| Tech Note | The Diagrams of Led Zeppelin 017
25 July 1969; State Fairgrounds, Midwest Rock Festival; West Allis, Wisconsin
Track Listing: Train Kept A Rollin', I Can't Quit You, Dazed And Confused, White Summer/Black Mountain Side, How Many More Times (cut), Communication Breakdown.
Recording Quality: The very good audience tape features Plant and Page more prominently, but Jones and Bonham are still totally audible. The only blemish is a cut near the end of How Many More Times. Perhaps a minute of music is lost. Surprisingly good quality for an outdoor audience tape from 1969.
Comments: By this time, Page plays a Les Paul onstage. The fatter, more 'electronic' sound of this guitar becomes audible under his aggresive picking in I Can't Quit You. Plant introduces Jimmy after his impressive solo. The piledriving intro of Dazed And Confused makes the audience yell out. With the recording quality, you can appreciate the efforts Page makes to vary his guitar tone, toggling from harsh to sweet. He slaps out some triplets on the bow and obtains some unusual reverberations. Such variations and aggression maintain interest in pieces they have performed all year- the audience can feel it too, someone says "heavy, heavy" after Dazed And Confused.
Page is on and he takes the solo spot with White Summer/Black Mountain Side. He nearly sounds like two guitarists with his accelerated hammers and pulls over the lush ringing octave strings. Just into the Black Mountain Side segment he stops to tune up. Still dissatisfied, Jimmy uses some harmonics to tune the strings while he plays. He disguises this distraction well, and doesn't interrupt the flow of his agile playing, rolling through the themes with soulful transitions. How Many More Times stretches to include improvised Page/ Plant interplay, with the teasing 'schoolgirl' lyrics typical of this tour in the Summer of '69: do it to me baby, make your daddy worry all night long, etc. Plant 'echoes' his voice in response to Page's echoed feedback and lets some of Whole Lotta Love out of the bag shouting "Woman!" Jones rattles the speakers with his bass lines during Communication Breakdown, overloading the recorder.
Packaging: With color photos from 1969 front and back on a paper slipcase, Diagrams produces a pretty package. The title refers to a Yardbirds track very similar to Train Kept A Rollin' that was featured in the 1968 film 'Blow Up' and can be found on the official soundtrack and numerous compilation releases.
Sound Rating: 7.5
Bottom Line: Somebody invent a time machine so we can go back and hear these concerts. The exciting performance features some setlist changes and a more intense Jimmy Page than the Newport date a few weeks before.
Eric Romano (7/10/97)
http://members.optushome.com.au/slooby/barlow/_stroll_on.html |
