Led Zeppelin have returned.
I saw the Page & Plant Tour several years ago and I admit I was impressed. I had seen Led Zeppelin back in, oh, ’71 or ’72, and while I confess to admiring the thundering power of their live show, I thought they were sloppy. (I’ve come to realize that this is more an artifact of the evolution of live rock concert technique than any lack of talent or ability–compared to a modern show, the YES of the early Seventies played well but not always smoothly, and it took time to get to where their on-stage chops equaled or surpassed what happened in the studio.) Page-Plant not only rewrote a bunch of the tunes, the musicianship on stage was far superior to what I remember way back when.
So no doubt this incarnation is drop-dead marvelous. Filling in for Bonham is his son, Jason.
Is a new album perhaps coming out? An American tour?
I gotta say, frankly, my days of attending concerts on this scale are behind me. I just don’t like my fellow beings enough to be jammed into an arena with several thousand of them, pushing and shoving to get in and get out, and competing with taller heads to see the stage. I know there are now video screens, but though I find myself watching them I hate them. They do not…belong. Personal sentiment. I tend to be drawn, mothlike, to television screens. In restaurants, bars, concerts, other people’s houses, if a screen is on I tend to watch it. I seem to have little control. Either turn it off or let’s just stop pretending it’s background.
Other people seem to be able to ignore them.
But at a concert, it’s curious to indulge what amounts to a second-had experience right in the presence of the primary experience!
Am I being too picky? Maybe.
In any event, I would buy a new Zep album. I’m thinking about getting the album Plant released with Alison Krause, who is definitely not my thing. But I heard some of it and I have to say, it’s amazing. Sure it’s got bluegrass in it. But also the blues and some jazz and a lot of rock echoes and some fine fine musicianship—T-Bone Burnett produced and plays on it.
So what other groups are waiting in the dustbin of history to reemerge? So many did in the 80s and 90s and ended up on the state fair circuit that it was depressing. A few, though, really came through. Some really ought to just remain in memory.
