Mystic San Diego (Scorpio (UK) – 25)
Sports Arena, San Diego, CA – March 14th, 1975
Disc 1 (54:21): Rock And Roll, Sick Again, Over The Hills And Far Away, In My Time Of Dying, The Song Remains The Same, The Rain Song, Kashmir
Disc 2 (65:31): No Quarter, Trampled Underfoot, Moby Dick
Disc 3 (54:54): Dazed And Confused, Stairway To Heaven, Heartbreaker
The March 14th, 1975 San Diego soundboard remains one of the nicest surprises for Led Zeppelin collectors. It came out in June 2004 without any warning and stunned everyone for offering a previously unknown show from the high point of Zeppelin’s live career. Conspiracy Theory (Empress Valley EVSD-263/264/265) was named release of the year and was quickly duplicated onto Conspiracy Theory (Eelgrass EGL20117/18/19).
Mystic San Diego on Scorpio (UK) is another opportunity to obtain this tape. It sounds identical to the Empress Valley and is packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve with many photographs from throughout Zeppelin’s career.
The music in general is well balanced and lively, but the audience sounds a bit further away compared to the Earls Court tapes. There is also as much as fifteen minutes missing since the first encore, “Whole Lotta Love” / “The Crunge” / “Black Dog” is absent. Although it is possible they simply dropped it from the performance, that is highly unlikely and most probably it is being held back since it really doesn’t make much sense that a gap that big would be an accident.
Since this new show comes after one of the best of the tour, it was hoped this show too would also fall into that category. There are some very good points to the show but it is uneven in general due in part to faulty equipment. “Rock And Roll” and “Sick Again” get the show off to a good start and Plant greets the audience by saying, “Good evening San Diego. Good evening.
“For anybody who isn’t aware of the fact…well thank you very much…our intention on this part of this tour of America is to try and re-associate you with a cross section of the music that we’ve done over the last six and a half years, right? A total cross section, light and shade, and we really hope that you dig it, cause we intend to have a good time doing it, and it starts, so we’ll start off with a story that goes something like this.”
“Over The Hills And Far Away” again contains an excellent Jimmy Page solo in the middle and in the final reiteration of the folk theme he includes a reference to “White Summer.” This is logical since the main theme comes from the old classic.
Before “In My Time Of Dying” Plant says cryptically, “Sorry about the very slight delay tonight, but apparently it was snowing in Austria, which has got a lot to do with San Diego, right?” Plant is very impressive on this song as he storms the gates of heaven.
Afterwards there is a buzz from the equipment onstage and Plant quips, “this is our turn to give you a good buzz.” Page loses his place in the introduction to “The Song Remains The Same” and waits two measures before coming back in. Both “The Rain Song” and “Kashmir” suffer from an out of tune mellotron. In fact it sounds as if the tapes were melting at the end of the former.
When Plant introduces Jones for “No Quarter,” he refers to “a brandy glass on top of his piano, and if we want, we put a dollar bill in, you know?…it’s for the conquistadors.” The reference to the brandy glass for cocktail lounge piano players to receive tips is appropriate for this night.
Jones wanders a bit on the grand piano until he hits upon a soft jazzy melody before Bonham comes in. Page slinks up to the main melody in the guitar solo and turns in a very good improvisation. “Trampled Under Foot” is introduced as “Trampled Under Physical Foot.” The drum solo takes up almost twenty-five minutes and the middle section of the show turns out to be the strongest.
“Dazed And Confused” is a half hour long but Page again sounds somewhat tentative. Plant calls it “a very dramatic, dynamic piece which was, as we said at the beginning, is part of the musical spectrum.” The final song of the set “Stairway To Heaven” is “perhaps one of the infrared points.”
It is a shame that the first encore is missing because that is a very exciting part of the show. “Heartbreaker” is very good although doesn’t have any blues references in the solo as other shows on the tour have.
Ultimately, this is a great sounding but uneven performance. It does have a definite place in the collection, however, and Mystic San Diego is a very nice release worth having.
7 Comments
According to Clinton Heylin, the original Scorpio and Toasted labels were based in the US but used a Korean pressing plant. However, that was twenty-five years ago and things have radically changed.
I really do not know if any of the Scorpios are run by the original guy, but I do know there are three outfits using the classic Scorpio label. One is in Japan, one is in the US, and the third in the UK. I don’t think they’re related to one another or related to the original label. But I really don’t know.
And I am a bit confused of hearing the original (first) Scorpio is being US label. All early CD titles came up from the same root/person who was living in the US but he lent all his tapes to South Korea, where they were manufactured. Toasted/Condor, Eagle, etc.
Quoting http://www.led-zeppelin.us/history.html:
“Neutral Zone and Toasted/Condor were the CD labels and the producers of the CD’s only have a partial connection with the earlier producers of the vinyl labels with almost similar names. All of these labels were USA based producers. The CD producers used overseas connections to press their titles and artwork and the vinyl producers mainly pressed their titles in USA in the days when they could do it in a record pressing plant. A well connected USA collector acquired the various tapes and for some of his labels like Neutral Zone and Toasted/Condor he used a contact from Australia who had connections in Korea and who speak their language to press the titles. The Australian connection was the person behind the mid 1990’s Apple House/Black Cat labels. Since the tapes came from the USA collector and he was the one who organised the labels and paid for the production of the titles it guess we would have to say the labels were a USA product even though the discs and artwork were made in Korea. You then have the situation where the Japs copied the Neutral Zone and Toasted/Condor titles in the mid 1990’s and also later again someone from the EEC copied them also in the late 1990’s. Only the trained eye can pick the difference between the original pressings and the Japanese copies but the EEC copies stand out as they have inferior artwork.”
So I assume the early Scorpio titles are came out from Korea/Japan, not from the US and todays Scorpio is the re-incarnation, similar to the new Swingin’ Pig’s, they ‘borrowed’ the name of the label, and it’s managing by the completely new team of people.
Assume AA means a copy of one of the other Scorpio labels like the current vinyl Swingin’ Pig label for instance – same logos/exact copy but not the original SP folks? From what I’ve seen Scorpio (UK) doesnt look or try to look the older labels of the same name.
What do you mean by “fake”? The discs exist in physical reality and actually play what is on them.
Sp what’s the origin for this one? It looks like a fake but I might be wrong LOL
No. This has no relation to the Japanese or US Scorpio labels.
Is this Scorpio (UK) label related to the japanese Scorpio?