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Press Review: Mass Hysteria At Zeppelin Concert

The first smoke bomb exploded several minutes before the show even began. In the audience, no less. But then you have to remember that this was the same audience that waited outside all night in grueling winter weather to buy tickets, then were put off again when the show was rescheduled, from February to May. Led Zeppelin – At the Summit – Saturday Night.

If that sounds like a combination of the Hindenburg disaster and Black Sunday, rolled into one, you’ve got it right on the mark.  It was a rough and raunchy crowd that perfectly matched the band’s music.

Led Zeppelin is THE hard rock act in the world – the band to beat – the fastest gun (or electric guitar) in the West. And they – Jimmy Page on guitar, Robert Plant on vocals, John Paul Jones on bass, keyboards and guitar and John Bonham on drums, were honoured with a standing ovation when they merely walked on stage, some 30 minutes late, and started tuning up.  From then on it was mass hysteria – in the audience, on stage and in the music.

The Summit’s security crew and ushers worked overtime clearing aisles and ousting belligerent fans. The band supplied excruciatingly loud, distorted, blues-derived, but hardly traceable rock and if things eased down, as they did during the band’s newly incorporated “acoustic set” and Jones’ keyboard solo, there were always the old laser beams, explosions, flash pots, dry ice fog and – the oldest trick in the book – spotlights on mirrored crystal balls.

The band’s set has changed considerably since the tour that resulted in the film and album The Song Remains the Same, but the music is just as excessive.

“I’d like to give you a brief history of the band over the last two years”, Plant said during a lull between “Do You Know My Name” (Sick Again) and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”. “It’s been spent mostly on our backs. So, there you have it. We’ll just get on a play”.

In crude, gruff voice, Plant attacked his vocal assignments as conscientiously as Bonham did his (drums) and Jones did his new variety of instruments. But Zeppelin is still Jimmy Page’s band, succeeding or failing on the strength of Page’s extended solos, usually dull and more powerful chord work on numbers like Dazed & Confused (writer meant Kashmir) or cat-and-mouse games with Plant on In My Time of Dying.

The rest of the group followed as surely as they paid attention to Page’s count-offs at the beginning of each song.

Plant pulled off an eerie juxtaposition of voice verses-piano interplay on the appropriately titled No Quarter, but the group’s acoustic work fell flat with Page’s finger-picking showcasing a bit of rustiness on the instrument safe the old-time boogie blues that led abruptly – and loudly – into “Dazed” with no warning, (writer was referring to Kashmir, not Dazed and Confused).

It’s out of courtesy, I suppose, that the band gives Bonham a solo spot which is inherently the dullest part of any Zeppelin concert. Even the rest of the band leaves when he dispenses with the sticks and starts thundering on his drum kit with his bare hands. Thanks to a deadline, I got to join them this time. [by D. Adamson / Chronicle]