Is there a worse concert movie than Song Remains the Same?

As a live album, How the West was Won destroys this one.

OTM

Despite this being a huge deal for wee me I never heard the LP with the full version of No Quarter until quite recently, and only relatively recently learned that some of the footage was recorded on a stage without the audience (even though this is quite obvious with hindsight.) The film is both risible and amazing.

Saw this at an art house theatre with a friend when I was 15. Missed the last bus home and had to walk the 10km return trip through one of the more questionable areas of Ottawa. The movie was much less memorable.

i'm not sure i've ever been able to sit through this whole film but i was at one of the three msg shows at which it was supposedly filmed so there's that.

The best part of the movie is the slow bucolic walk on Page’s estate grounds — and the discovery of him sitting on a blanket playing acoustic. He turns around to face you…

woah, TSF, that's cool! how was the show?

Doug: Bytowne? I watched it there in 00 or 01 once. A drunk guy was loudly warbling along to the whole thing, which enhanced the experience.

haha that was a long time ago, dr. casino, and i was 14. i was lucky enough to have seen them three times, always in arenas, and always in the cheapest of cheap seats. the most memorable was probably the first time, in 1972 at the nassau coliseum. that was my first concert, and it was an experience. i was a pretty straight kid, and the nassau coliseum in those days was a druggie's delight. so i just remember this vast haze of smoke (i'd never even smelled pot before) and this wall of noise emerging from these little figures on the stage. it was actually cool as all hell, with the guitar bow and the shrieking and everything. but also kind of scary. even the endless drum solo, when everyone left to get beer / get high / etc., was cool. the msg show is maybe the one i remember least. the third time was back at the coliseum, maybe early '75? (i was a long island kid and my dad, bless his heart, would drive me and my buddies to the shows, except the msg show where we took the train.) i believe the '75 show was just before the release of physical graffiti, and the most memorable thing -- and maybe one of my most memorable concert experiences ever -- was having "kashmir," which i had never heard, wash over me for the first time.

they were a lot of fun in concert. for all their rock godditude, plant was very conversational and down to earth.

xp It was actually its precursor, the Towne on Beechwood in the early 80s. But I suspect that your experience was timeless. Did they still allow smoking in theatres then? We always exited those rock doc screenings, stinking of weed and tobacco.

i believe the '75 show was just before the release of physical graffiti

February 4, 1975

yup thanks. my ticket stubs are all back at my mom's house.

that was one of the few times in my zelig-like existence that i heard a song live for the first time and just knew it was magnificent, the other being "once in a lifetime" at toronto's heatwave festival, a few months before "remain in light" came out. i don't even remember remembering that, but my brother tells me i said to him "that was a great song" after they played it.

Setlist.fm sez Zep played Nassau on February 4th, and came back on the 13th & 14th.

Did they still allow smoking in theatres then?

No, thankfully. High schools still had "smoking sections" on campus property when I started hs in 92 but that was gone within a year or two.

TSF, those are great recollections, thank you for sharing!

glad you were not among the teenaged fans seen in TSRtS who were let in the backdoor by the film crew, and then chased down and ejected by security under somewhat mysterious circumstances. this, and the very unflattering scene of their manager (?) yelling at the people from the venue because some people slipped in and were selling bootleg posters, suggest that at some point the director maybe had notions of it being less of a "concert film" and more of a documentary about putting on a concert, or something. hard to square with the dream sequences for each band member, and the 1930s gangster movie stuff at the beginning. weird movie.

Thank you for sharing, TSF!

I am v much with Casino on this one. This is how a concert film put out by Led Zeppelin was meant to be, it could be no other way

having "kashmir," which i had never heard, wash over me for the first time.

god damn, thanks for sharing