I admit as much as I love Prog I'd more or less written ELP as a bunch of self indulgent instrumental wankery for decades until I decided to do the work on Freezer's March 1 1974 Baton Rouge recording (cleaning up the sound, patching together two different versions of his recording to get the complete show- I put it up at Trader's Den as part of my "Freezer Flood" there in June) and actually listened to the thing. Those three lunatics could fuckin' play, that's for sure, probably overplay, even, with good and bad results. "Tarkus" is a fucking brilliant piece, probably my favourite of theirs. All respect to the departed Greg Lake, though, I have no use for his wide eyed balladeering...Keith Emerson, though, was a stoned goddamn genius. Palmer comes across like a less precise Neil Peart sometimes. I like 'em, just keep 'em off of Love Beach...😅

I'm probably as big a Stones nut as I am Zeppelin (okay, bigger, probably- you never forget yer first love, and mine was the Stones) but even I will concede throughout the 1970's Zeppelin trumped the Stones in just about every way. And the Stones knew it...and the professional jealousy! Whoo!😅 IMO the only Stones LPs from the 70's on par with Zeppelin are my exalted Exile and arguably Sticky Fingers. I mean, It's Only Rock And Roll?😅 Fuckin' In Through The Out Door is better than that, even, I reckon IORR to be the Stones' worst album...

You'd think so, but it doesn't appear to be the case- both of his June 11 and 14th recordings crap out after "Kashmir". Like Strider said (and myself as well in the past), it's Led fucking Zeppelin, you KNOW they're gonna be doing at least three hours on a good night. Still, of all the audience tapes available from the six MSG '77 shows, those two recordings are probably the best, followed by one of the June 10 alternate sources. The rest are pretty fair to middlin', unfortunately. Which, like I say, pains me whenever I listen to one of the Pink Floyd MSG '77 shows or Emerson, Lake and Palmer July 8 with the orchestra: "Goddamn, why couldn't these guys have taped at least one of the six Zeppelin shows as well?"

Artie and his crowd of Noo Yawk yahoos taped the June 7th and 10th shows at the very least (the alternates to the commonly circulating audience sources). Not sure if they're the same loudmouths who taped the June 8 alternate source as well, but yeah, they hit the Garden in '77 for good or ill. Truth be told I've never cared for the quality of their recordings or the endless yammering (though, to be fair, they probably weren't taping these shows for our benefit, particularly fourty odd years down the road). Too bad none of the REALLY GOOD New York area tapers (such as the guys who taped Pink Floyd and ELP that July) deigned to tape the Zeppelin shows that year. Or even the "Lostbrook" guy... Indeed. Keeping the Noise Solo (and "White Summer" for that matter) under ten minutes at any given show is optimal. The theramin freakouts are the only parts of the Noise Solos I enjoy...by which I mean, "listen to".

Pretty sure it is, both recordings sound pretty similar- probably the same taper, gear, seating etc. But one C90 ain't gonna cut it for taping Zeppelin, hence why both tapes share the same level of incompleteness...

The recording up to "Kashmir" for June 11 is awesome, though, probably the best MSG '77 recording. I want to say it's the same guy who taped June 14th, which is equally incomplete.

Well, April 28 takes the #1 spot, so...if pressed Fort Worth would probably by #6 on the top list. First performances of "Over The Hills" and "Heartbreaker" for the tour. Really, it's a tossup for me between the June 10, 11 and 13th as my favourite MSG '77 show. Gave July 24 Oakland a listen this weekend- and no, it's not a bad show for a performance more or less given under duress. The band rose to the occasion, certainly a better performance the day before. Also helps that the main audience source sounds damned good as well.

Personal preferences, of course, but here's my top five best and worst of '77: BEST: Cleveland, April 28 New York, June 10 L.A. June 22 Birmingham May 18 Chicago April 10 WORST: Tempe, July 20 Landover, May 28 Louisville, April 25 Chicago, April 9 Oklahoma City, April 3 "Best" meaning the least amount of fuckups, pointlessly self indulgent playing, sloppiness etc. The best shows tended to be the ones where they simply kept their heads down and focused on giving a good, understated performance without a lot of additional wankery. "Worst" coming down to either the condition of the band, technical issues or rowdy audiences affecting the performance.

June 22 is a killer show no matter how you slice it. Song for song, it arguably is a better performance than the 21st. The goddamn bootleg is one designed for "bootleg ears", but if you got the forgiving ears it is a rewarding listen. Bonham is kicking ass and taking names on the night, that's for fuckin' sure! June 22 is the one L.A. '77 show where I want the fucking soundboard. Shit, that's right, my bad😅

"Black Dog" was rumoured to have been played at a couple of other '77 shows but, as Strider points out, the only other show where BD has been more or less confirmed to have been played was in Dallas. Now, where's the Dallas tape?! 😂

When I'm cleaning up old audience tapes I swear by Sound Forge 13 and Audacity. Sometimes it's easier to do than others. Patching and editing sources can be a time consuming, monotonous endeavor. Of course in the end it's all worth it if you end up with something like "the definitive version" of a given show...and there's always the chance of having yer work bootlegged, which has happened to myself and a few other of the amateur audio engineers here...shit, look at Moonchild making a fortune (as it were) off of Winston's work😆 You know the Pride Of Chelsea Tempe '77 boot? Yeah, they used my 'remaster' for that one...what the fuck, I don't care, IMO I made the goddamn show listenable and, as a result, the performance managed to undergo a bit of reappraisal. Oddly enough probably the best work I think I did on an audience recording was the ELP Baton Rouge '74 show I put up over at Trader's Den when I did my little "Freezer Flood" there about a month back...there were two different versions of Freezer's tape circulating at that point, and both had audio issues- one was hissy as hell and had a couple of cuts in it (I suspect said cuts were how Freezer 'marked' that version) and the other, though less hissy, had an audible warble (tape issues of some kind or another) throughout, yet it was complete, so I used that to patch the other source once I'd taken some of the overriding hiss out of it (thank god for whoever invented the "Low Pass Filter".) Ended up sounding good, if I do say so myself, I figure I did justice to the recording and, given that I really wan't a big Emerson, Lake and Palmer fan before that I managed to gain a bit of an appreciation for those three lunatics as well after hearing the thing so many times...

Ah, kinda like how "All Right Now" and "Jumping Jack Flash" bleed through "Stairway" on the Tempe '77 audience tape!😄 You know, all these years I've never upgraded my copy of Destroyer from my old CDRs which I'm sure are sourced from the old vinyl versions...I've heard the "Master Reels" source and still prefer the version I have, 'cos it sounds like an actual live album and not a dry soundboard tape for some reason...

It's a passionate delivery of the tune, that's for sure!😁 Well, if you put a gun to my head the Vancouver gigs in March aside, the January '75 shows are my favourite part of the tour- oddly enough, Plant's shot voice -reminiscent of George Harrison on his '74 tour some nights- bugs me more than Page's iffy fingering, but, as with George, I can live with it😄. As far as early '77 goes, once they finally work out all the kinks over the four nights in Chicago, the tour is off and running. The April 10 Chicago performance is probably the first '77 gig that is fully up to their normal standard and it gets better from there. I have the St Louis '75 audience tape around here somewhere, and it's not bad. If the same guys who taped Zeppelin in '75 taped them in '77 it would have been a decent recording. But with those missing '77 tapes we simply don't have enough to go on in regards to how good (or bad) the performances were. I mean, Baton Rouge could be a shite performance like Houston and not a barnstormer like Birmingham for all we know...there doesn't even seem to be a helluva lot in the way of eyewitness accounts for those shows, for a couple we don't even have the fucking setlists 100% pinned down (i.e. "Black Dog" being an unconfirmed encore at a couple of the shows, Dallas and Minneapolis if memory serves)

"Probably"? No question about it- when the bottle hit Pagey's guitar after "TYG" they nearly called it a night. Check some of the pix in this thread- Robert was pissed, all right...

Berlin 7-7-80 was the first soundboard I heard, taped from a friend, and the first live Zeppelin I heard outside of the "Song Remains The Same" soundtrack, back in the mid eighties thereabouts. They almost sounded like two completely different bands...😆

Didja catch hearing Page snarl "Fuck off!" after "Ten Years Gone" when the thrown bottle hit his guitar? They nearly stopped the show for good at that point, but cooler heads prevailed. IMO the reason it sounds like a sloppy show -hell, even Jonesy makes a rare mistake here and there- is because the band was distracted by the crazy crowd. Which was probably par for the course in those days, but the Louisville audience seems a little crazier than usual. That may also explain the short and to the point "Noise" and drum solos on the night as well.

I'm much more of a '77 guy than a '75 guy but 1975 isn't without its charms even though IMO a) the setlist isn't perfect and b) the tedium can set in in the last third of some of them shows pretty easy. As I've said many times before I would have preferred if they'd kept "Wanton Song" and "How Many More Times" (as opposed to D & C) in the set. My top five 1975 performances are probably: Vancouver March 19th (love the jazzy "No Quarter", not a fan of the smuttier than usual Plantations on the night), Philly February 8 (as one review or another said, "This show doesn't crawl, it runs!"- a nice, understated performance), Detroit January 31 (for similar reasons as the Philly show plus we've still got Wanton and HMMT in there), Baton Rouge February 28 (mainly on the basis of the quality of Freezer's audience tape plus "No Quarter" kicks ass on the night) and Chicago January 22 (though truth be told I like both of the available Chi '75 shows- where the hell is the complete 21st recording???!!!) Admittedly I'm not a big fan of the (IMO) overblown L.A. and Earls Court gigs. THAT'S where I find the tedium can really set in...

Page being disingenuous about something...nope, Jimmy never does that!😅 Where are the Munich and Vienna 1980 soundboards, Jimmy?

Yep, Millard's antipathy for the bootleggers rivalled Freezer's. Two peas in a pod...fortunately their tapes are good enough to transcend whatever paranoias they might have had about their recordings getting out.

The Louisville recording is alright, I suppose, coulda been a lot worse, too bad it's not a better performance...

Just the same, live music torrent sites such as The Traders Den or Dimeadozen are free to join and those places are where all the action is. Fuck buying a Moonchild boot when you can log onto Dime or the Den and download the goddamn show for free in about three minutes. Yes, I'm well aware that in some cases in order for the show to appear online somebody has to pony up the dough for the fucking Silver boot CD and upload it, but these days, the best source recordings for a given performance are being circulated online for free exclusively and bypassing the bootleggers altogether. The hell of it is, the JEMS guys who are putting out these Millard Masters know goddamn well the recordings are going to be bootlegged, and are putting them out anyway.

"Bootleg Ears" is a term made with most of the '77 first leg audience recordings in mind. The second Cleveland gig and Cincinatti are the only really decent sounding audience tapes from the first leg. Other than April 7th the Chicago shows are a rough listen, same with April 23 in Atlanta.

With this new batch of "Millard Masters" coming out lately, you just know these bootlegging bastards are going insane waiting for the MASTER copies of Millard's Zep recordings to appear online. The Long Beach Millard Master indeed appeared on Dime last weekend and one of these Moonchild motherfuckers was probably first in the queue over there downloading it gratis. And now selling it at thirty bucks a pop. The guys who are putting out these Millard masters (the good people at JEMS, I believe) should save Mike's Zep tapes for last...

If the OKC show was that rusty, imagine what opening night in Dallas musta have been like... Be nice if a couple more recordings popped up for a couple of them early '77 gigs- five of the missing seven '77 recordings date from the first leg of the tour (Dallas, Minneapolis, St Paul, St Louis, Indianapolis, and a recording exists for Indy)

April 19th (the NQ from the second Cincinatti gig doesn't circulate). John Paul Jones sorta kinda tries playing "Lady Madonna" by The Beatles at the end of the "Boogie Jam" section.