Led Zeppelin, “Charlotte 1972 – Reel Archives” (No Label)
Disk One; Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Celebration Day Black Dog, SIBLY, Stairway To Heaven, Going To California, That’s The Way, Tangerine, Bron-Yr-Stomp
Disk Two; Dazed and Confused, What Is and What Should Never Be Moby Dick, Whole Lotta Love, Rock and Roll, Communication Breakdown
Live at Charlotte Coliseum, Charlotte, NC, USA. 9th June 1972
From the people behind NO LABEL (Reel Archives) comes the latest release of another show from the fabled 1972 tour. According to “The Year of Led Zeppelin” blog the sound quality: “…is fairly clear with Plant front and center.” I tend to agree with that assessment.
Per The Year of Led Zeppelin: “I’m the person that recorded this show from about a dozen rows back from the stage. Sorry about the talking. Had to stop during slow part of Dazed and Confused to put in a new cassette because the tape was about to run out.” As I’ve said before if you are a novice and are expecting perfection from 50 year old tapes you’ve come to the wrong place. Immigrant Song-I think this is the song where taper’s gear is put to the test, starts out punchy, then settles down.
Heart-Breaker-The crowd claps along during Page’s solo. Celebration Day – Plant’s spoken intro cuts in. A few bad notes during the solo. Black Dog – Plant talks about a broken string being fixed. He then goes on about feeling good to be on “holliday” after 10 months in England. Since I’ve Been Loving You – JPJ is right there with Page adding nice accents. The piece sounds like a dirge.
“Knees Up Mother Brown” is played before Stairway, and is announced as a number from the next album. Stairway – there is a bit of distortion towards the end of the song. Jones once again adds the right amount of atmosphere with his keyboards.
The tapers can be heard saying: “They are goiing to play some folk songs….” to introduce the acoustic set. At the tail end of the set you can hear someone yell: “Hey Hey What Can I Do” Dazed – You can hear one of the tapers say: “It’ll never fit we only have 15 min….” During the first jam you can hear Plant telling the crowd: “Keep it cool”, “Dont do it, if you don’t want no trouble.”
The band slow things down, and the tape cuts for the tape flip. Another great version of this song. The final jam needs to be heard repeatedly. Whole Lotta Love – Played without a medley, Jones once again plays keyboard during the theramin section, haven’t heard a version like this since 3/7/70 people were screaming “Boogie” during the final encore of “Communication Breakdown”. Plant tells the crowd that: “We were on our way to the airport, but we couldn’t do it.” You can hear a shout of: “Fuck your latest album!” Did they punish the crowd by ommitting the medley?
SQ – Good To Very Good Performance – Good to Very Good
Special Thanks to “The Year of Led Zeppelin”
Jim Sirigos
1 Comment
BootLedz states:
” It has audio problems beginning in Stairway, lasting about ten minutes, stopping during the next song. More problems appear breifly at the cut after Dazed, then again during Moby about half way into the song. ”
I would avoid this title.