Landover SHN weed, Drugged Zeppelin, Fireworks at MSG, D'yer M'ker, and Aeropage

["Jon Moorman" <Jon_Moorman@xxxxxxxx>]

LANDOVER WEED

the weed rolls on.  i will help make it "the SHN heard 'round the world".
i will give SHN discs to:
1 FBOer in the U.S.
1 FBOer outside the U.S.
1 digester in the U.S.
1 digester outside the U.S.
all you have to do is offer the discs up to someone (or someones) else in
the near future.  please email me at jmoorman@xxxxxxxx and put 'Landover
SHN' in the title.  if you don't hear back from me, then better luck next
time.  i'll post the winners names as soon as i have them all.

DRUGGED ZEPPELIN

a bit of history on this.  back in college (whoa, 20 years ago, now!) i had
the most utterly boring accounting class.  it was the first class that i
ever used all my cuts on as the teacher would literally sit in front of the
class and paraphrase the reading assignment.  he would occassionally give a
pop quiz to make sure that you had read the assignment.  yuck!  but that's
not what makes this class stick out.  in the back of the class was another
led zep fan.  his brother had been a roadie for them during the 1977 tour
(and possibly earlier, but not all the brains cells survived the past 20
years!).  we traded some vinyl boots back and forth and he told me some of
the stories that his brother had shared with him.

one of the stories that shocked him (and me) was the amount of drugs in led
zeppelin.  our mutual opinion was that led zep cared so much about how the
music sounded, that they could not have been so drugged up all of the time.
his brother had mentioned that jimmy page was sometimes so strung out on
heroin that he was hardly able to stand on stage.  at one concert, his
brother told him, jp was so drugged out that the show was cancelled half
way through the set!  this was a complete shock, but also sent me hunting.
i don't know if he mentioned a bootleg recording of it or not, but that
suddenly became my holy grail of zep shows.  just to see if this drug thing
could really have happened.

hee hee, re-reading this, i can laugh at my own naivete.  a lot of you guys
can remember what music was like back then.  there weren't two dozen books
talking about led zeppelin.  there was (thankfully!) no mtv.  there was no
web or mailing lists either.  the only source of band info was 'creem' or
'circus' magazines (boy howdy!) which printed pictures and told us some of
the concert dates.  hmmm.  well, i guess the good thing about that lack of
information was that rock bands had their own mystique.  you could pretty
much imagine them to be anything that you wanted.  but, i digress...

a number of years later after this drugged zeppelin conversation, i finally
came upon a vinyl bootleg named: 'sick again'.  it has an errorneous
listing of songs on the back cover, but had a comment about led zep
cancelling the show early because jp was 'sick from china white'.  the
quality of the recording is pretty abysmal, but i had found my elusive
proof.  this album remains a favorite find in my vinyl collection to this
day.  but there is still a little extra information that i would like to
know.

the locale on this boot was chicago, and i believe the date was april 9
1977.  on the 'this day in led zeppelin history' mailing list, steve
mentioned this show and how the press thought that jp was drunk on ouzo(?
that thick greek wine).  rp defended jimmy by saying that he had a touch of
food poisoning and never drank, did drugs, fooled around with women, and
other (seemingly) absurd comments.

does anyone have any other information about this show?  i have seen this
date on a couple of people's trade lists and notice that this show was
treed on FBO.  www.bootledz.com lists only a single audience source of this
show, so i'm going to assume that the source of my vinyl boot is the one
recording of this show that is commonly available.  my copy is on a single
vinyl album with a big skip (source, not vinyl) from the middle of the
piano/guitar solo thru most of the last verse.  is that skip on all copies
or did the vinyl bootlegger do this just to cram the show on one album?  rp
makes several comments about fireworks during the concert and before i knew
about the 'food poisoning' story, i thought that the band was going to
blame the early end on fireworks.  curiously, rp never says 'good night',
nor 'sorry, but jimmy's sick', nor any other comment before the band leaves
the stage.  are there any comments on the cd version?  is the NQ skip
there?  is the SQ any better?

FIREWORKS AT MSG

another friend told me this story in the late 70s.  he said that he was at
a show at madison square garden where someone had tossed an M80 at the
stage as the band returned for an encore.  said explosive device ignited
right near jimmy page and hurt his hand.  he said that rp was
(understandably) pissed but that jimmy (apparently) wanted to complete the
show.  jp put his hand in an ice bucket, wrapped it in gauze and began
playing WLL.  this friend told me that by the end of the encore, the gauze
was covered in blood and that rp left the stage without even saying 'good
night'.

i remember a letter to 'creem' or 'circus' magazine back in that time frame
that referenced this event.  the writer was (allegedly) a friend of the
person that threw the M80 and was trying to whine away any malicious
intent.  at the san diego show (1977.06.18), rp makes a mention to an
injury jp got 'from a firecracker in new york'.  i was wondering if anyone
knew any additional information.  was it from the last nyc show on the
14th?  i have two shows (6/8 and 6/11) from the garden in 1977, but haven't
come across the fireworks incident yet.

D'YER M'KER

someone asked a while back about this being played in concert.  there was
one post stating that they played pieces of it.  did this happen during WLL
or CB?  was it a substantial portion of the song or just rp scatting a few
lines?  more importantly (drool, drool), are there any shows circulating
with it?  the most i've heard (to this point) has been rp scatting a line
or two (cleveland '77, la '77).

AEROPAGE

i recently traded for an aerosmith boot with a certain led zeppelin
guitarist joining aerosmith for their encores of TKAR and WTW.  i recall
reading that JP also joined aerosmith for a complete show in the early 90s.
i seem to recall london, but may be mistaken.  the article stated that they
played a bunch of yardbirds tunes (TKAR, 'Think About It', and others).
assuming that this show was recorded, does anyone have this show for trade
(or b+p).

***

for an infrequent contributor, i think this is quite the lengthy post!  :)
thanks in advance for any information.

- -jon