Coast To Coast (Celebration SOBO-013)
(78:03): Madison Square Garden, New York, NY – June 11th, 1977: No Quarter, Ten Years Gone, The Battle Of Evermore. Kingdome, Seattle, WA – July 17th, 1977: Achilles Last Stand, Stairway To Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Rock And Roll
Coast To Coastwas released in 2000 and is a potpourri Led Zeppelin release. The fragments contained on the disc are too short to be on their own, so they’re thrown together in some rhyme or reason. This release has two soundboard fragments from Zeppelin’s 1977 tour, both in excellent quality.
The first half of the disc has the June 11th, 1977 New York soundboard fragment of “No Quarter,” “Ten Years Gone” and “The Battle Of Evermore.” It first surfaced on the vinyl 2LP set Hiawatha Express (Stash 2304) (with most of “No Quarter” missing).
The earliest CD releases include Polished Performances 1977 (POT-004/005), Silver Coated Rails (Condor/Toasted 1981), Unbooted(Tarantura UN-77-1~3) and For Badgeholders Only (Balboa BP-95007/8/9). The latest release can be found on Strange Tales From The Road (Godfather Records GR 365) along with a monitor mix from Maryland the previous week.
Celebration and Godfather are of comparable sound quality and are much superior to the older titles. The tape cuts in at the end of the first verse of “No Quarter” and cuts out at the very end of “The Battle Of Evermore,” lasting just over forty-five minutes.
It is a good tape to have because it is a very hot performance. “No Quarter” especially illustrates Page’s particular brilliance onstage. John Paul Jones’ improvisation becomes stagnant in the second half of the solo, and Page cuts and slashes the strings trying to get something interesting going, and he comes very close to succeeding.
“Ten Years Gone” is very tight and lively, and Plant keeps the show moving with various humorous asides and references to Heineken beer.
The Seattle fragment comes from the video soundtrack and, at the time of its release, was the only professionally recorded piece of the show in circulation. Other releases of the fragment were “Stairway To Heaven,” “Whole Lotta Love” and “Rock And Roll” on Shake For Me Baby! (Missing Links ML-017) and In A Delirious Daze (Equinox EX-00-013/014/015) using these songs edited into the second, very good quality audience tape.
Since then there have been various excellent releases of the complete show from both the video soundtrack and actual soundboard recording, and can be found on Conquering Kingdome (Godfather GR508/509/510), Fallen Angel (Tarantura TCD-104-1~3) and Jupiter And Saturn(Tarantura TCD-45-1~3).
Coast To Coast is packaged in a standard jewel case with an insert with various tour pictures and the concert descriptions lifted from The Concert File. The photos and overall graphics are really nice to look at. Celebration utilize the same four pictures used on the Equinox title too. It is a good way to obtain the June 11th soundboard fragment if the Godfather isn’t available. But otherwise it has fallen into redundancy.
