My choices:

 

1) "In the Light"

2) "Carouselambra"

3) "Down by the Seaside"

4) "The Rover"

5) "Fool in the Rain"

6) "Night Flight"

7) "I'm Gonna Crawl"

 

I've chosen these 7 simply because as far as I've heard, these were never performed live by the band, as opposed to some of my other favorites ("Kashmir", "The Song Remains the Same", "Achilles Last Stand").

EASY ...

Anything from the first 2 albums that helped blow LZ into the stratosphere. Some things from the 3rd album, however it is not as powerful as the first two when just about all the songs were played.

The bootlegs are full of these and their energy is unparalleled in anything from those days on. Everything is fine all the way into PG and the last album, but for concert purposes and energy, the new material was probably too difficult and complicated to put together on stage as well as they did on the studio in the albums.

1. the Song Remains the Same

2. Dancing Days

3. the Battle Of Evermore (of course Sandy comes from heaven to sing duet with Robert)

4. Misty Mountain Hop

5. Tangerine

6. Good Times Bad Times

7. Thank You

And everything of course in the right keys, not one lower as mostly in "Celebration Day".

Christ , why would anyone not want to hear them do Achilles Last Stand if you had the chance?! That Knebworth version with the sweat pouring off Bonham is why I love rock music.

I would take that with Immigrant Song, Kashmir, Trampled Underfoot , Stairway To Heaven , Dazed and Confused plus Communication Breakdown. Predictable I am.

I had, at one time, something like 14 different bootlegs by LZ and I had to let them go, including one of my favorites that I miss terribly ... "live on blueberry hill" ... and these were all before Stairway to Heaven, and my take still is that their material got a bit harder to do on stage and create the exciting levels that they had in the early days ... I guess as they got "older", the kid stuff kinda dies down, but any bootleg that I heard (only 4 of them) that has STH and some of the earlier stuff, was actually not very good in terms of the quality of the song on the stage. And I think that either they needed more rehearsal time, or there were too many details they could not include to make it better ... this is how I see it ... and thus, none of the later stuff -- which I like!!! -- has become a big thing in concert for me ... even a couple of the real nice versions of Kashmir did not come off as strong as the one on the album, specially that one on the net with a small contingent of players for it.

It's possible that for me, LZ was already on the way out (Progressive music was in for me!), even though I got everything all the way to Presence, I really think that their live presence fell some ... and the reasons may have been many, but the band was never the same after Robert's child died. And I think this may have been the difference, and to do the newer material as good as they did the earlier stuff, would require a lot of rehearsal, that I don't think the band was into any more. Maybe for one or two pieces ... 

But they also had issues ... in the series from LA (Bonzo's Birthday Party) it was well known that he fell off his stool half way through the show and another drummer (never found out who it was!), took over the seat, and you know the quality is not going to be the same that you know, or would like to hear. I doubt that Jimmy, or Robert could be replaced in any show, for example.

PS Sidebar: Some folks have trashed Jimmy for his musicality ... well if you go back to the father of "progressive music" (Giorgio Gomelsky) who had a hand in even one of the clubs that helped a lot of this music take off and bringing the YARDBIRDS to the stage, had made a comment in one special that Jimmy was a fantastic music reader and musician ... and knew his notes and scales really well and could pick things up fast!

The only song they only played live once:  'Ramble On' .

Oh--  and 'Over the Hills & Far Away' because it was so impossible to recreate well.   I have a recording of them doing it in a rare 1970 performance and it sounds great, but only one year later Plant was unable to hit those highs.

Tangerine

Misty Mount Hop

Nobody's Fault But Mine

That's the Way

Going to California

Gallows Pole

Thank You

Over the Hills and Far Away as the encore

a great set list:

Kashmir

Battle of Evermore

No Quarter

Since I've Been Loving You

Dazed and Confused

Stairway to Heaven

Encore :

Babe I'm Gonna Leave You

Squonk19 wrote: Kashmir/No Quarter/Dazed and Confused/Achilles Last Stand/The Song Remains the Same/The Rain Song/Stairway to Heaven - not particularly left-field, but when tribute bands play these, I'm more than contented.

I saw an Aussie cover band Zep Boys play Achilles a few years ago, backed by a full orchestra. It totally ripped.

That happened with The Who. Someone took over from Moon and there may even be utube footage of that.

Bonzo could not go on at Nuremberg '80 and they had to cancel the show. No one took over though. WHo could do that? Karen Carpenter?

Zeppelin bloopers are funny. Drums early in Stairway once. And Achilles. '77 US tour. SIBLY in Cologne 80 with JPJ and JP each (or one) in the wrong key, which they resolved while Plant had to do interesting parallel double duty. Once Plant stopped TSRTS as it was 'not right'... Kashmir 77-06-23 and Zurich 80 both botched.

My favourite Stairway is the last ever. JP played Plant's verse as a guitar break before Plant did the version with words. Not sure if he knew he had been written out of his own song for a few minutes...

I've heard and got most Zeppelin boots... 550 concerts and 300 or so concerts released.

The Dark Elf wrote:

Fantastic version & recording, no one but Zep could do this kind of spontaneous recreation of a four-minute folk ditty in quite such a compelling way.