I don't blame you for skipping Landover. The May 30th show is pretty darn good, and the first show on May 25th is solid (although nothing spectacular) by 77 standards. But the middle two are just awful in my opinion. Sluggish, sloppy and disjointed as hell. Probably my two least favorite Zeppelin performances by a good margin. I would recommend the last show though, if you're gonna do any of the four. You can tell they were determined to put on a good show to finish out the run. Definitely a high point of the tour imho.

I'm glad to hear that this show holds up upon closer inspection. Part of the reason I love this show is the recording. It's not the best tape by any means, but the sound is thick and massive and I love it so much. I've always wondered if the situation were reversed and this show had a soundboard and 4/27 had this recording, would they still be seen in the same light? I'm not sure, but regardless, this is one hell of a show. What are you tackling next? Landover, I assume? Or perhaps Fort Worth?

I've uploaded the Bluecongo matrix of Zurich 1980 along with a Westwood One FM radio broadcast of several tracks from it. One of my favorite 1980 shows!

Little late here, but my go to for this show is the Cobra Premium release. It uses a different main source from the more famous TMoQ and Rubber Dubber ones and, imho, it's the best in terms of a good balance of atmosphere and clarity. If I'm not mistaken, it was the version used for this upload of the show:

I've always been fond of the Birmingham show. Apart from the mishaps in No Quarter and Ten Years Gone, I always thought it was a very solid show. Not on par with the LA run, but definitely a very good show that always seems to get overlooked for some reason. Another good review. I look forward to whichever show you do next.

Unfortunately there is only one tape from this show that is currently circulating, and it sounds pretty crappy. If there is a remastered version out there, I doubt it's much of an improvement considering what we have to work with is pretty lackluster.

The 11th has a pretty good audience recording, although it only lasts through Kashmir. Not quite to the level of the Millard tapes, but definitely not far off either. I do wonder how the NY run would stack up against the LA run if the recording quality were the same across all shows. I favor the LA shows, but I have to wonder if that's partly bias because of the superior overall sound.

The 26th just features both Bonzo and Page having an off night. Bonzo joins Jones during No Quarter a little too early, and he also starts playing Achilles Last Stand too early. The 28th is similar. Personally, I think the 28th is the worse of the two nights, but they're pretty similar. Honestly, those two shows are two of my least favorite Zeppelin gigs. Three hours of sludgy sloppiness with the whole band dragging at a snail's pace.

I did another compilation, this time of the Summer 1970 US Tour. Check it out. More info is in the video description:

My favorite Jimmy Page performance. He's so incredibly fast and fluid!

I'd tend to agree re LA being the better run overall, but they're pretty damn close imho. I can PM you with some recommended versions of shows to get if you want. Not saying you have to do all of them of course, but they can just be ideas for what you can do next.

Been enjoying your reviews of these shows. I know you have one more to go, but how do you think the NY shows compare with the LA shows as a whole? The only surprise to me was that you didn't like No Quarter from the June 11th show. That's actually one of my favorites. In fact, Nutrocker, the guru of the 1977 tour who sadly seems to have become inactive, said that that was his favorite version of the whole tour. Idk, maybe I need to pay more attention to Jimmy's playing, but it sounds pretty solid to me. What do you plan to do after you finish the NY run? To quote Plant, are you taking requests?

I'm surprised to see some people talk about how Bonham suffered some sort of decline or was a mess on this tour. I'm no drummer, but apart from San Diego and one or two of the Landover shows, I don't see it. In fact, I think he carried the band on this tour, even more so than Robert. He took mediocre performances like Houston or Seattle and almost made them must hears based on his playing alone. Sure, one could argue he was overplaying, perhaps to cover for Page, and maybe that's not their thing, but I LOVE it. I'm honestly blown away by his playing on this tour every single time I listen to it. The LA shows get a lot of the attention, but there's plenty of other worthy performances like Fort Worth, Cleveland (more so the 2nd show), Birmingham, and the NY shows, and a large part of that is due to Bonzo. Sure, I will agree Page wasn't at his peak on this tour, but there's only a few gigs from him that I would classify as disasters. And he still had great moments, they were just fewer and farther between. I'm sorry, but I don't hear any evidence of a decline in Bonzo's playing ability. In fact, I'm agreement with a few other users: I think this was his greatest tour ever.

I'd be down with having the soundboards for 6/22 and 6/26, the two non-Millard shows. Then someone like Liriodendron, Sue Dounim, or North_Bridge could remaster them to make them sound as good as possible. Beyond that, I honestly agree. The Millard tapes are so good as is.

All of the Millard LA tapes (6/21, 6/23, 6/25, and 6/27) sound phenomenal and are worth having. The 4/28 Cleveland and 6/11 New York audience recordings are pretty good as well. Unfortunately, the 1977 soundboards are pretty flat and dry in comparison to the 75 soundboards. This is because they were taped on cassette as opposed to reel to reel (as memory serves). 5/22 Fort Worth and 5/30 Landover are probably the best sounding ones. I'd go for remasters of the soundboards from people like Liriodendron, North_Bridge, and Sue Dounim. They do a good job at getting as much as they can out of those tapes. Check out Lirio's remaster of 5/30 as a for instance:

It's amazing how much 8mm footage there is of this show. Almost 18 minutes worth!

Special thanks to Liriodendron for his outstanding work on this compilation. Sounds phenomenal!

The one from TSRTS is probably my favorite overall. All the elements work perfectly. If it has to be a single performance, the one from Seattle 73 is indeed great. Certainly the most unique version.

Thanks to Bluecongo for his outstanding matrix of this show!