Yardbirds: Fillmore West May 1968
(either May 23, 24 or 25th; the 3 nights they played at Fillmore West).
1. Train Kept A Rollin' (slight cut off)
2. Mister Your A Better Man Than I
3. Heart Full Of Soul (brief tape mangle near beginning)
4. Dazed And Confused
5. Shapes Of Things
6. White Summer
7. I'm A Man (slight cut in)
8. Medley: How Many More Years>Waiting For My Man (slight cut in)
9. Drinking Muddy Water (slight cut in & cut out)

Lineup:
Keith Relf: vocals, finger cymbals
Jimmy Page: guitar
Chris Dreja: bass
Jim McCarty: drums

Lineage: ?? > cdr > EAC > Flac (level 8)
Quality notes: below average audience recording
Grade C to C-
There is tape mangle evident in one spot which leads to a brief drop-out.
The taper also shut the recorder off at end of songs and resuming recording just as next song begins causing some intros to be missed. As a result, there is no in between song remarks and applause. The taper was no doubt making a copy for himself, not realizing what an historical artifact this would become.
Another issue: Shapes Of things starts up, stops and then re-starts from the beginning again; its not the same intro repeated, however. A guess is that the band stopped the song for some reason (broken string? Who knows) and the taper stopped the recorder and resumed recording when the band started back up.

Only marginally better than the LA, Shrine shows from the same month (May 31 & June 1), this show is mostly important to rabid Yardbirds & Zeppelin fans
I'm guessing a cheap mic was used; Dreja's bass is distorted & thuddy throughout. The sound is best on the quieter passages (the extended psychedelic jams into which many of the songs evolve ...)

This recording only recently came to light amongst Yardbird fans and has been provided by Avalonrick who wanted it to be seeded so that others could enjoy it.

If you only want excellent to very good sounding live recordings, then give this one a miss.

This is much more important than as a historical relic. The band's performance is awesome. Chris Dreja's bass playing is like lightning (pity about its distortion, tho). McCarty's drums are clear in the mix thankfully. Jimmy Page runs the gamut of effects later utilized in Zep: The beautiful acoustic number "White Summer"; the bowed guitar on the extended psych jam that evolves out of I'm A Man (a 12 minute extravaganza); the interplay between Page and Relf (as he plays finger cymbals) on the LSD drenched "Mister You're A Better Man Than I" (over 6 minutes long)

And how about that medley of Howling Wolf's "How Many More Years" seguing into the Velvet Underground's "Waiting For the Man". Whew.

Dazed & Confused is an amazing version (over 9 minutes) with Dreja & McCarty driving the song to its climax.

The Little Games studio album didn't show the power that this Yardbirds lineup had; all we have is this show, the 2 Shrine shows (which, btw, had poor sound because the taper hid the recorder & mic under his pregnant girlfiend's dress; according to Russo's book). There are also two other shows of this era that circulate (with poorer sound than these, I'm told) but I haven't heard them.