Led Zeppelin Freedom Hall Louisville, KY April 25, 1977 Rick Coate Master Tapes via JEMS recording gear: unknown JEMS 2020 Transfer: Scotch C-120 normal bias cassettes > Nakamichi RX-505 (azimuth adjustment) > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 24/96 capture > wav@24/96 > Adobe Audition (tracking, downsampling, deleting blank tape) > wav@16/44 > TLH > flac@16/44 01 Intro 02 The Song Remains The Same 03 The Rover > Sick Again 04 Nobody's Fault But Mine 05 In My Time of Dying 06 Since I've Been Loving You 07 No Quarter 08 Ten Years Gone 09 The Battle Of Evermore 10 Going To California 11 Black Country Woman/Bron-Y-Aur Stomp 12 Kashmir 13 Out On The Tiles > Moby Dick 14 Noise Solo 15 Achilles Last Stand 16 Stairway to Heaven 17 Rock and Roll Known Faults: -The Song Remains The Same: numerous cuts -Sick Again: numerous cuts -No Quarter: cuts off -The Battle of Evermore: cuts off -Going To California: cuts in -Bron-Y-Aur Stomp: cuts off -White Summer/Black Mountain Side: missing -Kashmir: cuts in -Over The Top: cut inside JEMS Notes: JEMS was honored to be asked to transfer this newly discovered second source for Led Zeppelin's April 25, 1977 concert in Louisville, KY. The 1977 tour seems to be the one where inexperienced tapers made one-off attempts to record shows. This new Louisville source fits the profile: low quality, 120-minute tape; recording a lot of the pre-show; audience chatter; many cut songs and issues throughout; distortion and signal overload due to low-end recorders. The Louisville taper hit a lot of snags, specifically calling out "The Song Remains The Same" and "Sick Again" as having "technical problems during recording" in the handwritten notes in the cassette j-card. Unfortunately, the issues are more wide ranging, with several missing chunks and dropouts, along with heavy distortion on louder material. That being said the acoustic set sounds especially good and close, and the distortion can be tuned out on some of the mid-volume material. The louder songs are more challenging. Still, a new Led Zeppelin tape is a new Led Zeppelin tape. I have never played a tape that needed such a radical adjustment in playback azimuth, which further supports the assumption that the taper was using a low-end portable deck and was likely experiencing tape alignment issues on the night. The azimuth correction moved the recording from useless to listenable despite the aforementioned issues. I did spend some time seeing if any restoration tools could help tame the distortion, but the results were never good enough to warrant the effort. Maybe someone else can attempt that. Given the level of detail in the handwritten notes and the fact that these are 120 minute tapes (which almost no one would use to copy a show onto), these are very likely the master tapes. The hand-labeling dates sometime after Bonham's death, as the notes dedicate the recording to the late drummer. Thanks to Glyn, June72/Vinnie, Ed, ledzepfilm, TAFCIA, Bert13, and Sticks of Fire from The Dogs of Doom for funding the liberation of this tape! New tape everyone. direct link can't be posted here, but it's up on dime and RO. Enjoy Edit: the tape isn't sourced from the master, but a first gen cassette.

Excellent nitpick as always. This one actually prompted me to watch the performance in full for the first time, and it really wasn't that bad. Other than some bad articulation here and there for Page, his playing is fairly solid and just dragged down by that awful phaser effect. Plant's hoarseness isn't pretty, but he still sounds better than just about any given show from 73 to 75. Also his stepping on Page's solo is quite ugly. Although it's clearly not just him, I'd say a majority of the more unsavory moments do come from Phil. he doesn't seem drunk or out of it, he just straight up doesn't know the songs. I mean, if I were about to go on stage in front of a sold out JFK stadium and there was another guy who actually knew how to play the songs, I'd say fuck it, sit it out and let the guy who knows how to play, play lmao.

hey man I don't blame him. It's like the whole campaign against cell phones at concerts, you're supposed to enjoy the show while your there, not on a tiny screen 3 months later. At the very least, we have a tape from the show and we should be grateful for that. Thanks for all the info on this you've been digging up, much appreciated

Any chance I could get a link to that 5/21 remaster? Thanks