BOTM#11 Nut collection part 3

[tytlane@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

One of the big reasons I'm glad this tape has surfaced is that during
this song I had to piss so bad my eyeballs were floating, so I
managed to weave my way back to the bathroom, which was an adventure
in itself. I'm glad I did at this point, because on the tape it sounds
like Page's guitar goes out of tune or something right before the
last verse. The show was so loud, we could hear basically everything
in the can too, so I took my time getting back to the boys. I ran
into old Titty-Girl out in the hallway. She was passed out cold as
kraut. Wonder if she ever made it home? There were some dudes smoking
some kick-ass herb in the john, so I stopped by to grab a hit or two
before finding my way back to my "seat". I could hear Plant talking
to the crowd as I got back down to the floor. I could have sworn I
heard Plant tell someone to "Fuck off!" and this tape proves that.
Must have been somebody down front fighting again. I was kind of
taken aback when I got there, because they had gathered at the front
of the stage with the acoustic instruments.

They kick off the acoustic set with 'Battle Of Evermore', admittedly
not one of my more favorite Zeppelin songs, and it was made that much
worse (for me, anyway) by Jonesey's dour and watchful backing vocals.
Bah! Me and Ron rolled 2 joints apiece and sent them east and west
respectively. BOE had it's moments, with Plant's vocals being quite
strong at times, delivering the lines with controlled fury. The crowd
has mellowed a bit again with the mandolin strains crawling across
the tops of the audience's heads. I think a good portion of the upper
deck headed to the bathrooms too, because there was more commotion in
the hallways than on the floor by that point. Still, a strong BOE,
despite the majority of the crowd wanting to "rawk".

Plant led a fairly lengthy segue into 'Goin' To California' while
Page got his Martin ready and tuned. Plant kept saying something to
someone in the photo pit, you can hear that on this tape although I
can't hardly understand what he's saying. Plant has a couple of vocal
cracks on this one. Mostly attempting the higher notes. The tape
seems to drag a bit during this song. A bit of "wow and flutter", for
want of a better word. Robert does some more of his plays on "it's
terribly hard", and "it's hard", like on the rest of the '77 tour
boots, but at the time, we were out on the floor going "huh huhuh
huh..he said "hard"...huh huhuh" One of those things that if ya hear
it once, it's cool, after that....eh...a little trite. Standard
ending for 'GTC' then a brief stage rap into 'Black Country Woman'.

Oh yeah! Now we're cookin' with gas!!! Bonham's went back to the drum
kit and Jimmy's jammin' on the acoustic. I vaguely remember Jonesey's
standup bass, I think I yelled to Brian "what the fuck is that???".
He couldn't hear me. He never even turned his head. On this tape, the
song cuts at 1:45 and is out about long enough to grab another tape
and load it and stash the other one.

We come back into Jimmy doing some fair acoustic noodling a segue
into 'Bron Yr Aur Stomp'. We were all on our feet stomping and
clapping, as you can hear on the tape. I remember a big frickin'
beach ball rolling around the crowd during this one. There was a lot
of shit thrown that night. I think somebody clipped Jimma with a
bottle once. I think it was fairly early in the show. Might have been
'NFBM'. Can't remember. Anyway, back to Bron Yr Aur Stomp, Jimmy does
a lengthy acoustic solo with a short tape drop-out then Plant doing
the "Strider!" shout. A bit of time passes for Jimmy to grab up the
Danelectro. Thank god for this tape, because we kinda had to tend to
Jack because he'd just puked on the floor right then and was about to
white-eye on us, so we kinda walked him around some.

I missed a lot of the first part of 'White Summer'. Jimmy was really
doing some amazing stuff, we were just on drunk watch at that point.
Jackie straightened up about midway through, so we migrated away from
the puke-pool and enjoyed the rest of the show. I remember Jimmy
hunkered down over that old Danelectro, weaving back and forth, with
his hair all down in his face for what seemed like forever. Then the
lighting changed, and he got up and launched into 'Kashmir'.

Friends and neighbors, we're talkin' religious experience here! This
was the culmination of all the elements that made bein' a Zeppelin
fan in 1977 the greatest thing in the world! The crowd wasn't weaving
from side-to-side so much as lurching forward and backward! The place
got real sexual all of a sudden, if you can dig where I'm coming from
on this. The band had the "slow hunch" tempo going and the air was
thick with rock and roll fever. My eyes were closed for most of that
song. I was in another land. One of sand, wind, silken scarves and
chicks with one titty hangin' out. Pure Bliss! Between the reds, the
weed, the beer, that bourbon and the sheer volume and awesomeness of
the show, it could get no better! Listening now to the tape makes it
hard to type this. I realize now that we were treated to one of the
better versions of 'Kashmir' that had or would ever be played by Led
Zeppelin. The crowd LOVED it! The rush of applause afterward was akin
to a "release". This crowd had just got a nut.