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TSRTS as an opening number


snapper

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I've never particularly liked TSRTS as a show starting song. It always felt like it was a bit

too much too soon, plus its practically an instrumental, and quite long.

And, maybe as a result of playing such a high energy and complex song first,

it wound up being played too damn fast, which is understandable.

It always sounds rushed, to me.

I loved the relaxed vibe of Rock n Roll and thought GTBT was a great choice to open with

at the 02 and totally worked.

This is just my opinion.

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I've never particularly liked TSRTS as a show starting song. It always felt like it was a bit

too much too soon, plus its practically an instrumental, and quite long.

And, maybe as a result of playing such a high energy and complex song first,

it wound up being played too damn fast, which is understandable.

It always sounds rushed, to me.

I loved the relaxed vibe of Rock n Roll and thought GTBT was a great choice to open with

at the 02 and totally worked.

This is just my opinion.

I always felt it worked well,high energy,aggressive,rocking,good stuff,it really works as an opening to HOTH,but I don't think it's an ideal opener by any means,R&R,GTBT,Immigrant Song,You Shook Me,We're Gonna Groove,all better openers.

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In 1977 I expected Rock and Roll at the starting gate. Then I saw Page with the doubleneck and thought, "They can't be opening with Stairway to Heaven!" It had been four years since I'd seen them live and had long forgotten he used it on TSRTS too. When they cranked it up I was caught offguard and thought, "They can't be opening with that either." When the song finished and Pagey played the opening chords of The Rover the thought they couldn't use that as a second song had barely crossed my mind before they shifted to Sick Again. "What are they doing playing the last song on Physical Graffiti as their second number?" I wondered, more than a little blown away. By the time Pant and Page swung into the intro of Nobody's Fault But Mine I had relaxed enough to expect the unexpected. And so it went, for another two and a half hours.

Thanks for jarring that memory loose.

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TSRTS is my favorite opener of them all. Yes, it's in your face but it gets everyone, including the band, into a state of frenzy for the next "three hours of lunacy."

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I've never particularly liked TSRTS as a show starting song. It always felt like it was a bit

too much too soon, plus its practically an instrumental, and quite long.

And, maybe as a result of playing such a high energy and complex song first,

it wound up being played too damn fast, which is understandable.

It always sounds rushed, to me.

I loved the relaxed vibe of Rock n Roll and thought GTBT was a great choice to open with

at the 02 and totally worked.

This is just my opinion.

Oh, I disagree completely...... I think that TSRTS is a PERFECT Led Zeppelin opener for a tour !

It highlights the main star of the show, JP !

I hate when bands start off with a pissy number.

I remember seeing Heart for the first time.... and I think they opened with an acoustic song.

Boy, I expected different from that rocking band!

Van Halen used to open with "On Fire".... one of the weaker songs. by comparison to the other songs from their first album !

IMO, Zeppelin concerts STARTED with the energy that a lot of other lesser bands climaxed their shows with!

It would have blown if the '77 tour had started with Rock'n'Roll. That was good for '73 and '75, but '77 needed something different.

Other great Zeppelin openers have been "We're Gonna Groove", "Train Kept A Rollin'", and "Heartbreaker"...

ZEPPELIN STARTS STRONG ---- and I like it like that !!!!!!

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Oh, I disagree completely...... I think that TSRTS is a PERFECT Led Zeppelin opener for a tour !

It highlights the main star of the show, JP !

Other great Zeppelin openers have been "We're Gonna Groove", "Train Kept A Rollin'", and "Heartbreaker"...

ZEPPELIN STARTS STRONG ---- and I like it like that !!!!!!

Didn't they open a show with Moby Dick once when Jones left his bass at the hotel? Don't remember Heartbreaker as a first salvo. What year/tour was that, Rover?

Excuse my being vulgar, but Bonzo was the star of the show. :P

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It is fair to say that any live version of any studio track by any band will have more energy on the stage than the studio. Usually the tempo is accelerated live. Playing for appreciative audiences imbues more oomph to a song than an engineer saying through the glass: "Let me reset the click for take 18, after we'll break for lunch."

Contrast the studio rendition of In The Evening with the one performed on the first Knebworth date; the song is slightly faster live and the band plays a lot more fills. Same goes for The Ocean on Houses of the Holy as opposed to The Ocean played with great abandon on How The West Was Won.

Having two versions of one song is only bettered by having three. :D

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Didn't they open a show with Moby Dick once when Jones left his bass at the hotel? Don't remember Heartbreaker as a first salvo. What year/tour was that, Rover?

Excuse my being vulgar, but Bonzo was the star of the show. :P

Bonzo... would be the Heart & Soul of the show ! ! ! !

HB was played as the opener the first time I ever saw Zeppelin live in August of 1970 in Ft. Worth at the Convention Center Arena. I gues word had gotten out to the boys that HB was my favorite Zeppelin song. :D

Zeppelin also did HB as the 2nd encore at the first Dallas show of 1975. The place went flippin' nuts when that happened!! :D:D

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I totally disagree. I can just imagine Page doing his final tuning up, and then he strums that beginning note, guitar held aloft in the air. And then running all over the stage like a madman whilst playing the song, it would be unbelievably epic.

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TSRTS is my favorite opener of them all. Yes, it's in your face but it gets everyone, including the band, into a state of frenzy for the next "three hours of lunacy."

....absolutely, TSRTS sets the mood for the "festivities" to come....Page must play his Guitar, for that matter any other number, to set the mood......... :D

....With deepest respect to the Band, Led Zeppelin is Page's greatest Creation, The Honor to strike a chord belongs to Him to open any show..... :D :D

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I liked TSRTS as an opener although Jimmy constantly banging on that opening chord before the band start the show, to me, killed the momentum. Had there been complete silence and then they just belted out the song, the effect would have been more stunning...

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I always thought The Lemon Song would have made a kick ass opener.

I think the Wanton Song would have been a killer opening to a Zeppelin concert.

That song is so wicked and has such an urgency its frightening,

one of their heaviest and most compact tunes ever.

I can't understand why they dropped it from the 75' setlist after just a few shows,

and never touched it again.... wonder what the problem was?

Page & Plant tore the Wanton Song up on their 98' tour, big time.

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I think the Wanton Song would have been a killer opening to a Zeppelin concert.

That song is so wicked and has such an urgency its frightening,

one of their heaviest and most compact tunes ever.

I can't understand why they dropped it from the 75' setlist after just a few shows,

and never touched it again.... wonder what the problem was?

Page & Plant tore the Wanton Song up on their 98' tour, big time.

They did that in '95 already, and it kicked ass indeed.

As far as the topig, I love TSRTS as an opener, a straight attack that gets you by the nuts from the first second on.

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Go to the video archives in the official forum, click on Birmingham 1977. The crowd is about as loud as the band. Check the animation of Page and Plant onstage. This is as fucking a kick ass opener as they get.They didn't shoot their wad too early in the grand scheme with this epic song.Had it segued into the Rain Song this early, the mood would have clearly changed. But to delve into the intro of The Rover,then go full speed ahead into Sick Again...sheer brilliance. Acknowledge the crowd after Sick Again.This set a solid foundation for the rest of the evening. A most excellent way to kick off the show!!!

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I don't like it as much as an opener, first, it was far too complex and even though it was fast it went on wandering for about 5 minutes every gig to me. And with so many solos and changes etc, I often loose myself in it especially considering it's status as an opening number. But the worst thing to it is that often Page would mess up this son esp 77 before getting straight on and playing nicely for the rest of the gig. So yeah, I think along with TYG it was the roughest number on the 77 set list. But the good thing is that Bonzo basically saved this number with some incredible, frantic high speed drumming.

But among them 21/06/77 is as good as it got as an opener.

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Go to the video archives in the official forum, click on Birmingham 1977. The crowd is about as loud as the band. Check the animation of Page and Plant onstage. This is as fucking a kick ass opener as they get.They didn't shoot their wad too early in the grand scheme with this epic song.Had it segued into the Rain Song this early, the mood would have clearly changed. But to delve into the intro of The Rover,then go full speed ahead into Sick Again...sheer brilliance. Acknowledge the crowd after Sick Again.This set a solid foundation for the rest of the evening. A most excellent way to kick off the show!!!

Perfect description.

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Probably the most logical reason for TSRTS being the opening, besides it being awesome to open a show with, is that it was a fairly easy song for Plant to get going. He can warm up his chops far more easily and gracefully with a slow "I had a dream... etc" than he could with 75's "IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I ROCK AND ROLLED." Voice cracks abound in 75...

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Probably the most logical reason for TSRTS being the opening, besides it being awesome to open a show with, is that it was a fairly easy song for Plant to get going. He can warm up his chops far more easily and gracefully with a slow "I had a dream... etc" than he could with 75's "IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I ROCK AND ROLLED." Voice cracks abound in 75...

And remember they had just released the movie, TSRTS, less than a year before the tour. I think it was a great opener for THAT tour. As said before it just set the stage perfectly for "three hours of lunacy".

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Go to the video archives in the official forum, click on Birmingham 1977. The crowd is about as loud as the band. Check the animation of Page and Plant onstage. This is as fucking a kick ass opener as they get.They didn't shoot their wad too early in the grand scheme with this epic song.Had it segued into the Rain Song this early, the mood would have clearly changed. But to delve into the intro of The Rover,then go full speed ahead into Sick Again...sheer brilliance. Acknowledge the crowd after Sick Again.This set a solid foundation for the rest of the evening. A most excellent way to kick off the show!!!

:thumbsup:

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:thumbsup:

Courtesy to Sebastian Darkly

I think he put up what you're thinking perfectly:

(To get this you have to watch the may 18th film)

Yes, the sound quality is awful from a technical standpoint and the band is fuzzy and distant.

but this is IT, a homemade fragment of the pinnacle of Zeppelin's popularity: the United States Tour Summer of 1977: 44 dates of sold out shows in arenas and stadiums holding anywhere from 15-76,000 with the shows stretching for 3- 3 1/2 hours every night!

And going by the amount of "United States Tour 1977" shirts on the backs of college dudes last summer, a quarter of early 20-something Americans were at one of these shows from April-July 1977. But of course they're all about 20 years too young to have really been at any of the shows. And I'd be willing to bet that very few of them have actually heard a Zep '77 show, since nothing from the tour has ever been officially released, with the exception of one song as a submenu background on the Led Zeppelin "DVD."

Of course even most of the hardcore Zeppelin fans of today (including yours truly, the typist) were too young to be at any of these shows 1977 filled with:

Double neck guitars

white satin bellbottomed suits worn shirtless, embroidered with dragons and poppies.

Drugs, and groupies

bare chests and sock-lumped trousers

Firecrackers and fan riots.

25 minute drum solos

John Paul Jones playing a 3-necked acoustic 26-stringed monstrosity: mandolin, 6 and 12 string guitar all together.

I wish I could've been there ,though. And with headphone-plugged ears and the laptop in full-screen mode i can at least pretend. The hot fuzziness of this amateur Birmingham film gives me that "I'm there!" feeling in a way that the sharp clarity of the officially released material cannot. What it loses in clarity, it gains in raw excitement.

The cavernous boom gives an idea of the magnitude of the venue. And the roar gives an idea of the magnitude of the crowd.

To be exact what we're looking at here is Birmingham May 18th 1977 at the Jefferson Memorial Coliseum.

To be exact this was Led Zeppelin's final US tour. Within a couple months, the death of Robert Plant's young son would grind the tour to a halt and put a cloud over the band's sunny, cocky nature. This cloud would remain overhead until the band's end.

And that end was to come about 3 and a half years after this fan-made

film was shot. And in that time heroin and alcohol would work their dark, isolating magic on half the band (the White Stripes-esque half.) And It was just a day before my 1st birthday, Sept 25, 1980 that the band would hit their vomitous rhythmless end.

But that's all darkness.

Though, as Jimmy Page said back in the early 70s, the mission of the band was to create both "light and shade."

And this echoey, jittery film is the manifestation of that lightness. It's 8mm of pure joy, with Jimmy glowing in in his white costume, flying around the stage on twinkling toes, and seeming thin enough to be blown away by a moderate wind. And the huge collective excitement of the evening is channeled through Jimmy Page's continually-moving feet .

"The Song Remains the Same" is in the first fragment of this Birmingham clip. The song opened every single Zep concert in '77. And to my ears it's a perfect opener. It could be the soundtrack for a chase scene or for the Indy 500. It showcases speed and intensity. The band comes out of the gate charging with it. There was no easing the crowd into the show. From the first moments the band is going right for the teenage throat. And they're drawing blood too.

And if you pick threw all the noise and boom and jump cuts, you can hear they're all playing very well, here in Alabama.

For the whole time, Jimmy Page gives no quarter. All the while this motherf*cker has restless leg syndrome. I love how Jimmy's flared trousers accentuate this dramatic footwork. And I think cocaine trumped heroin for the white wizard on this night.

He falls to his knees at the end of a drum roll 0:33-0:37

He marches to the stage front to take a bow 1:05-1:11

He kicks imaginary soccer balls off of stage right 2:02-2:07

He spins around in a full circle between slow bluesy phrases 3:22-3:25

His hand goes up to cast a spell to increase the band's speed and intensity 4:01-4:07

He makes a crotch-forward lunge 4:23-4:26

He makes a dramatic turn in time with a cymbal accent 5:32

He goose steps, raises his hand to cast more spells and dances like a maniac, a maniac for sure. 6:12-7:20 (The previous month in Chicago on April 10 he wore jack boots and a Nazi SS officer's cap on stage, so militaristic moves were not unprecedented for this tour)

He drops to his knees to praise the Lord (of this self-professed band of Over-Lords) 8:28

He duck-walks and dances with Robert Plant 9:22-9:30

Meanwhile, as his toes are twinkling, he's shadowed by the OTHER string man in white who mostly hides in the darkness behind Jimmy's right shoulder. Naturally, Bonham can't really go anywhere and is stuck near the back of the frame. And Plant mostly just stands looking pretty: bare-chested, tight-trousered, and perfect-haired.

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