Led Zeppelin – Your Time Is Gonna Come (Scorpio LZ-08024)

Your Time Is Gonna Come (Scorpio LZ-08024)

Budokan, Tokyo, Japan – September 24th, 1971

Disc 1 (51:24):  Introduction, Heartbreaker, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Black Dog, Dazed And Confused

Disc 2 (63:48):  Stairway To Heaven, Celebration Day, That’s The Way, Going To California, Tangerine, What Is And What Should Never Be, Moby Dick

Disc 3 (51:29):  Whole Lotta Love, organ solo, Thank You, Communication Breakdown

Disc 4 (55:09):  Introduction, Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Since I’ve Been Loving You, Black Dog, Dazed And Confused, Whole Lotta Love

With five unique tape sources, Led Zeppelin’s second Tokyo show in 1971 is one of the more well represented.  Your Time Is Gonna Come uses the complete sourced used on Light & Shade on TDOLZ which was released many years ago with a second tape source filling in the introduction some of the other minor gaps.  It is a good sounding recording with an overloaded and distorted bass which can detract from the enjoyment of the music.  Scorpio didn’t boot the volume too much on the tape, making this perhaps the best sounding edition of this particular tape source.  The fourth disc is occupied with the same tape that appears as a bonus on the first edition of Timeless Rock on Watch Tower released in 2001.  This is a slightly cleaner sounding source of the first fifty minutes of the show.  Scorpio debut the first four minutes of “Whole Lotta Love” not found on Watchtower.  It is a shame it is incomplete since this is perhaps the most enjoyable sounding tape of the bunch.

This show occurs on the afternoon following the legendary first night in Tokyo.  And unlike the previous show, where they began sounding slightly stiff, they get off to an energetic start.  Robert Plant makes a big deal about playing in the afternoon by mentioning it several times between the first couple of numbers.  “Black Dog” is from the new album coming out “in a manner of three weeks” and all of the new songs are dedicated to Cliff Richards.

“Dazed And Confused” lasts more than twenty minutes and is notable for Jimmy Page’s duplication of a jet crashing into the venue during the violin bow episode and for Bonham bashing out “The Crunge” during the funk section.  Plant again speaks about the time while introducing “Celebration Day,” saying “Good Afternoon. I don’t really like playing when the daylight’s with us. It’s a pity it wasn’t a little darker….We just came from the United States of America, which is no fault of our own, but we’d like to do something that we really feel is…if anybody’s been there, it’s about five thousand oarstrokes away…”  A whistle and applause are heard and he responds, “surgical rubberwear, that was very good.”

The acoustic set is expanded with the first live performance of “Tangerine.”  The show’s finale “Whole Lotta Love” reaches past a half hour and like the first night is played at a furious pace.  The medley was pretty well set by the end of the US tour but in all these shows they expand and experiment with the songs played and their arrangements.  After “Boogie Chillun'” they get into rare covers of “Cocaine Blues” and Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.” 

Plant is loose enough that he tries to lead the band into “Your Time Is Gonna Come” from the first album.  Having never played it live before, it takes a bit of time before the band figure out how.  Page strums the riff for “For What It’s Worth” and Jones plays the “Ramble On” rhythm before hitting the song’s chorus.  After “I’m A Man” they play “The Hunter” section to “How Many More Times” and the  medley ends with an uptempo reading of the first verse of that song.  It’s one of their more adventurous medleys like all of them in Japan.  The encores are much longer than the previous evening with the organ solo preceding “Thank You” and a long “Communication Breakdown” with Plant babbling the words from the “How Many More Times” violin bow section from the studio recording.  Overall this is a great sounding edition of this well documented tape and is worth having.