Saturday Night’s Alright (Wendy WECD-12/13/14)
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, No Quarter
Disc 2: Ten Years Gone, The Battle Of Evermore, Going To California, Black Country Woman, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp, White Summer/Black Mountain Side, Kashmir, Trampled Underfoot
Disc 3: Out On The Tiles/Moby Dick, Guitar solo, Achillies Last Stand, Stairway To Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown
This recording first surfaced on The Battle Of Evermore on Black Cat back in 1992. Although it is excellent sounding the set list was jumbled. It was followed by Rip It Up on Silver Rarities and Badge Holder’s Annual Meeting in the Tarantura box set. The former was plagued with incorrect speed and the latter by being impossibly rare and expensive. TDOLZ released their version in 1997 in the Power & Glory box set and individually as Bursting Night. That label used a very high generation tape producing a very dull sound. Led Note released Saturday Night Special in the autumn of 1999 to very good reviews. Wendy released Saturday Night’s Alright last December and Tarantura2000 produced Delirium Treatment July 2003. The Tarantura2000 release has turned out to be one of their greatest misjudgments.
Heralded as the best version of the show, it is simply the well-traveled tape with the volume cranked up and seeing copies available for a third of the original asking price is very encouraging. This release by Wendy then is really a definitive release. It sounds as very good with only a hint of mastering in the upper frequencies with a slight compression in sound. The concert itself is split with critics. Some consider this to be the best night of Zeppelin’s famous week at the Forum in ’77. It does have its detractors too. I can’t say this show compares favorably with the first and third nights but it isn’t bad either. Jimmy Page’s double neck is horribly out of tune at the very beginning of the show thus producing very strange versions of “The Song Remains The Same” and “Sick Again”. There are some sluggish moments, Bonzo misses a cue in “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, and the version of “Communication Breakdown” (the only time played on this tour) fails to really excite.
But the highlights include a great “No Quarter” which sees JPJ playing some interesting jazz figures before the boogie in the improv. Plant leads the band in an impromptu “Rip It Up” in the middle of “In My Time Of Dying”, and the LA crowd are treated to a full half hour of “Moby Dick”. The artwork lists “Heartbreaker” after “Moby Dick” but that is a mistake. Included is a cardboard insert with a replication of the cover photo of Jimmy and the review of this tape copied from the bootledz website and a chart showing the cuts in the tape. They proudly state that all the cuts occur between songs and that no music is lost. The jewel case comes with a cardboard slip cover that that a painting of a medieval castle similar in design to Wendy’s Listen To This Eddie release. The bottom line is Wendy has produced another excellent title and Saturday Night’s Alright is all that you’ll really need for this concert.
