It is with sadness that Collectors Music Review must announce the recent passing of Art “Mr. Freezer” Parr. A life-long resident of New Orleans, Louisiana, his impeccable musical taste and audio acumen have blessed collectors with some of the most impressive live documents from the seventies. He had been suffering from poor health in recent years.
He fell in love with live music about 1970 when he was an eyewitness to The Doors final concert with Jim Morrison at The Warehouse in New Orleans on December 12th. One of his earliest tapes is the Led Zeppelin show in New Orleans on August 29th, 1971, eight months after The Doors. Described as low fidelity and very poor sound quality, he never bothered to share it with anyone.
But others he did. The Led Zeppelin Baton Rouge show from February 28th, 1975 is among his very best and has been released many times in the past.
Other popular Freezer tapes include the Rolling Stones’ June 27th, 1972 show in Mobile, AL, and the June 1st, 1975 concert in Baton Rouge, Eric Clapton’s New Orleans show in 1974 and Baton Rouge concert in 1976, and, in latter years, the March 1973 Led Zeppelin show in New Orleans, Queen’s first appearance there on their first tour, and David Bowie’s Baton Rouge show on the Stage tour in 1978.
Although he traded frequently, he also vowed never to circulate certain shows, claiming he wanted to keep them for personal enjoyment. The most often cited tape is Led Zeppelin’s May 19th, 1977 show in Baton Rouge, an appearance that has some audience shot video footage but no complete audio.
The last time I spoke to Parr he told me he was in the process of selling his home and throwing away his tape collection. We’ll most likely never hear those tapes.
6 Comments
Sigh…. R.I.P Artie. Thanks for the great, great music shared over the years….
He certainly left his mark in live classic rock music history and we have to thank him for that. Unfortunately, I first “met” him when I read his comments left on a certain torrent site whenever one of his recordings was shared and he was quite acidic in his comments.
Always very sad to read a fellow music fan has passed or otherwise retired. I guess was his decision to take his tapes with or without him and we’ll have to live with that. We can hold on to the hope that he may have been bluffing and has indeed given them away to another taper. Unless that never happened or Mr. Freezer’s absolute was not to let those tapes loose, it’ll be a shame that they never came our way.
R.I.P. Mr Freezer.
What a waste (of good audience tapes)
But indeed sad news, even if we’ll never hear any of his recordings that aren’t shared before.
Those homeless people who might found them in trash will be very rich soon :D.