3 x Kodak CD-R ultima (from AUD master cassettes)
3 x Fujifilm CD-R red / blue (Deep Throat source)

CDR

6

3 x Kodak CD-R ultima (from AUD master cassettes)
3 x Fujifilm CD-R red / blue (Deep Throat source)

Led Zeppelin’s final show of their 1975 tour at the LA Forum is one of the longest, heaviest and self-indulgent on record. This show is good for those who like their Zeppelin dark and mysterious with long and crazy improvisations going on for hours. Surprisingly this show was never released on vinyl but saw new life with the advent of compact discs.

Perhaps the earliest can be found on Psychical Graffiti (Flying Disc CD6-817), which claims this to be a soundboard recording. This was supposed to be part of a three disc set but the label only produced one. The Italy produced Dazed And Confused (The Mad Dogs Records MDR-LZ001-2) and its Australian copy Crazed And Bemused (Black Cat BC-22) has “Rock And Roll,” “Sick Again,” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” The earliest three disc set with the whole show appear on Electric Orgasm (Jolly Roger D91-51-52-53) and in the boxset Get Back To LA (Tarantura T9CD-1-7).

In the late nineties Final Show In the Forum 1975 (Jelly Roll JR 12/13/14) (which many Zeppelin collectors admit is the best version to exist), Tour De Force (Rabbit Records RR 005/6/7) and Remainz (Akashic AKA-4) all were released to various degrees of success. The latest two editions can be found in Last Night In the Forum 1975 (Power Archives PA 0307001/2/3), coming out in late 2003 and is actually the only title to use the second tape source to fill in the gaps on the first, and We’re Playing Our Balls Out(The Chronicles Of Led Zeppelin TCOLZ 021/022/023/024/025/026) which presents both tape srouces in total spread out over six discs.

For the final night on their tenth US tour, Led Zeppelin play one of their longest ever gigs clocking in at almost three and a half hours. They also stretch themselves musically and, although they don’t always succeed, the results are interesting nevertheless. Disc jockey JJ Jackson introduces porn star Linda Lovelace to introduce the band and after the opening duo of “Rock And Roll” and “Sick Again” Plant says, “This is the last gig on the American tour for us. So it only remains to be said that we intend to have yet even a better time than we’ve had here before. We’d like to thank Linda Lovelace for coming on and making an appropriate speech about our presence and we’d like to apologize for being late, but one of the cars didn’t crash. It didn’t crash.”

After “Kashmir” they celebrate the final night by changing the setlist by playing “Since I’ve Been Loving You” for only the third time on the tour. Still a bit rugged, Page misses the transition from the solo to the final verse. Self consciously Plant says afterwards, “Right, well that was something that we’ve done about three times in three years. It’s always quite refreshing to do things that we haven’t done for such a long time even though sometime you might think it puts your reputation at stake in front of twenty thousand people, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“No Quarter” reaches a half hour in this performance. Jones plays an interesting three note arpeggio on the grand piano and runs it through different variations as a reoccurring motif before Page comes in with the guitar section of the solo. This is certainly one of the more interesting improvisations among the 1975 versions of the piece. “Trampled Underfoot” follows and Page himself, in a magazine interview several years ago, singled this performance out as perhaps the best ever. He plays a unique solo in the middle and by the end Plant is singing “Gallows Pole” as the song moves along. In fact he refers to the song afterwards as “Trampled Under Gallows.” Plant continues talking about a part they attended in honor of The Pretty Things and how Bonham left early and threw a television out of the window, one of his activities that has passed into legend.

AUD

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