Timeless Rock (Watch Tower WT 2001010/11/12)
Disc 1: MC, Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Black Dog, Dazed & Confused, Stairway To Heaven
Disc 2: Celebration Day, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp/That’s The Way, Going To California, What Is And What Should Never Be, Moby Dick
Disc 3: Whole Lotta Love (Boogie Chillun’, Mary Lou, Mess O’ Blues, Evil Woman, Tobacco Road, Good Times Bad Times, For What It’s Worth, How Many More Times, The Hunter, You Shook Me), Communication Breakdown
Watchtower have re-released Timeless Rock in a third edition. This is probably in response to the surfacing of the complete audience recording they released several years ago on Rock Carnival. The first edition is in a gatefold cardboard sleeve and the second edition is in a fatboy jewel case with outer clam-shell box and with a bonus disc with an hour of the September 24th gig in good quality. The third edition is identical except for the cover art and the addition of an “R” to the matrix number.
The first three discs of this title represent the newly released excellent stereo audience recording from September 23, 1971 in Tokyo. The first pressing of Timeless Rock was released almost simultaneously with First Attack Of The Rising Sun (Empress Valley EVSD 55/56/57/58). The quality of this tape source is much better than the previous versions of this show. The recorder is closer to the stage, and we can enjoy the music in great stereo. At several places Watch Tower edits gaps from the first tape source, namely the very end of the first disc (Plant talking about Celebration Day), and in a cut in Tobacco Road in the Whole Lotta Love medley. This is the second edition of this title. This comes in a standard jewel case housing four discs. The case comes in a glossy hinged black box with silver lettering and a photo from the acoustic set on the cover. This concert is simply one of the best of their career. It begins very heavy and tentative, and snowballs in the Whole Lotta Love medley. They play a good part of the first album, seemingly to make up for their lack of touring in Japan the previous three years.
Disc 4: Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Black Dog, Dazed & Confused
The bonus disc on Timeless Rock is the first hour of the September 24, 1971 show at the same venue. The quality is similar to Light & Shade: not too bad, but the bass is very distorted detracting from the recording. Hopefully a tape source will surface for the second show that is as good as the first.
4 Comments
Sorry, I realized that this is not the same source as Flying Rock Carnival, just a reissue of their old release. Oops!
The no label release has some strange phasing type sounds on the alledged remainder of the 7th source. Does this release also have that efeect. It’s especially noticeable on What Is …
Thanks,
George
Reflections From A Dream is one of the early and legendary titles released by Diagrams and was the best sounding tape at that time. But the tapes sources on both this and on the Rock Carnival Complete are superior to TDOLZ.
How do you compare this set to the one released in 2000 (if I’m not mitaken) by TDOZ – Live in Japan box set? That one is name REFLECTIONS FROM A DREAM. Does this one sound better?
Alex