Led Zeppelin: 1970-09-02 Oakland, CA (FLAC_AUD_2 CD)

Today is the 45th anniversary of this great show.  In late 1990's CD-R trade I made for this Silver Rarities Two Days Before copy, I was always confused by the artwork not matching right.  And after wasting hours tonight and becoming convinced it was really the Tarantura Live on Blueberry Hill II copy instead, I was able to confirm it definitely was not in the end.

I did a few hours of research to confirm this is the Silver Rarities (SIRA) Two Days Before copy of the show this morning and learn they just did a horrible job of making their artwork to match their CD tracking.  The SIRA and Tarantura copies are from the same source tape (the better sounding one), but according to reviews, this SIRA copy did not amplify their production heavily like Tarantura did.  And that's a good thing.

It can be a nightmare sometimes trying to track down the information needed to confirm labels, show details, and just information altogether nowadays.  We went from having books and a few resources in the 1990's to having too much useless information to weed through today to find what we're looking for.  But it is all worth it in the end.

LINEAGE:
1997 CD-R trade > EAC (secure mode/offset corrected) > WAV (tested for lossiness) > Audacity (to view waveform, embed metadata/track titles & info, and then to encode) > FLAC 8 > TLH (to check for SBE's and create and verify new ffp & md5 files) > you

DETAILS:
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Date: September 2nd, 1970
Location: Oakland, California
Venue: Oakland Coliseum
Title: Two Days Before
Label: Silver Rarities
Source: AUD
Format: FLAC
CD's: 2
Artwork: Yes (not a perfect match but definitely the correct artwork)
Size: 689 MB
Length: 143:47:51

SETLIST:
CD 1:
101. Immigrant Song
102. Heartbreaker
103. Dazed And Confused
104. Bring It On Home
105. That's The Way
106. Bron-Yr-Aur
107. Since I've Been Loving You
108. JPJ (organ solo intro) ~ Thank you

CD 2:
201. What Is And What Should Never Be
202. Moby Dick
203. Whole Lotta Love
204. Communication Breakdown ~ Good Times Bad Times
205. Train Kept A Rollin'
206. Blueberry Hill
207. Long Tall Sally

LINKS:
(1) 1970-09-02 Oakland, CA (AUD/Silver Rarities)

This show starts of sounding good but by "Dazed and Confused" it starts sounding great and even excellent.  This is a show that doesn't get as much credit as it should.  Since the 1970-09-04 show at The Forum is a better recording (at least 6 sources I know of for this date) many people brush off this Oakland show.  And it's to their detriment they do because the performance and sound are really something to enjoy.

The taper(s) do a small amount of talking during the show but they sound like they're not trying to make themselves loud or heard in the recording.  And they don't talk often either.  Silver Rarities has likely removed the tape hiss from the recording because not much is heard at all.  That can be good and bad depending on how (and how much) it is done.

The audio seems pretty evenly mixed and the only time distortion comes into play is when there is heavy jamming like when the band comes out of the violin bow solo in "Dazed and Confused" and hits it hard and heavy.  But Plants voice still rings out above all of it loud and clear and he sounds in fine form during these California shows in 1970.  The waveform looks great too and there is no audio clipping whatsoever in the show.

The setlist is another nice surprise.  Putting "Train Kept A Rollin'" in at the end of the set, a song not really played (or played much) since their 1969 tour, is a smart choice.  And of course "Blueberry hill" and "Long Tall Sally" wrap the night up just like the band did with "Long Tall Sally" in January of this same year (1970) as they played their gigs with high energy and raw charisma!  This is some of the best music Led Zeppelin did live too.  This is a wonderful show, and if you can put up with a less than perfect audio sound, you have a real treat in store!

The band had not released Led Zeppelin III yet and it did not come out until 1970-10-05.  So the acoustic set with songs like "That's The Way" and "Bron-Yr-Aur" were new to the crowds each night in this part of the tour.  The lucky crowd got to hear new songs before they heard the studio versions of them.  And that is one cool thing Led Zeppelin seemed to always do.  They'd be touring on their new LP before it was released and seeing how the crowd responded to their new songs live first.  Robert Plant messes up the lyrics just a little in "That's The Way" but is back on track without anyone even knowing he'd made a slight mistake.  That must be another plus in playing songs live before they're released on LP officially.  Who's going to know if you mess up since this is their first time hearing the song?

Both CD-R's I got in trade have a one second or so skipping sound at the beginning of each CD.  This was likely caused by a CD-R burning error that the trader I got the shows from had made trying to burn the discs too fast or doing something similar.  This is exactly why you do not want to burn discs at high speeds and I never burn discs any faster than 4X today (it was 2X in the early CD burner days).  If your program shows you can burn discs at 24X, 32X, 48X, or whatever; do not do that!  Burn at slower speeds and be patient if you want an error free disc.  It does not take long at all to burn a full 80 minute CD-R at 4X speeds.  It might take 10 minutes if things are running slow but it is worth the wait.

In conclusion, this is a superb performance with great audio and one all Led Zeppelin fans should listen to at least once in their lifetime.

I hope you enjoy the concert...

Bootradr

SPECIAL NOTICE TO ALL!!

  THESE DOWNLOADS ARE FOR FREE ONLY!  NEVER BUY OR SELL ANY LEGALLY RECORDED BUT ILLEGAL TO SELL SHOWS LIKE THIS ONE.  THIS IS FOR FANS AND FUTURE FANS WHO WANT TO HEAR THE ARTIST'S MUSIC RAW & LIVE BUT NOT OFFICIALLY AVAILABLE OR RELEASED.

ALWAYS REMEMBER TO SUPPORT THE ARTISTS BY BUYING THEIR OFFICIALLY RELEASED MATERIAL TOO.

KEEP IT FREE, KEEP IT AVAILABLE, AND MOST OF ALL; KEEP IT LEGAL!!!