One Night Stand In Paris (TCOLZ 029/030)
L’Olympia, Paris, France – October 10th, 1969
Disc 1 (78:11), Pre-FM: Introduction, Good Times Bad Times / Communication Breakdown, I Can’t Quit You, Heartbreaker, Dazed And Confused, White Summer/Black Mountain Side, You Shook Me, How Many More Times
Disc 2 (78:02), FM broadcast version: Introduction, Good Times Bad Times / Communication Breakdown, I Can’t Quit You, Heartbreaker, Dazed And Confused, White Summer/Black Mountain Side, You Shook Me, How Many More Times
Led Zeppelin’s first full year is in general very well documented with excellent sounding audience recordings, soundboards and radio broadcasts. The slight exception to this are the months surrounding the release of their second LP in the autumn. Besides the great sounding tapes from Winterland in San Francisco in November, there really are not many good tapes in circulation, which might be the reason why silver manufacturers have all but ignored this Zeppelin period in the last decade.
The October 10th Paris show was known to have been professionally taped and broadcast on “Musicorama” on Europe 1. Nobody, it seems, taped it off the air in 1969 and the master tapes never surfaced either. It was finally rebroadcast on Europe 2 on Friday, December 7th, 2007 in anticipation of the reunion the following Monday.
Knowing this would be released, the station wanted to ensure nobody would have a clean copy of the show. A DJ offers commentary scattered throughout the show including during the actual music. This is a well known practice by radio stations to “mark” their broadcasts.
The radio hosts’ announcements occur in approximately 10-second (times within tracks) intervals, as follows: “I Can’t Quit You Baby” 3:55-4:05, “Dazed and Confused” 4:17-4:27 and 14:05-15:05, “White Summer / Black Mountain Side” 3:44-3:56 and 11:18-11:29 (this announcement timing actually comes after the song has fully ended in the interlude right before “You Shook Me” starts), and “How Many More Times” from 13:18-13:26 for a total of six, approx. 10-sec. each voice-overs during the tape.
A host of titles hit the market almost immediately afterwards. Paris Olympia 1969 (Wendy WECD – 104), Paris Par Excellence (Empress Valley EVSD-510) and Olympia 1969 (no label) and N’est Aucun Imbecile (Black Dog Records BDR-003), were issued with the compete tape as it was broadcast including comments. L’Olympia (Godfather G.R. 248) and Ain’t No Fool (Black Dog Rekords BDR-002) both had the DJ comments edited out with subsequent loss of music, and the latest release Good Times Bad Times (Scorpio LZ-08015) cut out the comments and replaced the missing music from a different show.
One Night Stand In Parisis a two disc set with two different versions on each disc. The second disc is the radio broadcast as it occurred that night complete with the DJ commentary. The first disc is more interesting because it claims to be the pre-broadcast tape with the complete music but with no commentary and listening to this many times confirms it. There are no signs of editing as on Godfather, Black Dog and Scorpio.
The set begins with the devastating opening bars of “Good Times, Bad Times” serving as a prelude to “Communication Breakdown.” Only at these shows was this arrangement used as they were trying to achieve the most overwhelming sound they could muster. This tape includes the earliest reference to “Heartbreaker” introduced by Robert Plant, saying, “We’d like to carry on with something on the new Led Zeppelin II album, which is eventually coming out in England and America. It’s called ‘Heartbreaker.'”
This version sounds close to the studio arrangement and Page uses heavy distortion during the guitar solo. Page’s “White Summer” was still played at this time and is introduced by Plant saying, “right now we’d like to feature…” Page can be heard behind him saying, “wanking dog.” Plant continues, “wanking dog…Jimmy Page on guitar. This is a combination of several things. It goes under the collective title, as Percy Thrower would say, ‘White Summer,’ Jimmy Page.” What follows is a virtuoso epic crammed into ten minutes.
“How Many More Times” is stretched to over twenty minutes long. The long improvisation starts off very dark and includes references to Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer Of War” and a very slow version of The Yardbirds’ “Over Under Sideways Down.” Some people shout to Plant while he’s in the middle of “The Hunter” and causes him to say, “shut up!” There is a long “Boogie Chillun'” part with a reference to Ainsley Dunbar and “Needle Blues” where Plant sings, “I got my needle in you babe, and you seem to think it’s alright. Why don’t you roll over baby, see what it’s like on the other side. I think that was Brownie McGhee.”
The sound quality is excellent as to be expected. TCOLZ package One Night Stand In Paris in a double slimline jewel case with attractive artwork design in keeping with their later releases. For the Paris show, until a more complete tape surfaces with “Moby Dick” and the encores, this is the definitive edition.
6 Comments
How does the Beelzebub release ON FIRE match up to the other “endless” amount of releases?
I know some people don’t like Beelz but they have actually put out some ggod releases. They do their better job on sb tapes bringing a little more “life” to them and maybe not such a good job on regular audience tapes.
I think it would be a mistake to pass on this release. If you want the best version of this show then there’s really no need to look any further.
There are persuasive arguments both ways about the inclusion of the second disc in this collection since there have been numerous releases of the broadcast with DJ comments. However TCOLZ sees itself as an archive label producing titles not only with definitive versions of the tapes but also of the shows themselves. Obsessive collectors like myself like to have all the different variations of any given tape. One Night Stand offers both versions for the collector so there is a choice and as a whole renders all previous issues of the show obsolete.
TCOLZ have pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat with this release. All prior releases of this recording are now, in my mind, obsolete because of the remarkable power, clarity, and subtlety of what TCOLZ has produced. Robert’s voice is much more up front and there is no longer the constant overloading bass sound that I found so distracting in prior releases of this show. There is a professional sound to this recording that was so sorely missing, to date, and is why I believe this title’s disc 1 is the final word. Disc 2 is pointless. Add to that the fact of very attractive artwork using familiar color pictures in an original layout, with an extremely reasonable asking price, and you have what I consider to be TCOLZ’s first major keeper for the Zeppelin live collector. One can only hope that they keep the momentum with future releases.
A pity they couldn’t just release the single disc without the DJ chatter as many of us already have the radio broadcast CD from one of the several releases mentioned. I’m not going to buy that disc twice, I’ll wait until EVSD or someone else puts out the single disc, or merely download the motherfucker from Demonoid or Pirate’s Bay when it inevitably surfaces there.
This was quite a surprise however does appear to be legit. As mentioned above, there’s no DJ comments,cuts, or misplaced music.