It's Your Thing - Communication Breakdown

[Christopher Lees]

Back around 1990 I caught a live version of Communication Breakdown being played on the Zep set. Pro quality sound, must have been a BBC bootleg. They went into It's Your Thing (do what you wanna do - I can't tell you, who to sock it to...) with excellent wah pedal work. It was kind of funky sounding. Really great. I can't find it anywhere on YouTube. Does anyone know for sure what show this was from and what the deal is with not being able to find it?

[zeplz71]

It's from BBC Playhouse Theater 6/27/69 but unfortunately that jam of It's Your Thing was cut from the official release.  You can hear it on bootlegs or earlier radio broadcasts.

[Zep Hed]

Yup tough to find the officially released BBC stuff on YouTube etc. Copyright and all.

[The Only Way To Fly]

18 hours ago, Christopher Lees said:

They went into It's Your Thing (do what you wanna do - I can't tell you, who to sock it to...) with excellent wah pedal work.

It's really a great groove and I wish they would have expanded it a bit longer. Page does use that same section in other live songs I've heard but Plant never reprises the lyrics. Shame really because he kills it just like For What It's Worth from the same era. 

[John M]

It's Your Thing was released on Feb 16, 1969.  It hit Number one on the US R&B Chart and Number 2 on the US Chart.  Those were the days when radio was not so segmented.

Zeppelin had started building a funk breakdown into Communication Breakdown that spring.  You can hear a bit of it in the March Danish TV broadcast.

 

[chef free]

I guess ol "Led Wallet" didn't want to cough up the $ to include it!  Huge error to lose this part...

[1975NQ]

On 6/23/2021 at 7:39 PM, The Only Way To Fly said:

It's really a great groove and I wish they would have expanded it a bit longer. Page does use that same section in other live songs I've heard but Plant never reprises the lyrics. Shame really because he kills it just like For What It's Worth from the same era. 

Yes! My fav version of the song. I caught it on the radio back in the late 80s and taped the whole thing. I'm sure it's out there in streaming land though.