ZZ Top
17 August 1980
Venue: Toledo Speedway
Location: Toledo, Ohio
Source: Soundboard (Master)

Lineage: Maxell UDXL-II C90 cassette > Nakamichi DR-1 (azimuth adjustment) > Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD > Audacity (24-96) > FLAC 6

Track Listing:

01 I Thank You
02 Waitin' For The Bus
03 Jesus Just Left Chicago
04 Francine
05 I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide
06 Manic Mechanic
07 Lowdown In The Street
08 Heard It On The X
09 A Fool For Your Stockings
10 Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings
11 Barefootin'
12 Cheap Sunglasses
13 Arrested For Driving While Blind
14 Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers
15 La Grange
16 Dust My Broom
17 Tush

Notes:
Here we have an unheard, uncirculated soundboard recording of ZZ Top during their Deguello tour (Expect No Quarter tour) in 1980. Not even an audience recording of this show seems to have circulated previously. Besides a few occasional audible oddities during the first 2 and a half minutes of the show, this is a great sounding tape.

This performance took place during the 1980 "Toledo Speedway Jam II" event. Since the event featured six different performing artists, ZZ Top's setlist here does not feature the usual El Diablo, and also has a shorter than usual encore. This show does however feature Barefootin', which seems to be a rare live song, in that apparently only one other live recording of the song is publicly known.

This is largely the raw transfer, since I overall prefer doing as little editing as possible. There was an issue with the left channel being inaudible for the first 19 minutes of the show, so the right channel was copied over to compensate, giving the effect of a full mono recording. After about 19 minutes, the real left channel finally comes in with proper stereo. The first 20 seconds of the second side of the tape (Cheap Sunglasses) had this same issue with the left channel, which has also been corrected. An overall speed adjustment was also applied. The manual azimuth adjustment was done by briefly listening to the tape playing into a mono feed, with stereo headphones.

Enjoy the music and be grateful we are able hear these special recordings. If you have uncirculated tapes, please consider sharing them before they end up forever lost to time.