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50th Anniversary Box Set

Michael Fry

By Michael Fry
in Led Zeppelin Live

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  • 8 months later...
right-there

right-there

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Hi Michael.

Can I ask why you have passed on February 12 1975 as a 'go to' amongst the best of 1975? "In My Time Of Dying" picks up an honourable mention, but tracks from a set that once had fans gushing are otherwise not featured.

Best regards, Michael McGennan

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Michael Fry

Michael Fry

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On 5/10/2023 at 8:46 AM, right-there said:

Hi Michael.

Can I ask why you have passed on February 12 1975 as a 'go to' amongst the best of 1975? "In My Time Of Dying" picks up an honourable mention, but tracks from a set that once had fans gushing are otherwise not featured.

Best regards, Michael McGennan

Well, it's all down to Plant's voice, I'm afraid. Remember my mission statement for the 50th Anniversary Set was creating something that was near to official release standard. Once Plant's voice had almost recovered in mid-March and May 1975, it was quite easy to drop in a tiny edit from a different night to replace the odd vocal crack here and there for those performances, hence my preference for those in the compilations. However, the Feb 12th show you refer to has so many vocal flubs, I felt it would have been a rather more dishonest job to get them up to releasable standard, not to mention massively time-consuming! I remember playing a few bits of the Feb 12 concert to a more casual fan and he did grimace quite a few times in response to the vocals, which led me to think it wasn't up to standard, as much as I hate to admit it! That soundboard is pretty unforgiving and the well-known sbd/aud matrix doesn't do much to soften the squeaks and hoarseness. True, it is mostly a wonderful show (apart from Page's playing taking a bit of a downturn after the DAC bow solo) but it just wasn't good enough, like many of the February sbd shows, unfortunately.

Hope that explains everything.

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right-there

right-there

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Hi Michael.

Thanks for your response. As it happens I put together a compilation a few years back myself (not quite ten years gone), and when I checked it over I found I'd only used one track from February 12 1975 too, "No Quarter". I don't recall that Plant's voice was the primary criterion for choices I made across the compilation, but clearly something was nagging at me about that show. My guiding principle, apart from the 'bonus'  last track of "Bring It On Home", was to put together a chronological 'concert', not the way artists do structure their shows in the real world, but in my case, an umbrella concept for choosing performances across the years of releasing material and subsequently performing it.

I've discovered that the track listing for Volume 9 (six cds of honourable mentions) on the '50th Anniversary Box Set' text file is different from the songs/shows downloadable from the cloud site. I've also discovered that the quality of each version across the two sets of 6 cds is so high that you could quite straightforwardly have made both line-ups available, an embarrassment of Zep riches! What decisions led you to settle on the tracks that make up the downloadable cloud site compilation? Plant's voice?

I wonder how often Peter Grant spins in his grave when after so much effort to stop Zep being bootlegged at all there exist so many shows that can be drawn on to make the remarkable collection you have put together? And subsequently I have to be sure send fans off to seek out entire shows.

Thanks again,

Michael.

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Michael Fry

Michael Fry

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Well, I'd forgotten how much I changed the track list to be honest - quite a few original selections got dropped, didn't they! It was a while ago but I do remember selecting songs for a few different reasons:

Firstly, if the song was an amazing performance from an otherwise mediocre show (e.g. Stairway To Heaven from Seattle 1977-7-17);

Secondly, if I had selected a different night's performance of the song for one of the other compilations but I felt that the performance was so good it still deserved recognition (e.g. Trampled Underfoot from Earls Court 1975-5-24 which is pretty much on a par with the one from the following night that made it onto the Earls Court comp);

Thirdly, if there was something significant about the song (e.g. When The Levee Breaks from Bloomington 1975-1-18 which is the only soundboard performance that has turned up so far and therefore was included even though the show is weaker than other 1975 shows).

The soundcheck performances were selected because they're so much fun to listen to and are the best of the bunch from the soundcheck but perhaps they should have been placed as bonus tracks on the 1973 compilation, freeing up space for songs I ultimately left out. A few of the dropped songs ended up on other compilations such as Europe 1973 but I can't remember now why I dropped some of the others, I'm afraid! Maybe I should make discs 7 & 8!

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right-there

right-there

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Hi Michael.

Discs 7 & 8 sounds like a very good idea! And still, from your text above, there'd be tough choices to make.

Thanks again for the remarkable treasure trove you've compiled, and especially because diving into it sponsors the urge to listen to whole shows that might have slipped beneath any individual's (that's me) horizons.

Michael

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