Zep reforming?

[7/4]

Wow, look at that set list!

[BFrank]

Setlist so far - highlight to read - don't want to spoil it for anyone if they don't wanna know.

Good Times Bad Times

Ramble On

Black Dog

In My Time of Dying

For Your Life

Trampled Underfoot

Custard Pie

Nobody's Fault But Mine

No Quarter

Since I've Been Loving You

Dazed and Confused

Stairway To Heaven

A quote from nme.com:

"The crowd is going wild inside the O2. People are hugging strangers, some are crying, some are punching the air with joy. This must be the rock n roll equivalent of winning the world cup."

What's not to know??

[Aggie87]

I really just wanted to play with the cool SPOILER code

And I have to run, but I'll finish updating the list later (unless someone else cares to), the show's not over yet.

Edit - The setlist is complete now!

Edited December 10, 2007 by Aggie87

[7/4]

I really just wanted to play with the cool SPOILER code

That is cool. I was wondering how you did that.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Anything on YouTube yet? I wanna see Misty Mountain Hop.

[Quincy]

About 30 seconds of broadcast footage without any newscaster talking over it.

Mediafire link

Supposedly a brief bit on the NBC national news tonight, but being on the west coast I haven't seen it.

[BFrank]

About 30 seconds of broadcast footage without any newscaster talking over it.

Mediafire link

Supposedly a brief bit on the NBC national news tonight, but being on the west coast I haven't seen it.

Good clip. Probably the centerpiece of some upcoming DVD.

[ghost of miles]

Inspired opening choice with "Good Times, Bad Times." I figured they'd end with "Rock 'n Roll." Honestly thought this appearance would fall somewhere between dud and smash, but initial reports make it sound as if they just about lived up to the hype. My older cousin introduced me to Zeppelin (among other things) and we were going to go up to Chicago to see them on the announced IN THROUGH THE OUT DOOR tour... I was 13 at the time and always regretted that that trip never came to pass.

[Quincy]

Ghost, I might have seen you at that show, not that I had parental permission to drive 300 miles to Chicago.

The cellphone footage is coming in!

*edited - If that's overloaded, a bunch in a row here: at Q107

Edited December 11, 2007 by Quincy

[Robert J]

I see youtube has "scheduled" maintenance @ 10pm. Perhaps didn't want to deal with the headache of a flood of Zep vids coming in?

[ghost of miles]

AP review:

Led Zeppelin lets the 'Good Times' roll

By CHRIS LEHOURITES, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago

LONDON - After that performance, Led Zeppelin really must go on tour.

The reunited rock 'n' roll legends were superb Monday in their first full concert in nearly three decades, mixing in classics like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Black Dog" with the thumping "Kashmir" and the hard-rocking "Dazed and Confused."

The band's three surviving members — singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones — were joined by the late John Bonham's son Jason on drums.

And it was the newest member of the band that was given the honor of kicking off the sold-out benefit show, pounding out the beat before the others joined in on a near-perfect "Good Times Bad Times."

After the lights went down at the O2 Arena, newsreel footage of the band arriving in Tampa, Fla., for a 1973 performance was projected onstage. Then Bonham jumped in, soon to be joined by the rest.

They followed that with "Ramble On," and with it destroyed all rumors that the 59-year-old Plant could no longer reproduce his trademark wail.

With his button-down shirt mercifully buttoned up, Plant roamed the stage belting out hit after hit, rarely giving his critics anything to work with.

But Page showed he still has the touch as well. Besides ripping out his patented riffs all night, he put the spotlight on himself when the band played the bluesy "In My Time of Dying."

With his left hand moving freely up and down the neck of his guitar and the metal slide wrapped around one of his fingers, Page effortlessly played a song that's not easy to master.

Page and Plant later combined to open "Nobody's Fault But Mine," a song that starts with another classic Page riff and then gets help from Plant mimicking the same sounds.

Still, it was Bonham who may have been the star of the show. At 41, he is older than his father was — 32 — when he choked to death on his own vomit in 1980.

Bonham's flawless performance and driving beat even made the other members of the band watch in awe at the end of "Black Dog."

After "The Song Remains the Same," Plant screamed: "Jason Bonham, drums! Come on!"

The 16-song set list produced few surprises. They did many of the songs expected, such as "No Quarter" and "Trampled Under Foot," and the entire show lasted a bit more than two hours, mainly because of encores "Whole Lotta Love" and "Rock and Roll."

The band also played "For Your Life" live for the first time.

"It's quite peculiar to imagine ... to think about creating a dynamic evening choosing from 10 different albums. There are certain songs that have to be there, and this is one of them," Plant said in introducing "Dazed and Confused."

When Page's solo started midway through the song, many in the audience were wondering whether the guitar virtuoso would resort to his old tricks.

But after only a few seconds, the 63-year-old Page turned his back to the crowd and walked nonchalantly toward his amp. Once there, he pulled a cello bow off the top, and the fans again went wild.

They followed that with "Stairway to Heaven," the band's staple song, which many hardcore fans were hoping would be dropped from the set.

But the crowd still loved it, with many standing to dance as Page played on his double-necked guitar.

A few lighters even popped up, but they were mostly replaced by digital cameras.

Plant may have struggled a bit on the early verses — his voice a tad raspy — but it was hardly reason to believe the band wasn't ready for anything.

Fans are hoping to get to hear them do it again, and soon.

Though this show is supposed to be one-time event, there have been rumors that if all went well, it would kick off a world tour.

Plant seemed to play down those rumors, saying he plans to tour with bluegrass star Alison Krauss, but Monday's performance will only add to the fervor of the fans to see them play more gigs.

"The whole idea of being on a cavalcade of merciless repetition is not what it's all about," Page told The Sunday Times leading up to the performance.

The show was Led Zeppelin's first full set since 1980. Robbed of "Bonzo's" pulsing drums, the band decided it couldn't go on and split up on Dec. 4, 1980.

Tickets for the show, a benefit for the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, were won in an Internet lottery. Proceeds are to go to the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which provides scholarships to universities in the United States, Britain and Turkey.

"Hey Ahmet, we did it!" Plant screamed after "Stairway."

Monday's concert wasn't the first Led Zeppelin reunion. The band played together in 1985 at Live Aid, and joined forces again three years later — with Jason Bonham on drums — to play at the 40th anniversary concert for Atlantic Records.

At their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1995, they teamed up with other musicians for another short set.

The show was originally scheduled for Nov. 26, but was postponed until Monday because Page injured the little finger on his left hand.

There were several opening acts rotating across the stage, mainly hosted by former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman.

Paul Rodgers, Keith Emerson and Foreigner got the biggest cheers.

Plant said he was told that people from 50 countries made their way to London for the show.

"I can't believe people would come from 50 countries for that," Page said after pointing out a banner in the crowd that read "Hammer of the Gods."

They came, and they saw a show that hopefully won't be the last.

[Aggie87]

Coupla more pix, from the show:

Edited December 11, 2007 by Aggie87

[7/4]

December 10, 2007

Music Review

Led Zeppelin Finds Its Old Power

By BEN RATLIFF, NY Times

A one-shot reunion of Led Zeppelin, the band’s first concert in 19 years, rocked a London arena for more than two hours Monday night. Three original members — John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page — joined by Jason Bonham, filling in for his late father, John, replowed such fertile ground as “Whole Lotta Love,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Kashmir” and, of course, “Stairway to Heaven.”

LONDON, Dec. 10 — Some rock bands accelerate their tempos when they play their old songs decades after the fact. Playing fast is a kind of armor: a refutation of the plain fact of aging, all that unregainable enthusiasm and lost muscle mass, and a hard block against an old band’s lessened cultural importance.

But Led Zeppelin slowed its down a little. At the O2 arena here on Monday night, in its first concert since 1980 — without John Bonham, who died that year, but with Bonham’s son Jason as a natural substitute — the band found much of its old power in tempos that were more graceful than those on the old live recordings. The speed of the songs ran closer to those on the group’s old studio records, or slower yet. “Good Times Bad Times,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” and “Whole Lotta Love” were confident, easy cruises; “Dazed and Confused” was a glorious doom-crawl.

It all goes back to the blues, in which oozing gracefully is a virtue, and from which Led Zeppelin initially got half its ideas. Its singer, Robert Plant, doesn’t want you to forget that fact: he introduced “Trampled Underfoot” by explaining its connection to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” and mentioned Blind Willie Johnson as the inspiration for “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” (Beyond that, the band spent 10 luxuriant minutes each in two other blues songs from its back catalog — “Since I Been Loving You” and “In My Time of Dying”).

Ahmet Ertegun, the dedicatee of the concert, would have been satisfied, sure as he was of the centrality of southern black music to American culture. Ertegun, who died last year, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records; the show was a one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which will offer music students scholarships to universities in the United States, England, and Turkey, his homeland.

By the end of Zeppelin’s two-hour-plus show, it was already hard to remember that anyone else had been on the bill. But the band was preceded by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings—a good-timey rhythm-and-blues show with revolving singers including Paolo Nutini and Albert Lee, as well as a few songs each by Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) and Foreigner — all of whom had recorded for Atlantic under Ertegun.

There was a kind of loud serenity about Led Zeppelin’s set. It was well-rehearsed, for one thing: planning and rehearsals have been underway since May. The band wore mostly black clothes, instead of its old candy-colored wardrobe. Unlike Mick Jagger, Mr. Plant — the youngest of the original members, at 59 — doesn’t walk and gesture like an excited woman anymore. Some of the top of his voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“there walks a la-dy we all know{hellip}”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified.

As for Mr. Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious. (He did produce a violin bow for his solo on “Dazed and Confused,” during that song’s great, spooky middle section.)

John Paul Jones’s bass lines got a little lost in the hall’s acoustics — like all such places, the 22,000-seat O2 Arena is rough on low frequencies — but he was thoroughly in the pocket with Mr. Bonham; when he sat down to play keyboards on “Kashmir” and “No Quarter” and a few others, he simultaneously operated bass pedals with his feet, keeping to that same far-behind-the-beat groove.

And what of Jason Bonham, the big question mark of what has been — there’s no way to prove this scientifically, but let’s just round it off — the most anticipated rock reunion in an era full of them? He is an expert in his father’s beats, an encyclopedia of all their variations on all the existing recordings. And apart from a few small places where he added a few strokes, he stuck to the sound and feel of the original. The smacks of the snare drum didn’t have exactly the same timbre, that barbarous, reverberant sound. But as the show got into its second hour and a few of the sound problems were gradually corrected, you found yourself not worrying about it anymore. It was all working.

Led Zeppelin has semi-reunited a few times in the past, with not much success: short, problematic sets at Live Aid in 1985, and at Atlantic Records’ 40th Anniversary concert in 1988. But this was a reunion that the band had invested in, despite the fact that there are no plans yet for a future tour; among its 16 songs was one the band had never played live before: “For Your Life,” from the album “Presence.”

The excitement in the hall felt extreme, and genuine; the crowd roars between encores were ravenous. At the end of it all, as the three original members took a bow, Mr. Bonham knelt before them and genuflected.

[sidewinder]

"But that did not stop some eBay sellers claiming to have tickets, with some selling for up to £1,800 each.

BBC Radio 2 listener Kenneth Donnell, from Glasgow, had the most expensive tickets - after paying £83,000 for a pair of passes in an auction for Children In Need."

Jeez !

Edited December 11, 2007 by sidewinder

[7/4]

[Quincy]

One fan review, based on watching the big screens above the band noted he thought that Page was playing 3 fingered the whole night. At least on the "Good Times, Bad Times" clip you can see that he's not using the fret pinky. This guy claims he thought he saw Page try to use on "Stairway" (which is or was also on Youtube) and it failed on him. Something to watch for I suppose as more clips appear.

[ghost of miles]

Where are there clips of "Good Times" and "Misty Mountain Hop" from last night's show?

[Aggie87]

Good Times, Bad Times

[7/4]

Good Times, Bad Times

wow. goosebumps!

[ghost of miles]

The set-closer:

[Quincy]

A rough audience has shown up on the Dime. Given the crowd enthusiasm & the venue I doubt that any good sounding recording will appear. Though oddly some of the cellphone stuff doesn't sound half bad.

[7/4]

Led Zeppelin Roundup: Backstage and Beyond

Rolling Stone, 12/11/07, 5:39 pm EST

By now you’ve probably read about what happened onstage during Led Zeppelin’s show last night, but else happened at the concert of the year? For one, Pete Townshend, despite reports to the contrary, did not perform: “I pulled out of the Ahmet Ertegun benefit the day I heard Led Zep were performing,” Townshend wrote on his blog. “They really don’t need me.” Many in the audience probably wished the other openers had taken Townshend’s stance, but they gave a polite reception to the other acts.

The show began with a prog-rock supergroup composed of Yes bassist Chris Squire, Yes drummer Alan White, Emerson and Lake and Palmer’s keyboardist Keith Emerson, doing a progged-out version of Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man.” Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman took the stage next with his longtime group The Rhythm Kings, serving as the house band for the remaining openers. Paul Rodgers performed joined them for “All Right Now” and Foreigner’s Mick Jones came out for “I Want To Know What Love Is.” All of the acts had been signed by the late Atlantic Records co-founder Ertegun, and Robert Plant made sure that the audience didn’t forget it, announcing “Ahmet, we did it!” after Zeppelin performed “Stairway to Heaven.”

Backstage at the main gig was one gigantic A-list conclave, featuring Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, David Gilmour, Dave Grohl, Marilyn Manson, Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley, Michael J. Fox, Pink, Juliette Lewis, Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher and Steve Winwood. After the show, VIP’s headed over to the nearby Club Indigo to check out a post-show featuring soul stars Solomon Burke, Ben E. King, Percy Sledge and Sam Moore. The club was jam packed, and even the most intrepid of reporters didn’t manage to get in.

If that weren’t validation enough for Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the reviews have been almost universally positive. Here’s a small sampling:

• “Some of the top of [Robert Plant]’s voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“there walks a la-dy we all know”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified.” (The New York Times)
  
  
• “The finale of “Whole Lotta Love,” played as the first of two encores, was as raw and mesmerizing as ever.” (Los Angeles Times)
  
  
• “The riff that powers In My Time Of Dying is authentically churning and queasy, Ramble On sounds not like a song that’s been brought out of mothballs for a benefit concert but wrigglingly, obscenely alive.” (The Guardian UK)
  
  
• “By Dazed And Confused (all 26 minutes of it), Page was at his most avant-garde, attacking his guitar with a violin bow, but on Kashmir, unleashing the Zeppelin riff of Zeppelin riffs, he was almost inhumanly exciting. It was like watching a man invent electricity. One oft-repeated Seventies myth suggested Page’s prowess came as a result of a pact with the devil. Superstitious nonsense of course, but sometimes you wonder.” (The Evening Standard)
  
  
• “Page may no longer swagger across the stage, his guitar worn low like a gunslinger as he churns out riffs. And Plant can’t scram and strut like he did in his rock god heyday. But the awesome power and majesty of the music was undiminished.” (The Daily News)
  
  
• “Bonham’s volcanic fills on Nobody’s Fault But Mine confirmed that there are some things that can be transmitted only through DNA.” (The Times UK)
  

[Matthew]

A rough audience has shown up on the Dime. Given the crowd enthusiasm & the venue I doubt that any good sounding recording will appear. Though oddly some of the cellphone stuff doesn't sound half bad.

I know "somebody" whose listened to this aud and says it doesn't sound half bad. I'll have to get the cd/dvd when it comes out.

[Matthew]

I doubt that the aud tape is going to be still up this evening, word to out that sites are starting to pull it down. So if you want it, move now.

[ghost of miles]

Looks like YouTube's yanked the "Good Times, Bad Times" and "Kashmir" clips. Too bad... "Kashmir" in particular was just epic.