Complete Tarrant Concert (Wendy WECD-15/16/17)
Disc 1: The Song Remains The Same, Sick Again, Nobody’s Fault But Mine, In My Time Of Dying, Since I’ve Been Loving You
Disc 2: No Quarter, Ten Years Gone, Going To California, Black Country Woman, Bron-Yr-Aur-Stomp, White Summer/Black Mountain Side, Kashmir
Disc 3: Moby Dick, Guitar Solo, Achilles Last Stand, Stairway To Heaven, Whole Lotta Love/ Rock And Roll, It’ll Be Me
The last hour of this show first surfaced in excellent quality on vinyl on the well-known Duckwalks And Lasers (Rock Solid Records/International Records 204). It was committed to compact disc first on Polished Performances 1977 (POT 004/5) on the Pot label (omitting the “Moby Dick” fragment) which is a two disc set also including the
Song of the South (CR-2036) Capricorn is a one disc title featuring again only the hour long
Also in 1995 Silver Rarities released It’ll Be Zep (SIRA 171/172/173) the first release editing the two sources together to form an almost complete concert.
Complete Tarrant Concert is a similar mix of the two audience recordings. The longer source is used from the beginning of the show through to the middle of “Moby Dick” where the shorter source is primarily used through to the end encores. The longer tape source is used again briefly after “Achillies Last Stand”. The sound quality of the longer source is fair to good, sometimes verging on very good. The lower frequencies are distorted producing a “boomy” bass and the second half of “Ten Years Gone” and “The
The shorter tape “was recorded in pure stereo from the 7th row in dead center on May 22nd, 1977” according the taper’s notes on the cassette inlay. It was the first to surface and really makes everybody who hears the tape wish the entire show exists in that quality because this is another really good concert. “No Quarter” contains a very tentative version of the “Nutrocker” and sounds like a lot of fun. “Going To
“Stairway To Heaven” sounds like a thunderstorm and this is the tour debut of the “Whole Lotta Love/ Rock And Roll” encore. The former tune ends after one verse and it takes Bonham three tries to lead the band into the latter.
Plant introduces Ralphs for the final encore and the crowd obviously goes nuts. There aren’t too many records of other musicians jamming with Zeppelin on stage and it’s great to have such an outstanding sounding recording to capture the event. It is a shame the whole show exists in such average quality, as it is one of the best from the eleventh tour. Wendy did a pretty good job with the presentation, taking a cue from Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert for the cover artwork.
