Robert Plant
I’ve been a Zeppelin fan since I was a little kid. Was obsessed with them in high school. I always thought Plant was one of the best singers in rock and roll. A lot of people still do. I never saw Zep but did see Plant in concert several times in the 80s/90s.
Over the decades I find that I don’t listen to Zep all that much for whatever reason.
This Christmas Eve morning I stayed home from church because of a nasty cold and dug out some of my old LPs. One of them was a bootleg (at the time) of Zeppelin's live BBC performances. I bought it used in 1984 for $20 which was a ton of money for me back then. (You can get this on Qobuz etc now.)
About 4 minutes into Whole Lotta Love the band lapses into a blues/Elvis medley of songs that is simply epic. The entire band is right on point and amazing as always but in this medley Plant really shows you his stuff. The range, the control, the timing, the soul. All there. Is he the best rock and roll singer ever? I can think of a lot of challengers to that idea but he’s certainly up around the top.
Give this song a listen. The initial part of Whole Lotta Love is not my favorite. But this medley and the ending are Zeppelin at its best.
Merry Christmas all.
Absolutely +1000. I believe that performance, IIRC, was at Earl's Court. Probably my favorite Jimmy Page acoustic performance of all time, at his zenith as rock's premier guitarist of the time (IMO). |
@decooney thank you! I Amazon’d the Celebration Day CD/DVD/BlueRay right after I read your thread. WOW! I’m playing it on a Sony 75” with an Oppo 203 player and no external DAC thru a PrimaLuna Dialogue Pre and Quicksilver Mid Monos (a few tubes there) into modified Klipsch Belles with an SVS double 12” sub. I had to turn the sub off. Love Jimmy with the Les Paul bow work on Dazed and Confused! Great audio and video. Highly recommended! I am also a huge fan of the Plant/Krauss project
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Cool, enjoy. Glad you like it! 👍 I'm an old Zep fan myself, and yet some of the old 70s recordings were pretty limited. Finding this concert dvd and others like David Gilmore, anything played at Royal Albert Hall or O2 arena since Blue Ray came out can offer something else to explore. Each time I play that Blue Ray, totally enjoy it. |
@nitrobob, you are so right. Get The Led Out is just an amazing show. front row center for their show coming up in March. Last year, they were EPIC. I was looking around at all of these old geezers singing along, with their walkers etc., and then I realized . . . I AM ONE OF THEM! LOL! I highly recommend them for any Zep fan. I grew up on Led Zeppelin in the '70s, and remember going to the store as soon as their album dropped, going home, smoking some weed and carefully putting it on the turntable. IMHO, there is Led Zeppelin, and then all other bands. Ironically, with my relatively nice system, I find myself playing Led Zep bootlegs, especially remastered soundboard recordings, much more than the studio albums. Although obviously not as good as How The West Was Won (recorded in LA venues, FYI), some of the soundboard recordings are shockingly good, especially given the recording technology of the time. I have had experiences listening when it sounds like I am in the first row and Robert Plant is singing right in front of me, up about three feet. I am still trying to remember what strain I was smoking, LOL! One sad thing about Led Zep is the lack of good pro shot video of their concerts. Why hasn't someone taken the raw footage from The Song Remains The Same and re-released it minus what I consider to be idiotic fantasy sequences and stupid low end "special" effects? Well, now I must go put on a bootleg!!! |
