Led Zeppelin - For Badgeholders Only (LA Forum, 21st – 27th June 1977) [18 CD]

Empress Valley’s massive box set For Badge Holders Only caught collectors by surprise. Nowhere was it ever mentioned this was in production. This is an eighteen disc plus one DVD box set. It has two designs on the front cover and each is limited to only one hundred fifty copies. This is the third time a box set with Led Zeppelin’s eleventh tour Los Angeles shows has been released. The first was A Week For Badge Holders (Tarantura T19CD-BOX (T19CD-1~19)). At the time this was a startling achievement and is an extremely rare piece. However Tarantura used the first hour of the June 14th New York show for the June 22nd tape for some reason. After this Power & Glory (The Diagrams Of Led Zeppelin TDOLZ Vol. 50-55). This was a solid set but for the June 22nd show they edited in ”Ten Years Gone” from an alternate source for the June 21st show. Also they used some high generation tapes which is noticeable especially on the June 25th concert.

In the intervening decade since the release of the Diagrams set there have been a multitude of releases of the four Millard taped concerts. In the past two years both Wendy and Scorpio issued these shows and both released the Eddie show twice. This set finds partial redemption in issuing the first complete version of the June 22nd show on silver for the first time. Empress Valley are also trying hard to associate this with their excellent Deep Throat boxset, which covers the three Los Angeles shows from 1975 and now commands high prices. What follows are brief comments regarding each of the shows in this set.

 

 

Bob Dylan - Man On The Street, Vol. 2 (10 CD, 2019) [FLAC]

 

Second set of Dylan's performances : 1974-1994

Rod Stewart - The Studio Albums 1975-2001 (14 CD, 2013/FLAC)

 

Faust - Faust 1971-1974 (9 CD, 2021/FLAC)

Faust 1971-1974 is new box set, available on CD and vinyl, that collects the music of Faust, the band who are strongly associated with Krautrock movement in West German.

 The 8CD box set (also available as a 7LP vinyl collection) contains the four albums from the original early Seventies incarnation of the band. That is, Faust (1971), So Far (1972) , The Faust Tapes (1973) and Faust IV (1973). It also includes Punkt, a 1974 album that has never been released (recorded at Giorgio Moroder’s Musicland Studios) and unissued studio tracks collected on Momentaufnahme I and Momentaufnahme II. The final disc in the CD version contains material from two seven-inch singles which feature in the vinyl box set.

The first seven inch features ‘Lieber Herr Deutschland’, the demo recording the band sent to Polydor in 1971 (eventually issued as the B-side to their single ‘Baby’) while the second is ‘So Far’, the very first Faust single on Polydor (originally issued in 1972).

Faust 1971-1974 is very limited with just 2,000 copies available as the 7LP+2×7″ set and an even lower number (1,000) on CD. 

Warren Haynes - The Benefit Concert, Vol. 20 (3 CD, 2023) [FLAC]

Warren Haynes' Christmas Jam returned for it's 30th annual installment in December 2018. The charity event was held over two days at the U.S. Cellular Center in the guitarist's hometown of Asheville, North Carolina on December 7 and 8, 2018. Now, for the first time, it's being released on 4 different vinyl sets, 2CD+DVD and 3CD+2blu-ray. It features performances by Gov't Mule who presented a "Dark Side Of The Mule" tribute to Pink Floyd as well as Grace Potter, Jamey Johnson, Marco Benevento, and Mike Gordon. Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl also headlined one night for a set billed as "Dave Grohl And Friends Play 'Play'" in reference to his 23-minute instrumental. Gov't Mule, Eric Church, Jim James, and Joe Bonamassa round out the lineup alongside many more special guests.