Celebration Day - June 2, 1973, Kezar, San Francisco. Great show.

03 07 70 Montreux, Intimidator - ferocious show. It's hard to believe there's another early 1970 show that actually threatens to make the amazing Royal Albert Hall show seem merely "very good," but here it is.

SIBLY, Osaka 09 29 71

I remember having my dad drive me to the record store the day it came out so I could get it. 30 years - wow, I'm freakin' old. And I can say with total confidence that I have absolutely no idea what that video was about. I love that early '82-'84 MTV period. It's like some bizarre, surreal, wonderful aberration.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty good show, but I rarely find any real reason to listen to it over the superior 6-21, 6-23 and 6-25 shows. (I know some prefer 6-22, but since the days before and after are available in so much better sound quality, I skip that one.)

I haven't paid much attention to the 25th, as the tape sucks. But the 26th is available in very nice quality and is... a pretty mediocre show, unfortunately. The 28th is available as a soundboard and is... a pretty uninspired show too. The 30th is AUD only and is... a fantastic show! This often seems to be the way with their multi-night stands in '75 and '77. Whoever owns the soundboard tapes seems to have wisely (from their point of view) sold the weaker nights to the bootleggers first, presumably to keep demand high and the prices up. I suppose eventually the best nights will come out: Uniondale Feb 13 '75 (though the existing Feb 14 sbd is quite a good show too); Seattle March 21 '75; Landover May 30 '77; and so on. The March 20 '75 Vancouver Show is one of the first of these, with the good-but-not-as-good March 19 show having been released first.

Great show! The existing source is an overloaded AUD tape, but it's actually quite listenable, and the overload makes some of the performances (like In My Time of Dying) sound really ferocious. If anyone's looking to check this performance out, don't be scared off by the distortion on the first song or two. The tape is overloaded throughout, but it clears up a lot after the first 5-10 minutes.

Offenburg 03 24 73 - holy sh*t!

In My Time of Dying - Landover 5 30 77

Same here - Sick Again, Snowblind, 03 20 75

Of the shows Armani mentioned, I'd say Royal Albert Hall 1970 (they played there in '69 but there are no known tapes), Earls Court 1975, and L.A. June 1977 are the most highly regarded. Seattle '77 is very long and interesting in some respects, but far from one of their best shows. Parts of it are a train wreck. I also really like the July '73 NYC "The Song Remains the Same" shows - but again, not their best. In addition to these, I agree with the previous commenters that the Europe '73 tour was among their strongest. Southampton sounds great but Plant's voice is a mess, and the performance is a little uneven (although the HMMT-Communication Breakdown encore - oh my!). The UK and continental shows in March, however, are probably the strongest. Offenburg (as Wolfman says) is considered the best, but I think Essen and Vienna are pretty terrific too. And then there's Japan 1971 - legendary, and deservedly so. As for the single best performance, that's nearly impossible to answer, because the band sounded so different, and played such different sets, in different eras. It's somewhat arbitrary, but I would probably rule out shows that didn't feature a full, long set (so that rules out almost everything before 1970), and that didn't include any acoustic numbers (which rules out the 1975 U.S. tour). I'd also rule out anything in '79 or '80 because I can think of only one performance (07 24 79 Copenhagen) that, as a whole, could rival their best performances in any other era. So for a Top Five performances, I'd say you could start narrowing things down as follows: (1) The 09-04-1970 LA "Blueberry Hill" show (2) The 06 25 or 27 LA/Long Beach "How the West Was Won" shows (3) Your favorite European date from March '73 (4) Your favorite Earls Court show (IMHO either May 24 or 25) (5) Your favorite June '77 L.A. Show (Most folks seem to think 06 21, 22 or 23 is the best)

Cool - nice performance. Thanks for the link!

Landover 05 30 77. Best of the '77 MD run of shows.

Communication Breakdown, Milwaukee, 07 25 69