Led Zeppelin - "William Tell's Overture"
August, 7th, 1971, Montreux, Switzerland, Montreux Casino
Remastered Audience Recording (A Group/Personal Project)
Lineage: AGFA Fe Master cassettes > Phillips Deck (Mono) > second generation EL3302 > Nakamichi 682 ZX Cassette Tape deck(normal eq/no noise reduction) > Sony CDR-W66 Standalone CD Burner w/"super bitmapping on" > CD-R (2) > Plexwriter Premium II CD-Transport > iMac 3.06 GHz Intel Core Duo with iTunes 9.2.1 into WAW > DVD-R > DVD-R > WAV > TLH > FLAC > DIME > Torrent > HD > TLH, Decode > WAV > Remaster > Flac (Level.8, Align On SBE'S, All Tracks Tested With TLH, No Errors Occured).
Label: N/A
Original Taper: Judge Free
This is a Group/Personal project by "That Den Of Snakes" Judge Free, William Tell, Luciferburns, Porgie, The 7th Son, Joel, Mike, Grendel, and Acapulco Gold.
We hope that whoever picks this up will enjoy it and the work we've done, and will pass it along and share it with others, or just pass, the choice is yours.
This is not meant to be a "Definitive" edition.
Cheers and thanks go out to:
- The taper "Judge Free" for taping and sharing their recording with everyone in the community, if you're out there, and happen to pick this up, we hope you'll enjoy the work we've done.
- "William Tell" for sharing this recording with Luciferburns, and for allowing him to post it online to share it with the community.
- My mate Luciferburns for sharing the recording online with the community, for allowing me to work on it, and for proofing the samples, it was nice working with you on one of these projects mate and I hope we can do this again sometime.
- My mate Porgie for all his help and input on the final project, always a pleasure working with you on these mate.
Dedicated to "Judge Free", "William Tell", and "Luciferburns".
Cheers
Disc One:
1) Introduction
2) Immigrant Song (Has A Quick Drop Out Near Beginning)
3) Heartbreaker (Suffers From Some Brief Tape Fluxes)
4) Since I've Been Loving You
5) Black Dog
6) Dazed And Confused
7) Stairway To Heaven (Suffers From Some Brief Tape Fluxes, Tape Stops As Plantations Begin)
Disc Two:
1) Going To California (Tape Cut During Plantations)
2) That's The Way
3) Celebration Day (Has A Brief Tape Flux)
4) What Is And What Should Never Be
5) Whole Lotta Love (Medley, Has Two Small Tape Cust At End Of Song)
Includes:
- Boogie Chillen
- That's Alright Mama
- Ramble On (Has A Mic Bump At The End Of Song)
- Honey Bee (False Start)
- I'm A Man
- Ain't Got No Love
- Honey Bee (Second Attempt)
6) Weekend
Enjoy!
Please Do Not Convert To Lossy Formats
Please Do Not Sell
Please Share With Others
Notes:
I'd like to start off the notes for this torrent with notes given to me about the history of this recording from my mate Luciferburns, who recieved the information I'm passing on to everyone here about the recording from the taper of this show himself "Judge Free".
Lucifer is friends with the taper, and I personally asked him if he could ask the taper a couple of questions about this recording that have been on my mind (and possibly the mind of other Zeppelin tape collectors) ever since this recording was released into wide circulation.
The goal was to try and "get rid of the smoke" surrounding this recording, most importantly, the question about where the taper actually was when they recorded this show, were they inside the concert venue?, or was it recorded from outside from the p.a that Peter Grant set up outside?.
Here are his notes:
"This recording came to me from my friend "William Tell".
"William Tell" is the name of the person who is providing the recordings and transfers of his various friends in the "European Taping Community".
Several tapers including "William Tell" himself have recorded a wide range of various artists from the 70's, 80's and beyond.
This recording came into his possession from the taper "Judge Free".
I spoke to "Judge Free" about the popular opinion that the show was not recorded from inside the venue hall, but recorded from outside the doors of the venue from Peter Grant's p.a set up outside the venue.
Both Judge Free and I would like to state to everyone here that this statement is false, the show WAS actually recorded from inside the theatre, with the taper sitting on the floor of the venue, which was a routine thing for people to do when they saw a show at the Casino.
I don't know how this theory that the show was taped outside the doors got started we don't know, but we'd like to state, once and for all, that this show was recorded from inside the venue.
The reason for the changes in sound quality is simply due to the taper moving the equipment around and covering the mic."
- Luciferburns
Notes About The Performance:
This show is the first of a two night stint at the Montreux Casino, a venue that the band apparently enjoyed playing.
It was at these August 1971 concerts that manager Peter Grant agreed with the promoter Claude Nobs that an outside P.A system be set up, and that the show be piped outside the venue so those unfortunate enough not to get tickets could hear it.
This is an excellent performance from the group, very intense and passionate, and this is a very nice recording that captures it.
All the members of the group are in fine form, but Robert is the one that really shines at this performance.
It is not often that Robert really puts the rest of the band into the shade, but on this show he totally dominates with a stunning performance, His voice sounding as strong as you will ever hear him.
However, while it's indeed great that Robert's vocals are not being drowned out by the other instruments, his vocals are often drowning out the other members in the group.
So we wanted to work on this recording with the goal to try and balance Roberts vocals a bit, and try and bring out the rest of the instruments and make them just as dominant.
What we've done to make this project:
- We've tried to balance the instruments as best as possible, originally the vocals and guitar were the most dominant in the mix, we've tried to add more things that were missing from the raw tape source (low end from bass and drum fills).
- We've reduced as much tape hiss as possible.
- we've increased the volume of the entire recording, the raw tape sources volume was originally a little low, so we've brought up to make the sound a little fuller and more well rounded. We hope it isn't too loud for everyone.
- We've removed all silent portions and drop outs from the raw recording with the exception of the one during "Immigrant Song" because traces of the song are actually still there.
In regards to the title:
We started the project out with 3 ideas for a title.
Our first and most popular choice was "Burning Down The Gambling House", which is of course a line from Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water" a song about the casino burning down in 1972, the second was "We're Making A Bootleg Record Tonight", which comes from a Plantation made during the night in regards to the P.A system set up outside the venue, where anyone with access to a tape recorder could actually record it, and the third was "William Tell's Overture" a reference to the person who shared this recording with us "William Tell".
We liked all of these title ideas and felt they all seemed very fitting, but we couldn't decided what was the best choice, so we put it to a vote and "William Tell's Overture" came out the winner.
So the title is a sort of dedication to him, like shows dedicated to Mike Millard.
Highlights Of This Show Are:
- Immigrant Song
- Heartbreaker
- Since I've Been Loving You
- Black Dog
- Stairway To Heaven
- That's The Way
- Whole Lotta Love
- Weekend
Hope everyone here will enjoy this.
Cheers