Fortune Teller (Tarantura TCD-74-1, 2)
Oakland Coliseum, Oakland, CA – September 2nd, 1970
Disc1: Introduction, Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Dazed And Confused, Bring It On Home, That’s The Way, Bron-Yr-Aur, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Organ Solo, Thank You, What Is And What Should Never Be
Disc 2: Moby Dick, Whole Lotta Love (inc. Boogie Chillun – Sugar Rhythm – Lawdy Miss Clawdy – For What It’s Worth – Honey Bee – I’m Moving On – Fortune Teller – That’s Alright Mama), Communication Breakdown (inc. Good Times Bad Times), The Train Kept A Rollin’, Blueberry Hill, Long Tall Sally
Led Zeppelin’s Oakland show in 1970 is one of the most intriguing. With the general high standard for the tour and with the rarities in the “Whole Lotta Love” medley and the encores, this is Zeppelin at their most adventurous. There are two tape sources in existence for the show. The first fair quality audience recording can be found on Get Loose (HGCD 100/1) on Holy Grail. The second, almost complete and better sounding source has been used for all other releases beginning with Two Days Before(SIRA-129/130) on Silver Rarities in 1994. Tarantura followed with Led Zeppelin Live On Blueberry Hill II (OAK 1,2) in 1996. Seven years later Another Night On Blueberry Hill (EMC-019A/B) on Electric Magic was released in sound quality similar to the Tarantura.
Wendy released Blueberry Hill II(wecd-84/85) last year and was the label to combine the two sources at four edits. The first is the beginning four seconds of the tape during the introduction. The second occurs between 10:00 and 10:08 after “Bring It On Home”. The third is between 6:55 and 7:33 after “Thank You” with Plant saying “let’s hear it for John Paul Jones”. And in “Whole Lotta Love” about 7:15 in the track, while they are playing “Ju Sugar Rhythm” the tape becomes unstable and cuts out (probably at the end of the tape). Wendy edit the older source beginning at 7:22 and it runs to 8:39 and doing their best to minimize the tape stretch and wobble.
Because of the careful work with the two source tapes Wendy were able to present the entire show in the best available sound quality. Fortune Teller is a new release on Tarantura and they use the second tape source only without any edits. The cuts and the sound wobble in “Whole Lotta Love” remain. The sound quality is very good without any excessive mastering on the tape and sounds almost like an identical copy of the Electric Magic release. It comes packaged in a gatefold sleeve that is nice to look at and is limited to one hundred copies. This isn’t an improvement, but it isn’t any worse than the older releases either and is worth it if you want to have the a nicely packaged one source version of this show. Otherwise the Wendy release stands as definitive.
