Oh yeah, June 27 isn't a perfect show by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy it- you pretty much nailed all the high points. Hell, I even listened to the goddamn 26 minute Noise Solo yesterday and I usually skip those As for the Year Of Led Zeppelin guy, I do sorta have to call into question his objectivity when he considers 4/27 a must hear buy not 4/28, which is easily one of the best shows of the tour...

Gave June 27 a listen this morning while doing a massive clean on the house...looking forward to yer recollections on that show, Strider- it's my favourite of the L.A. '77 run.

By all means, continue! Busted out my old For Badgeholders Only vinyl for the 40th yesterday...you can't deny that it's a classic performance and a classic recording.

As far as I'm concerned soundboards for the June 21/23/25/27 shows would only really be useful for matrixing purposes with Millard's audience tapes.

^^^ Excellent recollection, Strider. To answer a couple of yer questions: The first few gigs of the tour are kinda shaky. Dunno about Dallas, 'cos there's no circulating recording, but Oklahoma City and the first night in Chicago have a bit of a "live rehearsal" vibe to them- clearly they were still working out some of the kinks. Truth be told, simply based on the mediocre audience tapes fourty years later it's hard to tell how much of a hash -if any- they made of "Nobody's Fault But Mine". We do know that on the April 9th Chicago show -the one where Jimmy goes down with 'gastroentritis'- he starts into "Since I've Been Loving You" after "Sick Again", forgetting all about "Nobody's Fault..." until Plant reminds him. Been a while since I've heard that show but I seem to recall they do fuck up the song here and there. As for "Heartbreaker", it was played four times: June 10, 11 and 13th in New York and the June 21 L.A. show. You probably witnessed the best one, and I am still convinced that Page only busted it out to shut up the guy in the audience who kept yelling for it (they must have been able to hear that guy from the stage ) Another thing I'm convinced of about the June 21 show was that Neil Young was in attendance (makes sense considering Neil was a Zeppelin fan). I base that on the numerous Neil Young/CSNY references Plant makes during the acoustic set, even ad-libbing "Well, Neil?!" during "Black Country Woman".

I don't think we wanna know how many tapes are still out there. I've said it before: if you think hoarding a tape of a fourty-odd year old Led Zeppelin concert that maybe 0.0000001% of the population cares about is gonna make you Grand Poohbah Of All Creation, yeah, you do have a mental issue or two to get sorted out.

Black And Blue is great, but it would have been so much better if "Slave" and "Worried About You" (both recorded at those sessions) were on there in place of, say, "Cherry Oh Baby" and "Fool To Cry".

He could have been pulling my chain, I don't know. Knowing the guy is a total fucking con man/bullshit artist I took it all with a grain of salt. I don't think he knew that I knew who he was. I doubt at this late date that Indy '77 will come out, but fuck it. "You don't know who we are, but we know who you are!" - Robert De Niro, Goodfellas

Harbaugh refused to make things right in the "Freezer's Revenge" saga because he didn't want to give up the identity of who made it public that Freezer's NOLA audience tapes were indeed circulating- he was afraid if he named names it would fuck up his trading status with them. He even admitted as much in the discussion and was rightly smacked down by Freezer and others. Apparently Freezer did circulate his '71 NOLA recording to some people but he'd always said that the recording wasn't up to his standard. If it sounds like shit, that might also factor into why it hasn't circulated. That said, I've heard his 1971 NOLA Allman Brothers recording, which is damned fine- if the Zep recording didn't sound like that... When Harbaugh PM'd me over at RO about the Indianapolis '77 recording, no, he didn't tease me with a sample or anything, just claimed that the discs were "sitting in his garage rotting away" and that the performance or the sound quality really "wasn't anything special". Pure taunting and teasing just the same, the guy's a fucking asshole. I do believe in one discussion or another here a few years back I posted the entire conversation Harbaugh and I had. It pisses me off to this day, to be honest, which sounds fucking stupid 'cos in this day and age there are a helluva lot more important things to be angry about than a hoarded 1977 Led Zeppelin recording, but just the same...

You must have yer suspicions as to who's behind that label, I'd imagine... Congrats, Sue- you just got one hell of an endorsement!

I have never seen the amount of back stabbing, double dealing all around bad craziness among other bands' trading circles like I have in the Zeppelin community. It's no fucking wonder why the Zep trading community has such a bad name, though to be fair it's getting better. Keep in mind that a lot of this insanity surrounding Freezer's tapes happened ten years ago or more, a lot of the troublemakers have been outed and their names are rightfully mud as a result. Other bands circles -Pink Floyd comes to mind- can get a little bitchy at times but nothing like what goes on in the Zeppelin community. Reading that "Freezer's Revenge" discussion is enough to sour a collector/trader on the whole goddamn hobby. The thing is, by selling those kids his '73 NOLA master tapes Freezer knew exactly what he doing, he did it deliberately and he did it to prove a point, that some of these Zep traders who thought they were big wheels within the community had no integrity whatsoever.

Knowing the Zeppelin/bootleg communities as you do, Andy, surely you knew that it was inevitable at some point that some asshole was gonna start making money off yer work, though, right? Hell, i'm surprised it's actually taken so long, given that your versions of the L.A. '77 shows are pretty much the definitive versions. Christ, it's only taken them, what, ten years? At least these Moonchild guys aren't pulling the same crap "labels" like Beelzebub or TCOLZ (remember them? ) did by claiming they didn't get their recordings from the internet... It'll happen, Sue, bank on it. I'm nowhere near as prodigious a remasterer as yerself or Andy Winston, but I'm damned sure that my Tempe '77 remaster has been booted, as the Pride Of Chelsea bootleg. The alternate New York '77 recordings I patched and cleaned up and shared or even that third source of the Birmingham '77 show I did a few years ago, not so much...difference is I actually made the Tempe recording listenable, for lack of a better term With that Birmingham recording -and I remember saying it at the time- they could paste "NOT FOR SALE!" all over the thing (even titling the project that) until yer blue in the face and if some motherfucker was gonna download it and then sell it if they felt so inclined, they were gonna download it and sell it. Rule number one: once it's out there, it's out there, people are going to do whatever they want with the recording no matter what the principals involved say.

When Freezer gave the 1977 Baton Rouge show to the head of the Traders Den site in 2008, he gave her the 1971 show as well. Nine years later, we're still waiting... The Indianapolis '77 show also exists. The dumbass architect behind the whole "Freezer's Revenge" fiasco, a fellow by the name of Adam Harbaugh (aka "Javit" at the Royal Orleans site) claimed to be hoarding it and taunted me with a few private messages at RO about it years ago. That was the end of me at the Hotel because I decided to call him out publicly about it.

I'd love a soundboard for the April 28th show, best show of the tour IMO. I'd bet fifty bucks that there's a soundboard for the Greensboro show. We may get it one o' these years... 4/28/77 would be a pure-D bitch to matrix...there's just too many cuts in between the songs eliminating most of the Plantations on the audience tape. Plus, the ending of "No Quarter" is pretty cut up as well. I've heard that "Master reel" copy of the Destroyer soundboard that circulates- as I recall it's even dryer sounding than the other '77 soundboards, some of which almost have a "live in the studio" kinda feel. What I'd like to know is why the copy of Destroyer I've had for about thirty years sounds like an actual professionally recorded live album (no "dry" sound at all); you can hear the audience loud and clear and utterly unlike any of the other '77 board tapes. These days I rather suspect that my copy was originally sourced from the old vinyl version, but if so than that vinyl version was complete minus the cuts in "TSRTS", "No Quarter", "White Summer" and "Rock And Roll" common to all the Destroyer versions.

Close- AA was the guy who told the bootleggers (the now defunct TCOLZ label) Freezer's Baton Rouge '77 recording might be coming out. If AA wasn't involved -especially given the way he endlessly shilled for them- with that label somehow then I'm the fuckin' Pope. The guy may keep a comprehensive website but he's trickier than a fuckin' robber's dog. Wouldn't trust the motherfucker any further than I could throw him, and I ain't the only one. They rode him outta town on a goddamn rail over at RO and I am proud to have been a part of that.

Argenteum Astrum is hardly the most trustworthy source in Zeppelin collector's circles...just sayin'

Yeah, man, i just stumbled across this discussion and like everyone else I'm waiting for you to finish...hope you don't mind if I live vicariously through the L.A. '77 shows through yer eyes, Strider!

When it comes to the 1980 tour "Trampled Under Foot" is generally considered to be the most consistently well played song of any given show. Just about every version is a highlight of the tour.

What makes me nervous is that we still have two days left in this horrible year for celebrity deaths to go...isn't the Grim Reaper tired yet?! Fuckin' hell! Mind ya, I am fully aware that the Reaper's work is only going to accelerate over the next few years, but it's never the ones you expect to go that go, know what I mean? Of all the prominent people who died this year I think the only one that really wasn't a shock to me was bleedin' Castro...

I can just imagine Page perusing the Zeppelin bootleg section in a store in Tokyo and spotting this: "Hmm...Tempe 1977. I don't remember this show at all, maybe I should give it a listen!"

The new Stones album, Blue And Lonesome, is fucking awesome. Total blues, they might as well be back at Chess Studios in 1964. Between his singing and harmonica playing, Mick Jagger is totally the star here, though Keith and Ronnie (and Clapton) get in some tasty guitar licks here and there as well. We always say the latest Stones album, deserving or not, is the best "since Exile/Some Girls/Tattoo You" but Blue and Lonesome really is. They even do "I Can't Quit You Baby" and the Stones' version gives Zeppelin's a run for it's money. If you are a Stones fan, Blue And Lonesome is essential.

Not yet...

Correct, that is why the quality of the recording improves every so often. Too bad it's such a shitty sounding tape, there's a damned good performance under all that distortion, but, not unlike the April 10 Chicago show (another pretty bad recording) every time I want to listen to it, I can only get through about three songs before switching to something that sounds decent. I am hoping a soundboard recording exists for Atlanta.

Whaddya expect, they were in Vancouver!