lotta Love also seems to be the longest of this tour...30 minutes. As crazed as the audience is cheering at the end it's a shame the band didn't do more encores...as on fire as the band is, The Ocean and Thank You would have been legendary versions for sure. Anyway, this is not meant to slight the 1972 LA/Long Beach shows...as they were fantastic concerts and deserved of official release. But I think there might be a tendancy for some people to annoint the LA stand as the highpoint of the tour and overlook the show that occured just a mere day after the Long Beach Arena gig...no rest for the wicked. If you haven't taken the time to search out the 1972 Tuscon show thinking it would be redundant with the LA/Long Beach shows released, I urge you to take the time to find it and give it a listen. See if you don't agree that as great as the performances on "HTWWW" are, there seems to be just an extra level of scary intensity to the Tuscon show. If only the Tuscon show had been multi-tracked!!!

I should change my name to Thread Killer as many threads that cease functioning once I post.

No Quarter was always one of the highlights of a Zeppelin concert and I always anticipated the band performing the song...and crossing my fingers that it hadn't been dropped from the setlist. My 5 favourite performances of No Quarter that I saw are: May 31, 1973 LA Forum March 12, 1975 Long Beach Arena March 27, 1975 LA Forum June 21, 1977 LA Forum June 23, 1977 LA Forum Other NQ's that I recommend from other shows: July 17, 1973 Seattle...that's 1973, not 1977. February 14, 1975 Nassau Coliseum...even better than the 2/12/75 MSG version...as heard on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre cd. March 5, 1975 Dallas March 19, 1975 Vancouver May 24 & 25 1975, Earl's Court July 24, 1979 Copenhagen...a little different, back to a more shorter succint style but still effective.

Thank you Knebby! I plan on doing what I always do on the 4th...WATCH WIMBLEDON!!! Strawberry wafffles and orange juice and coffee and Wimbledon...it comes on EARLY in the morning here in California...6am! Venus vs. Serena Saturday and Federer vs. Roddick Sunday...I'll be cheering for Federer over the Yank Roddick(sorry he beat Britain's best hope Andy Murray today Knebby). Then later on the 4th, we're going to see John Fogerty at the Hollywood Bowl w/the orchestra and firework show. Cheers! Ta!

It's just that LA will be a little less lovely without you in it, AA.