Led Zeppelin: 1980-07-02 Mannheim, Germany (FLAC_SB_2 CD)

This is the fourth from last 1980 show before Led Zeppelin was no more.  This one has been requested as have two more 1980 shows in order for me to have at least one copy of each 1980 shows here on the site.  The band was wrapping up their Tour Over Europe 1980 dates and after this show there were only three more before Led Zeppelin was suppose to come to North America in November and start their tour dates here.  As we all know, the North American tour never happened due to the death of John Henry Bonham on September 25, 1980.

I decided to upload the Flagge label copy because it sounds really nice.  Most all copies sounds excellent from what I've got and heard but this one, and it may not even be the best sounding copy either, is the one being shared today.

LINEAGE:
SB > ?? > ?? > FLAC 8 > me > TLH > WAV (to test for lossiness) > Audacity (to view waveform, embed metadata/track titles & info, and then to re-encode) > FLAC 8 > TLH (to check for SBE's and create and verify new ffp & md5 files) > you

DETAILS:
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Date: July 2nd, 1980
Location: Mannheim, Germany
Venue: Eisstadion
Title: Mannheim 1980
Label: Flagge
Source: SB
Format: FLAC
CD's: 2
Artwork: Yes
Size: 783 MB
Length: 129:25:61

SETLIST:
CD 1:
101. Train Kept A Rollin'
102. Nobody's Fault But Mine
103. Black Dog
104. In The Evening
105. The Rain Song
106. Hot Dog
107. All My Love
108. Trampled Underfoot
109. Since I've Been Loving You

CD 2:
201. Achilles Last Stand
202. White Summer ~ Black Mountain Side
203. Kashmir
204. Stairway To Heaven
205. Rock And Roll
206. Whole Lotta Love

NOTE:I somehow left "Achilles Last Stand" out of the text file when I uploaded it.

LINK:
(1) 1980-07-02 Mannheim, Germany (SB/Flagge)

MIRROR:
(1) 1980-07-02 Mannheim, Germany (SB/Flagge) (Mirror)

NOTE:
I'm using a free Mega account as a mirror in this upload.  Those of you downloading please leave me a message here or on the Facebook (Community Group or Secret Group) letting me know what works best as far as the links go.  I eventually plan on adding a secondary mirror site to my posts as I've always had until the last year or so.  Your opinion will help me help you.

This was the bands first of two nights in a row at Mannheim's Eisstadion (the venue).  They put on a great show and the sound is nicely mixed with all members being heard well and evenly.  There is a good low frequency range too where John Paul Jones can easily be heard on both bass and his keyboards.

There is some audio clipping but it isn't horrible.  Each song, with the exception of "White Summer" and "Black Mountain Side", looks to have a few peaks where audio is clipped.  It looks like Flagge likely amplified the audio causing the clipping.  But it is not a brickwalled recording and the clipping is not too bad.  There is more tape hiss in this recording too.  It isn't horrible but it is noticeable.  As I listen to "The Rain Song" now, with headphones on, it is a lot more obvious due to the song being a quieter one.  But this is better than having the high frequencies cut when a label tries to remove tape hiss incorrectly.

I had started to upload the first generation soundboard recording but I missed bringing it over to the local drive on my PC when moving a few copies of each show being uploaded to the Requests folder from their external hard drive.  From what I remember, the first generation copy is a cleaner sounding and likely not EQ'ed copy of the show.  I'm sure Flagge did some processing of the audio with an equalizer.

I don't want to give the impression this is not a good sounding show because that is far from true.  It sounds excellent.  The mix is fine like I mentioned already but I think a better EQ job could have made it even better.  You have no problems hearing anyone playing or singing at all.  But I'd have enjoyed hearing Page's guitar a little more up front as well as Plant's vocals.

The band does seem to be in synchronization with their timing very well this night and not messing up with wrong lyrics, musically coming in at the wrong time, and having other issues like that heard in some of the other shows.  I'm only up to "All My Love" right now but I expect the rest of the show to be tight like it has been in this show so far.

Ironically, I did notice a slight difference in sound just as "Trampled Underfoot" started up.  It has less tape hiss and may have been processed or EQ'ed slightly different.  The high frequencies sounds great but may have been cut slightly.  It actually does sound cleaner and the mix sounds better with Page's guitar especially.  I'm not sure if this is a different source being used here, the soundboard having been adjusted a little in the sound,  or just different audio tweaking?  I'll have to see if it continues with this sound or not as the show progresses from this song on.  "Since I've Been Loving You" is sounding like the best song to me so far and Page's guitar is right where I was wishing to hear it at still too.

One thing I am noticing as I come back and insert this paragraph is that the very end of "Since I've Been Loving You" has some very light clicking in the audio.  It isn't for long and the song is really at the very end when it is heard.  It's not show stopping or ruining the audio but I thought I'd mention it anyhow.  I do not hear it as "Achilles" Last Stand" starts up.  That would be the first song on the second disc and this makes me think it was an error Flagge  caused or the person ripping the audio introduced into the audio without knowing.  It's hard to tell since the lineage is not really anything we can tell anything from (like if EAC was used to rip the audio, etc).  It's no big deal and it is short (30 - 45 seconds maybe) and at the end of disc 1.

The "songs remained the same" again on this night with "Whole Lotta Love" being the final track again like it was in the end of some shows the previous month.  There really isn't a whole lot of change in each night's setlist or the way each song was played.  To me, this is one reason I like the earlier years of Led Zeppelin live because the song never remained the same and the songs were played differently each night.  "Whole Lotta Love" was the exception to the songs remaining the same in 1979 - 1980 though.  And I really like how Page and the rest of the band changed up the song, once again extending it to a longer than 1 - 3 minute intro into another song as in some previous years, and they really were trying some new and awesome sounding music out in this one.  This song was always meant to be a long one in my book and on this night Plant even adds in some "Boogie mama" too going back to the 1973 era doing that.

Almost every night in the European 1980 tour Robert Plant has to ask the crowd to quit pushing, quit moving around like snakes, etc.  The crowds were really excited seeing Led Zeppelin again after their three years of not touring.  And many of these European countries had not had a Led Zeppelin tour in seven years or more too.  The two Copenhagen 1979 and two Knebworth Festival 1979 shows were not a tour in that year and most people were not able to see those shows.  But here, Led Zeppelin was back and touring again even though nobody realized just how close to the end they were for this happening and how lucky they were too to be able to see these last shows in June and July of 1980.

I hope you enjoy the show...

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!!!