Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: Led Zeppelin – Minnesota Blues Oil Well

Led Zeppelin – Minnesota Blues
Oil Well – RSC 041 CD

1. Communication Breakdown 3:25
2. I Can't Quit You Baby 6:17
3. You Shook Me 10:16
4. White Summer 8:24
5. How Many More Times 11:18
6. Dazed And Confused 16:06
7. Heartbreaker 5:08
8. What Is And What Should Never Be 4:33
9. Whole Lotta Love 4:16
10. Boogie Mama 3:45
11. Minnesota Blues 2:07

Note
All songs by Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones unless noted
~~Live in Duluth, October 19, 1968~~

Tracks: 1 to 6 recorded on Friday 27 June 1969, original broadcast: Sunday 10 August 1969
Tracks: 7 to 11 recorded on Thursday 1 April 1971, original broadcast: Sunday 4 April 1971

Lineup:
Jimmy Page (guitars)
Robert Plant (vocals and harmonica)
John Paul Jones (bass and organ)
John Bonham (drums)

Don’t let the “Minnesota Blues” or the “Live in Duluth” on this album cover fool you, Led Zeppelin never performed in Duluth. But what is the story behind this Zep bootleg?

Setlist.fm, and several other websites, list Led Zeppelin performing at Liverpool University on Oct. 19, 1968 — the date listed on Minnesota Blues. The track list on the album, however, does not match well with the Liverpool set list. There are numerous web forums on this subject, but they have flashing objects on them and go off topic and are full of speculation, so it’s difficult to read through them all and decipher if anyone has come to any clear conclusions. It remains a mystery to me if solid determinations have been made about a) if 10/19/68 is the correct date of the bootleg recording or b) where exactly it was recorded and c) why it was labeled as a Duluth show.

Bootleggers are somewhat notorious for intentionally mislabeling albums, so that could be the case with Minnesota Blues. But it also might have been a sloppy mistake.

Several different versions of album art exist, and one version marks the recording as “Live in Denmark, 1969.” Perhaps Duluth was mistaken for Denmark at some point. Another thing I’ve gleaned from information online is that the album gets its title from the last track, which is labeled “Minnesota Blues” but apparently it’s a blues standard titled “A Mess of Blues” or “Mess of Blues” or “Mess o’ Blues.”

One theory that comes up fairly often is that the performance on Minnesota Blues is an April 1, 1971 show at the Paris Theatre recorded for the British Broadcasting Corporation. I haven’t found anything to dispute that. If it’s the case, the bootlegger probably felt that changing the details of the show would reduce the likelihood the BBC would file a copyright infringement lawsuit. - read here

The first part of this bootleg is a clone of: "White Summer" - Oil Well – RSC 003 CD
Oil Well version has a fine cover, fine quality. Limited to 200 copies only. Due to its rarity and good quality, this disc is recommended.

Audio quality:

Quality content:

© Official released material:
Tracks 1-11 have been released officially on: "BBC Sessions"
Track 4 had previously been released as "White Summer/Black Mountain Side" on the Led Zeppelin box set and expanded versions of Coda, but with 15 seconds cut out.
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Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions
BBC Sessions is a compilation album featuring studio sessions and a live concert recorded by English rock group Led Zeppelin for the BBC. It was released on 11 November 1997, by Atlantic Records. Disc one consists of material from four different 1969 BBC sessions. Disc two contains most of the 1 April 1971 concert from the Paris Theatre in London.[1] Disc three was only included in a limited run of album releases and features rare interviews from 1969, 1976/1977, and 1990.

Countless bootlegs of these recordings circulated for years before the official release. This release was widely welcomed by Led Zeppelin fans as it was the first live release since The Song Remains the Same in 1976. Others have criticized the decision to edit some of the songs and drop others that were recorded for the BBC. Most notable are one session from 1969 which included the unreleased song "Sunshine Woman", and about seven minutes of the "Whole Lotta Love" medley from 1971.[2] The album was re-released in September 2016 as The Complete BBC Sessions with further BBC recordings, including the "Sunshine Woman" session.

June 27, 1969 - London - UK - Playhouse Theatre
Communication Breakdown (incl. It's Your Thing), I Can't Quit You Baby, Page & Plant interview, Dazed and Confused, White Summer / Black Mountainside, You Shook Me, How Many More Times (incl. "Lemon Song"). BBC live session for "Radio One In Concert". Released on the BBC Sessions cd in 1997. Producer - Jeff Griffin; Engineer - Tony Wilson; Studio - Playhouse Theatre, Northumberland Avenue April 1, 1971 - London - UK - Paris Cinema Theatre Immigrant Song, Heartbreaker, Since I've Been Loving You, Black Dog, Dazed and Confused, Stairway to Heaven, Going to California, That's the Way, What Is and What Should Never Be, Whole Lotta Love (medley incl. Let that Boy Boogie, Fixin' to Die Blues, That's Alright Mama, For What It's Worth, Truckin Little Mama, Mess of Blues, Honey Bee), Thank You, Communication Breakdown (incl. Feel So Bad).

BBC recording session, for John Peel's In Concert show on Radio One in front of a lucky crowd of 400. The group was originally booked on March 25th, but were forced to re-schedule due to Robert Plant experiencing throat problems.
Originally broadcast: April 4th, 1971. Released on BBC Sessions in 1997.
BBC Radio 1 - 4 April 1971 Time: 19.00
Synopsis: In concert with John Peel Producer JEFF GRIFFIN
(Repeated: Wed, 6.0 pm)
Contributors: John Peel; Producer: Jeff Griffin
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Lord bless the BBC! For years now they’ve been putting out these cute little compilations, and they all range from amusing to great. This one’s one of the most recent, devoted to unveiling before us the grandiose live powers of what was formerly known as ‘the ultimate hard rock band’.

Needless to say, this is a must for everybody with even a passing interest in Led Zep. Whatever complaints I may hold towards separate original albums, there’s little to complain about as for what regards this package. The songs are all from the early years – they don’t go any further than IV, and so much the better (even though I would dearly love to see a live version of ‘No Quarter’ here as well).

The one major flaw is that several of the songs are repeated in two, sometimes even three versions – personally, I don’t see why I should patiently tolerate three similar takes on ‘Communication Breakdown’ (even if, strictly speaking, they’re all fabulous) or two nearly similar takes on ‘I Can’t Quit You Baby’ (even if, frankly speaking, they’re just as fabulous – brilliant use of pauses!). This makes me ditch a point – sorry, guys, even if there was nothing else interesting left, you’d have done better to eliminate some of these versions.

Led Zeppelin never, it is said, played the same song the same way twice.
Led Zeppelin never, it is said, played the same song the same way twice. Now I have all four official Led Zeppelin live albums and can vouch for that. Just in case anyone doesn’t believe it, the band has chosen to include several versions of “Communication Breakdown” on this album, as well as two versions of “You Shook Me”, “I Can’t Quit You, Baby”, “Dazed and Confused” and “Whole Lotta Love”, all from their early repertoire. That has been derided, but I believe it is to prove just that point on one album. So, I will say it again. Led Zeppelin NEVER played the same song the same way twice.

The album itself is a superb example of how the band sounded before they became so big that they could do anything they wanted and get away with it. These were rock gods before anyone worshipped them. This is just one step away from small clubs and provincial theatres.

This is as far away from the stadium rockers they eventually became as it is possible to be in a professional musician environment. The BBC is to be commended for putting this out – it is a rare insight into the band’s early, bluesiest years. It provides you with an insight into the development of tracks, especially their live versions, which were to become so prominent a few years after this was recorded. For instance, the medley incorporated into “Whole Lotta Love” begins here, and the extended bowed guitar solo from “Dazed and Confused also gets an early outing.

But there are some fascinating vignettes of future studio tracks as well. Given that the second part of this double CD was recorded between the release of Led Zeppelin III and their classic fourth album, tracks from the latetr are given an early airing on a fresh audience. What strikes me about this is that when Robert Plant announces, some months before it is due to be officially released on IV, that the next track is called “Stairway To Heaven” the audience claps politely as you would if you were listening to something you had never heard before. That’s the point!!!!! No one had heard it before. Think about it, this is rock radio’s most played song ever being played live before anyone had ever heard it! You can actually judge the song on its merits, putting aside the hype, for the only time ever.

There are other examples of how the band managed to mix things up. “Black Dog”, unreleased at the time this was recorded, starts with the intro from “Out on the Tiles”, surely in itself one of the most underrated of all Led Zeppelin tracks in my opinion. And of course there are the unreleased songs such as Robert Johnson’s “Travelling Riverside Blues”, Eddie Cochran’s “Somethin’ Else” and “The Girl I love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair” which were live staples in the band’s early years but, as far as I know, were never recorded properly in the studio, if at all.

The result is a marvellous album and one well worth getting, especially if you are a fan of Led Zeppelin. I really wish that someone (are you reading this, Jimmy) would dig out some of the tapes that must be sitting in someone’s basement somewhere, and put together a compilation of live sets covering “Kashmir”, “Achilles Last Stand”, “Ten Years Gone”, “Tea For One”, “Carouselambra”, “Trampled Underfoot” and so on. The DVD containing them issued a few years later is fine as it is, but a lot of those tracks really belong on a good CD compilation in their own right.
https://classicrockreview.wordpress.com/category/led-zeppelin-bbc-sessions/