February 28, 1975 Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
The second leg for Led Zeppelin’s tour in 1975 started on February 27th in Houston, but no tape is in circulation for that concert. Baton Rouge is the second date and has been in circulation thanks to one of the best audience tapes from the era. Rampaging Cajun on Eelgrass is the first release of an excellent quality, nearly complete soundboard recording.
Like the other soundboards from this tour, it has remarkable depth and liveliness in contrast to the rather dry professional tapes from other eras. There is good mix between the vocal, drums and guitar and the audience reactions to the music is clearly heard. Some of the minor imperfections are some distortion at the beginning of “Rock And Roll” due to high volume overload of the bass and a drop in the guitar during “Sick Again” starting at the 0:52 mark. Crackling is audible during the rocking part and ending of “The Rain Song,” some static where the volume runs too high on Bonham’s drums and Plant’s comments before “No Quarter” are missing.
Despite the imperfections this is one of the better soundboards to surface from this tour and offers another perspective on what is a very strong show.
Zeppelin took close to a two week long break after concluding the first half of the tour on February 16th in St. Louis. They started off the second half in much better health and with much more confidence than the first, setting a high standard in their performance. The show starts off with “Rock And Roll” and the new song “Sick Again” before Plant explains the program for the evening, speaking about the “cross-section of musical color that we’ve managed to get together in the last six and a half years. Some old stuff, some new stuff, some cool, and some pretty raunchy stuff too. So hang on to your heads.”
A groove is reached with “Over The Hills And Far Away” where the guitar solo sets the precedent for continued experimentation by Page later on in the tour and “In My Time Of Dying” is the first announced song from Physical Graffiti, “that’s just it’s finally been … the egg has been laid .. or it it the guy who got laid?” “Kashmir” is another and is dedicated to “quite a few people who passed our way. Mr. Royston, who’s travelling with us, Mr. Harold, who’s travelling with us, and many other folks who’ve given us inspiration from time to time.”
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