I found this track uploaded to YouTube in two parts by a website called The Metal Den.  To my ear it sounds like something made on a handheld cassette tape recorder using one microphone in the middle of the audience.  The original was quite muddy and full of natural reverb, with the bass drum giving almost a constant ring that was nearly like feedback.

I combined the files back into one and ran it through some effects to clean up the sound and try to eliminate some of the reverb and ring so that you can actually hear the drums.

Whether you think I’ve succeeded or failed is entirely up to you, I don’t pretend to be a wizard at this stuff, but I think that this remastered version sounds much better than the original upload, although ultimately there’s only so much you can do with junk source.

For the audio geeks – compressed, eq’d much of the bass out, brought up the highs, fiddled with a couple of other things.  The flanging is from the source, not from anything I did.

I haven’t the slightest clue what kind of copyright laws actually apply here, but as far as I’m concerned the audio is public domain.  If someone named Bonham cares to argue about that with me, I’ll happily listen; until then, to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t violated anyone’s copyright or what have you.

The track was recorded August 17, 1970 according to the folks at The Metal Den – three days before this John Henry drummer was born – in Hampton, VA.

Enjoy, share, like, and as always feedback is welcome :)