Led Zeppelin - "Funeral For A Friend"
September, 19th, 1970, New York City, New York, Madison Square Garden, (Evening Show)
Remastered Audience Recording, (A Group/Personal Project)
Lineage: Bell & Howell mono recorder > Master Cassette > 1st gen Sony 252 open reel > SoundForge > CD-R (exact lineage unknown > ProTools (errors corrected) > CDR > Flac > DVD-R > HD > TLH, Decode > WAV > Remaster > Flac (Level.8, Align On SBE's) > Flac (All Tracks Tested With TLH, No Errors Occured)
Label: N/A
Original Taper: Darth9Neo
This is a Group/Personal Project by "Those guys who think you've got some nerve there mister!", The 7th Son, Joel, Per Jonson, Porgie, Mark, Grendel, and Acapulco Gold.
We hope that everyone who chooses to pick this up will enjoy the work that we've done, and will pass this along, and share it with others, or just pass, the choice is yours.
This is not meant to be a "definitive" recording.
Cheers and thanks go out to:
- The taper (Darth9Neo), and everyone who was originally involved with the release of the raw recording (Badloser, DADGAD, etc). If any of you are out there, and happen to pick this up, we hope that you'll enjoy the work that we've done.
- My mate Per Jonson for sharing this release with me, always a pleasure trading with you.
- My mate Porgie for all his help and input on the sound of the project, thanks again for all your help mate.
- My mate Mark for putting together the artwork for this release, thanks again for all your help mate.
Dedicated to Jimi Hendrix.
Disc One:
1) Scott Muni Introduction
2) Immigrant Song
3) Heartbreaker
4) Dazed And Confused
5) Bring It On Home
6) Tribute/Eulogy To Jimi Hendrix
7) That's The Way
8) Bron-Yr-Aur
9) Since I've Been Loving You
10) Organ Solo
11) Thank You
Disc Two:
1) What Is And What Should Never Be
2) Moby Dick
3) Rice Pudding (Tease)
4) Whole Lotta Love (Medley)
Includes:
- Boogie Chillen
- Dust My Broom
- Trucking Little Mama
- Bottle Up And Go
- Lawdy Miss Clawdy
- For What It's Worth
- Cinnamon Girl
- Some Other Guy
- Train Kept-A-Rollin'
- I'm A King Bee
- C.C Rider
- Baby Don't You Wanna Go
- Honey Bee
- The Lemon Song
5) Out On The Tiles
6) Communication Breakdown (Includes: "It's Your Thing" and "Gallows Pole")
7) Scott Muni Announcement
8) The Girl Can't Help It
9) Talking 'Bout You
10) Twenty Flight Rock
11) How Many More Times (Medley)
Includes:
- The Hunter
- Cadillac (No Money Down)
- Blueberry Hill
Enjoy!
Please Do Not Convert To Lossy Formats
Please Do Not Sell
Please Share With Others
Notes:
The last show/stop of the band's 1970 North American tour, the group played 2 shows on this date (an afternoon, and an evening performance) because of overwhelming demand for tickets.
The afternoon show took place at 2 p.m, and the evening performance took place at 8 p.m, this project is a remaster of the evening show.
Both shows are excellent, and were luckily recorded in good quality by people who were close to the stage and who used good equipment, but some collectors do have their preferences on which performance they prefer (I'm partial to the afternoon show myself).
These shows are special for various reasons, some I've already discussed (i.e: the band played 2 performances on the same date, it's the last stop of the North American 1970 tour) but there are other factors that make these performances special like the group doing a lot of experimentation and rare numbers during both shows, and the fact that this is the band's first time playing Madison Square Garden.
But the thing that makes this show special is that this concert was played the day after Jimi Hendrix died, something that definitely shocked the music world.
During both performances, Robert called attention to this to the audience, and did a sort of brief tribute to Jimi during both performances, which I personally found to be quite a decent thing for him to do because although they (the band) were probably not as close to him as other musicians and bands were, his death was indeed a terrible loss to the music industry.
Jimi's style and performances changed the way artists could play rock and roll, and alot is owed to him.
Zeppelin being one of the biggest and hottest bands at the time could've just not said anything on his passing, they could've thought what many artists think from time to time when a band becomes hot that they're "the future", and that people like Hendrix were "the past", and therefore obsolete, but calling attention to his passing and saying that his death was a great loss I think was very big of them to do.
For those that may not know, there are 3 audience recordings for the afternoon performance, and only one recording for the evening show.
There's quite an interesting story/history behind the evening performance recording, I've personally put together the history/back story of the tape using various sources online, (my thanks go out to Darth9Neo,Badloser,DADGAD, and everyone else who documented the history of the tape for the community):
Back in January 2004, the taper of this show (Darth9Neo) joined a peer to peer file sharing server that had about 30 Zeppelin shows posted on it's server, one of the shows that was posted on the hub was "American Woman", what we know to be the NYC 70 afternoon show.
The taper sent a message to the uploader of the show (Badloser) to thank him for posting the show on the hub, Badloser wrote back saying that it was no problem, and that he'll seed as long as it takes so that Darth9Neo can finish the download.
The 2 members got to talking with each other, and Darth9Neo mentions in conversation that he wants to complete the download of "American Woman" so he can compare it to his own recording he made of the show on the 19th.
Darth9Neo was going to try and make a 'matrix' out of both recordings. Darth asked Badloser if he was interested in downloading his own recording, he said yes, and a few minuted later, it was available to him to download song by song.
After both had completed their downloads, Badloser sat down to have a listen to Darth9Neo's version, and was quite surprised at what he discovered on Darth's recording.
For starters, the songs on Darth's recording not only sounded different from the "American Woman" release, but it also had extra songs on it that were not found on "American Woman", also, Robert's mentioning to the crowd about Hendrix's death was worded differently then it was on "American Woman", but he still referred to it as yesterday.
Badloser realized that what he was listening to was a completely different recording from the "American Woman" performance, and that the band had played 2 different shows, both recorded on the same date.
Badloser checked the tour itinerary for 1970, and couldonly find mention of the band doing one show on the 19th, which kind of added to the confusion and excitement about this new recording.
Badloser communicated with a few colleages in the Zeppelin community about this new recording, and was still not given a concrete answer, so he decided that the best way to find out what this recording is was to post it online on 'sharingthegroove' ( now know as 'dimeadozen' ).
He explained that this was a recording made on the 19th, but was not the show that has been available for years, this was a brand new show, and the performance was something special.
The tape created a lot of interest from the community in the first few hours, some were convinced that it was a fake right off the bat without even hearing it.
Finally, a friend of Badloser's sent a PM to him about the recording and stated that the band had indeed played 2 shows at Madison Square Garden on the 19th, an Afternoon performance, and an evening performance.
After that, it was clear what Badloser had in his possession, that the new recording was of the evening show of that date.
Badloser contacted Darth9Neo about what he had discovered, and Darth said that he assumed his recording was of the same show as the AW recording, he wasn't aware there had been a show in the afternoon.
He wasn't hoarding the show, he had passed out copies to his friends over the years without realising it was the only recording of one of Zeppelin's greatest ever shows.
Darth was more than happy to release his show for free to the community, and Badloser was happy to share the recording with the community as well.
The taper (Darth9Neo) back story:
I taped this show on a borrowed Bell and Howll Cassette recorder, and transferred the recording the next day to open reel tape.
For it's time, and the technology used, I thought it was a very good sounding tape.
I was seated in the first 10 rows- that is, from about the middle of "Immigrant Song". When the song started, I was in the 83rd row.
What we've done to make this remaster/project:
- We've brought the volume down slightly, the raw recording was running a little too hot, creating some slight distortion/peaking, so we've tried to reduce that in the remaster.
- We've tried to balance the instruments as best we could. Originally, the vocals and bass were coming in stronger than the other instruments, we've tried to create more of a balanced sound to the recording.
- We've tried to bring out things that were buried in the raw recording, (comments, clapping, cheering, etc). After we cleaned up the recording, we discovered a very funny conversation that happens during "Bring It On Home" where either the taper (or someone near the taper) asks a woman in the audience "would you mind if you could sit down", and she replies "yes I would mind", and there's a moment of heated discussion.
- We've tried to bring out more of the ambiance of the recording, to try and give listeners a sense of the venue, and what the taper experienced.
- We've tried to reduce as much tape hiss as possible.
In regards to the title:
We were mulling over title ideas for quite a while for this project, the Hendrix references had already been exhausted, we couldn't think of a New York reference that really fit to the show, so we eventually started brainstorming about trying to come up with an idea that revolves around the sort of sombre tone that the show has (since it revolves around Jimi's death, and is dedicated to Jimi Hendrix's memory).
Eventually, someone came up with the idea of using the Elton John song title "Funeral For A Friend" from the "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album.
We thought it sounded suiting and clever.
We hope that everyone here will enjoy this.
Cheers!