Led Zeppelin – Disturbance House (Wendy WECD-52/53)

Venue : Alexandra Palace, London, England – December 23rd, 1972
Setlist : Disc 1:  Rock And Roll, Over The Hills And Far Away, Black Dog, Misty Mountain Hop, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Dancing Days, Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp, The Song Remains The Same, The Rain Song
Disc 2: Dazed And Confused, Stairway To Heaven, Whole Lotta Love (includes The Crunge, Everybody Needs Somebody To Love, Boogie Chillun’, Let’s Have A Party, Heartbreak Hotel, I Can’t Quit You), Heartbreaker
Review :
Disturbance House is Wendy’s companion volume to Riot House.  Unlike the December 22nd show this never saw a vinyl release but first surfaced commercially on Merry Christmas Mr. Jimmy (LS-7208/7209) on Lemon Song and later on the three disc set The Titanic  (IQ-016/17/18) on Image Quality.  Lemon Song moved “Dazed & Confused” out of sequence to fit the tape on to two discs (something which really wasn’t necessary).  Image Quality split the show over three discs and used a copy of the tape that ran noticeably too slow, but did put a picture from the actual gig on the front cover.  
Wendy sourced this from the first generation; it runs at the correct speed and sounds good but distant.  The main culprit is the PA and the venue itself.  Reviews afterwards stated that the sound mix was poor past the first thirty rows in the hall and didn’t reach the back at all.  In fact the back rows were huddled to the middle but it is as if there is a vacuum above the stage sucking away much of the sound giving it a muddy quality.  It is a similar timbre to the previous evening’s first tape source although this one isn’t as dull and flat.  It does have some liveliness to it and is very enjoyable as a whole although there is a lot of hiss present. 
Like the previous evening this is another hot show.  Plant remembers the early days when they played venues where “you got a concussion if you moved” on stage.  After saying he wants everybody to be brothers and sisters (“and I hope the press didn’t catch that”) he dedicated “Misty Mountain Hop” to the Manchester CID and suggests they all leave the faucets running after the show.  “Dazed & Confused” contains a very violent John Bonham right before the call and response part in the improvisation that even has Plant calling him to cool it.  Plant stops “Stairway To Heaven” and asks the audience to sit down and be quiet since it is “one of the hardest numbers to do with a monkey house going crazy”.  Again before “Whole Lotta Love” people shout out requests including “Moby Dick”.  Plant replies he’s writing a new drum solo called “The Titanic”.  “Heartbreaker” is the only encore and is dedicated to Roy Harper.  
The artwork is again an homage to the Hyatt House theme, giving this a red background with photo of Plant from the Sydney, Australia gig.  The back has more nice pictures of the Hyatt in Los Angeles and a picture of the band from 1975 continuing the non-sequiturs.  Regardless it would be three years before Zeppelin would play in the capital again at Earl’s Court and is a mystery why these shows aren’t more well known.  The shows are very good and makes many wish the complete tapes were in as good as quality as the second source for the December 22nd show and hope that fragment isn’t all that exists.  However this release by Wendy is pretty good and is worth having.   (GS)