Over the past few months we’ve been very lucky to have our friend Dale contribute some wonderful shows to the Grousing The Aisles mix. Dale doesn’t mess around with average shows — he only brings the best of the best from his collection. Every show Dale suggests to us winds up being a winner we’ve never come across before, so we asked him to pick three killer sets for this week’s column.

So excuse us while we put our feet up, and let Dale spread his wings and fly:

Pink Floyd 11/16/1974 SBD [MP3]

If you don’t already have this bootleg, stop whatever you’re doing (hell, even if it’s sexy time) and download it now. You have to hear this pristine multi-track SBD recording made by the BBC on November 16, 1974. This is the 2nd set and encore of the band’s performance that night: a full performance of Dark Side Of The Moon followed by an Echoes encore.

Now, even if you already have this recording in your collection, you’ll probably want to download this new version. All of the processing applied to previous versions has been eliminated through the use of a source closer to the original BBC tapes, and many previous versions in circulation did not include the Echoes encore. This is seriously an amazing treasure of a recording, possessing the ability to make Dark Side Of The Moon sound fresh and new to the ears. Best of all, it does not sound like a bootleg and it does not sound 33 years old.

Read on for two more epic downloads from Zeppelin and Zappa…

Led Zeppelin 07/06/1973 Soundcheck [MP3]

We’ve got a fun one, people. After playing the same songs onstage night after night, it seems that here Robert Plant, John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page are really enjoying themselves running through a lengthy soundcheck comprised primarily of covers. They also play a few originals that were never worked into their standard repertoire (such as Night Flight). This recording offers a glimpse into an almost private side of the band. We get an informal look behind the scenes of one of rock’s legendary bands at the peak of their success. It’s interesting to imagine that only a few hours later the band was performing Whole Lotta Love and Black Dog in front of 20,000 fans.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention 10/26/1968 SBD [MP3]

By late 1968, Frank Zappa had already released three Mothers of Invention records and his first solo album, Lumpy Gravy. During this initial bounty of creative output, Frank Zappa demonstrated his love and facility for classic doo-wop sounds, grinding psychedelia and some elements of “serious” music such as musique concrète. This recording finds the Mothers of Invention at a crossroads in their evolution. The short-song format of the first three Mothers albums is represented (”Plastic People” and “Hungry Freaks Daddy”), but the length and compositional sophistication of the music was expanding. The fourth Mothers record, Uncle Meat would not be released until months after this performance, but the band plays through a nascent “King Kong” from that album.

One has to admire Frank Zappa for his daring, his confidence, and his outright audacity for taking this music on the road. I like to imagine Frank Zappa walking the streets of Paris in 1968. Zappa’s brand of liberation and freakdom was not a by-product of the hippy pop-culture ’60s. Paris has always had an avant-garde aesthetic, and would seem to be a more natural environment for his art to be appreciated at face value rather than being boxed-in by some convenient journalistic labels. Frank Zappa remained true to his muse over the years despite trends and fashions, but to my ears nothing ever exceeded the sheer brilliance and clever enthusiasm captured on these recordings.

Have you downloaded any great shows lately? Let us know what you’ve been listening to by leaving a comment below…