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It’s time for another free download, Youdopia. This one is very special because I was at this show. Front row, actually. My good friend, Television Sux, and I paid bank to a legal ticket vendor (Front Row Tickets, in Manchester, NH if memory serves) for these tickets. Why? Because it was Jimmy Page, and not just Jimmy Page, but finally awesome again after the drugs and the Firm. He walked out onstage, and said, “Are you ready for us? We’re ready for you, but first, I’d like to introduce to my mistress.”  He then strapped on the Les Paul, for the first time in for-fucking-ever (after 8 years of the damn brown tele) and gets to it.

This show was extra special because Robert Plant was playing the same venue the very next night, and I was hoping they would jam. This was Robert Plant’s midlife crisis, Tall Cool One era, where he finally started singing Zeppelin songs again. Since Jimmy had already jammed at a Robert show in April of that year, and Zeppelin had done their reunion gig for the Atlantic Records gig… I thought it was a real possibility.

It didn’t happen. What did happen is that we got to watch Robert Plant stand behind the bass amps and watch the goddamn show. Yet another reason to dislike Robert Plant. I wouldn’t even have notied but John Miles, the singer for the tour, did a little bow to him during Over the Hills and Far Away. Great, great music.

This show is great. It is prime Jimmy Page back in full command of his instrument. Many of the songs are instrumentals, a la Jeff Beck, and they’re fantastic. There are many Led Zeppelin songs as well, and they’re awesome as well, especially Custard Pie, in which Jimmy throws in many of the same licks that Robert Plant sampled in Tall Cool One. Very tongue in cheek, and super cool.  The show finishes with an instrumental Stairway to Heaven that would be the ultimate in cheese, if the entire 11,000 member audience didn’t sing every verse. Then Jimmy nails “the” solo.

The band is good, but very 1980′s and very on the beat. A young (22 yr old) Jason Bonham is the drummer, and I hate his drum sound. The band is in no way bad, at all. They just don’t swing and groove. It was the 80′s and it sounds it. He even played a Paul Reed Smith guitar for some songs, but it was mostly the Les Paul.

The recording is much better than the shitty cassette I bought from a vendor in a T station in Boston, 22 years ago. I believe it’s the same source, but it’s a digital conversion of the master. It’s an audience tape, and I would rate it as EX-. There’s lots of crowd noise but you can hear everything just fine.

This is an amazing show. Jimmy proved that he was back, and a force to be reckoned with. This tour featured his finest playing since 1973, easily. For all the 80′s cheese, there’s a lot of meat. It is, without question, the Coolest Shit Ever.

Download it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?3zmz4qjyqoi

http://www.mediafire.com/?cj05mybk3mi

Set list after the break

Jimmy Page
1988-10-29
Worcester Centrum
Worcester Ma
Audience recording

disc1

Who’s To Blame
Prelude
Over The Hills and Far Away
Wanna Make Love
Band Introduction
Rites Of Winter/Tear Down The Walls
Emerald Eyes
Midnight Moonlight
In My Time Of Dying
City Siren/Drum Solo/ Someone To love
Prison blues

disc2

The Chase/Violin Bow Solo
Dazed & Confused
Wasting My Time
Blues Anthem
Custard Pie
Train Kept A-Rollin
Stairway to Heaven

Source: 1st Gen Maxell Normal Bias Tape > technics rs-t60r  > phillips cdr 760> EAC> TLH> flac 8> WAV>LAME mp3 VBR 0

No artwork available

Notes: New transfer August 2009 – speed corrected- reseed from DIME 2007

Ex-  sound quality

Enjoy!

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