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Favorite live version of In My Time of Dying...


paul carruthers

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  • 1 year later...

5/25/1975 is one amazing one, and the first i ever heard as it was on the Zeppelin DVD (watch it'll be a composite of the 24th and 25th or some shit)

but after just having listened to 6/22/1977, and having my mind blown by the Lemon Song snippet....I JUST HAVE TO SAY ITS BETTER THAN THE "YOU SHOOK ME" segment that sometimes sounded very very good, but this bversion is relentless. so its gotta go to 6/22/1977, and yes the 1977 versions are way more sinister

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5/25/1975 is one amazing one, and the first i ever heard as it was on the Zeppelin DVD (watch it'll be a composite of the 24th and 25th or some shit)

but after just having listened to 6/22/1977, and having my mind blown by the Lemon Song snippet....I JUST HAVE TO SAY ITS BETTER THAN THE "YOU SHOOK ME" segment that sometimes sounded very very good, but this bversion is relentless. so its gotta go to 6/22/1977, and yes the 1977 versions are way more sinister

From 'The Garden Tapes' by Eddie Edwards:

Earls Court 1975

In My Time Of Dying

A change of night for this one. It's from the 24th and, a little surprisingly for a song of this length and complexity, it's very close to being complete and unaltered. There are a couple of little adjustments, though.

Where everything stops at NTSC 0:25:54, PAL 0:25:56, Robert originally sang "Let me hear ya" four times, but three of these have been removed. Bafflingly, considering how much care has been taken elsewhere to hide small vocal imperfections, the surviving "Let me hear ya" was certainly not the best of the four! Immediately afterwards, to add to the confusion, the first "Oh, my Jesus" has been patched to fix a crack that was no worse than the one in "Let me hear ya" that was allowed to remain.

There is one other puzzling edit near the beginning of the song where the drums enter at NTSC 0:17:59, PAL 0:18:01. The slightly quirky lead-in that Bonzo played has been replaced with a straighter, simplified snare pattern.

In My Time Of Dying was played as the fourth number at all the Earls Court shows and it could be argued that it really belongs before the acoustic set, but in the context of the six songs chosen for DVD the adjusted running order works very well.

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IMTOD live has always been such an enigma to me in regards to Page's playing. This song is without a doubt one of the hardest, most complex songs in the Zep canon to play, everything must come off perfectly, one screw up and the whole thing falls apart. Jones very fast, complex bass line, Bonham's drum patterns and stop - start nature of the song, and of course the absolutely inhuman precision Jimmy has to maintain throughout this complex arrangement plus the fastest slide leads I have ever heard anywhere. So, how the heck did the band, and especially Jimmy nail this song so consistently on the 77' tour yet sometimes struggle with a Misty Mountain Hop or Sick Again, two extremely easy songs to play???

My favorite is the 25-6-77 version...the song is simply orgasmic!!!

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IMTOD live has always been such an enigma to me in regards to Page's playing. This song is without a doubt one of the hardest, most complex songs in the Zep canon to play, everything must come off perfectly, one screw up and the whole thing falls apart. Jones very fast, complex bass line, Bonham's drum patterns and stop - start nature of the song, and of course the absolutely inhuman precision Jimmy has to maintain throughout this complex arrangement plus the fastest slide leads I have ever heard anywhere. So, how the heck did the band, and especially Jimmy nail this song so consistently on the 77' tour yet sometimes struggle with a Misty Mountain Hop or Sick Again, two extremely easy songs to play???

My favorite is the 25-6-77 version...the song is simply orgasmic!!!

probably because they were EASY and they relaxed themselves too much because theyd played those songs so much or just Jimmy let his heroin high swallow his fingers during those songs???? I dunno i was seriously wondering that too , like THIS IS THE MOST INSANE SONG TO PLAY AND HES ALWAYS ON but with the others that have some complex parts but that Jimmy could play in his sleep.....its maybe they got too content sometimes, especially Jimmy

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probably because they were EASY and they relaxed themselves too much because theyd played those songs so much or just Jimmy let his heroin high swallow his fingers during those songs???? I dunno i was seriously wondering that too , like THIS IS THE MOST INSANE SONG TO PLAY AND HES ALWAYS ON but with the others that have some complex parts but that Jimmy could play in his sleep.....its maybe they got too content sometimes, especially Jimmy

That's what I would say too. With IMTOD it seemed like Jimmy was ALWAYS into the song and nailed it much more than not. As for Sick Again and Misty Mountain Hop, I concur and say that they probably just zoned out and lost themselves sometimes. Songs that require a lot of focus usually end up turning out better than songs that are really simple.

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IMTOD live has always been such an enigma to me in regards to Page's playing. This song is without a doubt one of the hardest, most complex songs in the Zep canon to play, everything must come off perfectly, one screw up and the whole thing falls apart. Jones very fast, complex bass line, Bonham's drum patterns and stop - start nature of the song, and of course the absolutely inhuman precision Jimmy has to maintain throughout this complex arrangement plus the fastest slide leads I have ever heard anywhere. So, how the heck did the band, and especially Jimmy nail this song so consistently on the 77' tour yet sometimes struggle with a Misty Mountain Hop or Sick Again, two extremely easy songs to play???

My favorite is the 25-6-77 version...the song is simply orgasmic!!!

probably because they were EASY and they relaxed themselves too much because theyd played those songs so much or just Jimmy let his heroin high swallow his fingers during those songs???? I dunno i was seriously wondering that too , like THIS IS THE MOST INSANE SONG TO PLAY AND HES ALWAYS ON but with the others that have some complex parts but that Jimmy could play in his sleep.....its maybe they got too content sometimes, especially Jimmy

That's what I would say too. With IMTOD it seemed like Jimmy was ALWAYS into the song and nailed it much more than not. As for Sick Again and Misty Mountain Hop, I concur and say that they probably just zoned out and lost themselves sometimes. Songs that require a lot of focus usually end up turning out better than songs that are really simple.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, IMTOD was one of the most consistently well played/performed songs in Zeppelin's live repertoire mainly because it's blues based...the blues was generally speaking their 'comfort zone' as it were, and, as complex as the IMTOD arrangement is, that 'comfort' goes a long way towards explaining why they could pull it off onstage so easily, as opposed to something like "Ten Years Gone". Even in iffy '75 or '77 performances they were just about guaranteed to nail "In My Time Of Dying" on the night.

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As I've pointed out elsewhere, IMTOD was one of the most consistently well played/performed songs in Zeppelin's live repertoire mainly because it's blues based...the blues was generally speaking their 'comfort zone' as it were, and, as complex as the IMTOD arrangement is, that 'comfort' goes a long way towards explaining why they could pull it off onstage so easily, as opposed to something like "Ten Years Gone". Even in iffy '75 or '77 performances they were just about guaranteed to nail "In My Time Of Dying" on the night.

I'd add Trampled Underfoot to consistently well played songs, not quite at the level of IMTOD but TUF was for the most part very well executed

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I'd add Trampled Underfoot to consistently well played songs, not quite at the level of IMTOD but TUF was for the most part very well executed

"For the most part" indeed in the case of "Trampled"...I don't think Plant ever sang the correct lyrics (he tended to repeat verses over and over in live performance), some of Page's solos were a little bit iffy (Tempe '77 probably being the prime example) and sometimes they tended to speed up a bit coming out of Page's solo (the final performance in Berlin '80 is a good example of this). And, as mentioned in other discussions, some of the 1977 versions were really plodding (especially when performed as an encore). So, for me, execution-wise as a live performance piece, I'd have to give "Trampled Under Foot" maybe a seven out of ten.

Getting back to "In My Time Of Dying", I reckon that on the night the performance of the song was really on if Bonham was on. Sometimes he tended to get carried away and nearly threw the rest of the band off (Houston and Fort Worth '77, anyone?) and on nights when Bonzo wasn't at his best it sorta made the song drag a bit (I think this is my main issue with the June 25 '77 L.A. version).

I would be inclined to say that "IMTOD", "Trampled Under Foot" and "Kashmir" were performed better in 1975 than in 1977.

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To clarify, I'm partial to the 77 versions because Robert's voice was way better, Bonzo's double rim shot, the Danelectro worked better for it, and the mellotron didn't sound so strained. The outros were also way better.

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