Led Zeppelin Physical Explosion (Seattle, March 1975)

From collectorsmusicreviews.com

Seattle Center Coliseum, Seattle, WA – March 17th, 1975

Disc 1 (52:27): The Song Remains The Same, The Rain Song, Kashmir, No Quarter

Disc 2 (67:29): Trampled Under Foot, Moby Dick, Dazed And Confused

Disc 3 (32:33): Stairway To Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Black Dog

All previous releases of the March 17th show on a silver are a two source mix. The earliest ones include The Hammer Of The Gods (T3CD-1~3) on Tarantura and its clone Two Days In Seattle on Whole Lotta Live (WLL013/014/015) which used the first five tracks were from the second Seattle show on March 21st.

The first attempt to present the whole show with a combination of two audience sources was Seattle Won’t You Listen (TDOLZ 0022/23/24) followed by Gallery of Soldiers (Powerchord PC-0002-01/2/3) and finally the first three discs of Dinosaur In Motion on Empress Valley (EVSD-172-178).

The editing is similar between all three titles with the second source used for the first four numbers with the excellent source picking up at “The Song Remains The Same.” Physical Explosion, manufactured by the same people who made Blow Away, use the excellent sounding but incomplete source exclusively. This is the first silver pressed edition with only one tape source.

The first night is very good and is sometimes neglected in comparison to the more well known second night. Plant’s voice, which had been quite weak at the beginning of the tour is very strong and he’s able to unleash some impressive vocal dynamics in “The Song Remains The Same” and “The Rain Song”.

“No Quarter” reaches twenty-five minutes and is very uneven. Jones doodles around on the keyboards until he finds a nice melody before Bonham and Page come in with their contributions and deliver a fantastic improvisation. ”Dazed & Confused” reaches more than a half hour and is brilliant.

Before “Stairway To Heaven” Plant praises the “energy”. “Whole Lotta Love” includes a long reference to “Licking Stick” before going into “Black Dog” and the close of the show. Overall, the sound is very nice and the package is excellent. If they followed the way of the previous releases and used the second source for the opening, this would be a standard edition of the March 17th Seattle performance.