The Led Zeppelin special

All right, well we're one day away from the big concert. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to post anything today as we're battling another round of freezing rain like we did last year. Fortunately we still have internet right now so off we go on this special post.

Originally the Zeppelin concert was only going to be one hour long, but the band decided to change that when they realized it would only allow them to do seven or eight songs at best. So now the question is..... what songs are they going to play? Well, I've come up with my own set of what I think they'd play. I might end up being very wrong but I'll take that chance. Here's what I think they'll do (and in no particular order other than the first song..... I think they'll open with that):

'Rock & Roll'
'Dazed and Confused'
'Whole Lotta Love'
'Heartbreaker'
'Bring It On Home'
'Immigrant Song'
'Since I've Been Loving You'
'Black Dog'
'Stairway to Heaven'
'Going to California'
'Over the Hills and Far Away'
'The Ocean'
'Kashmir'
'Ten Years Gone'
'Achilles Last Stand'
'For Your Life'
'Fool in the Rain'
'All My Love'

That's eighteen songs if you didn't already count it. It seems something like a set they might do. At least a couple songs from each album. Other possible songs they might play are as follows:

'Communication Breakdown'
'What Is and What Should Never Be'
'Tangerine'
'Bron-Y-Aur Stomp'
'The Song Remains the Same'
'No Quarter'
'Trampled Under Foot'
'Nobody's Fault But Mine'
'In the Evening'

Or, they might pull off something completely different and perform some songs that were never performed in concert (such as 'For Your Life', which is in the first list cause it's been confirmed that it will be played) or hardly played ('When the Levee Breaks' is an example of this) If that's the case, look at a set list somewhat like this:

'Rock & Roll'
'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You'
'Dazed and Confused'
'Whole Lotta Love'
'Heartbreaker'
'Ramble On'
'Since I've Been Loving You'
'Hey Hey What Can I Do'
'Black Dog'
'Stairway to Heaven'
'When the Levee Breaks'
'Over the Hills and Far Away'
'D'yer Mak'er'
'Custard Pie'
'Houses of the Holy'
'Kashmir'
'Achilles Last Stand'
'Royal Orleans'
'Hot Dog'
'Carouselambra'
'All My Love'

That set list would be twenty one songs. I guess we'll all find out just how accurate I was tomorrow.



I'm going to post twice as many videos today (in other words six instead of three). The first video is 'Dazed and Confused' from 1969. This was apparently before it became a twenty-five minute long song. Like Jimmy Page's violin bow on a guitar or not, it's pretty nifty. He plays an absolute blistering solo as well.

The second video is 'What Is and What Should Never Be', also taken from the Royal Albert Hall. This song, which is on Led Zeppelin II, is a quiet--loud--quiet--loud type of song... something that Page later repeated later in the album with 'Ramble On'. 'WIAWSNB' is one of the rare songs where Jimmy's playing slide..... as you can definitely hear during the solo.

The third video is well...... guess. Yep, 'Stairway to Heaven'. You didn't actually think I was going to go through all these posts without posting a 'STH' video did you? Most people have heard the version of 'STH' from The Song Remains the Same but not everyone has heard the Earl's Court version. I don't think I really need to introduce this song other than that.

The fourth video is 'Over the Hills and Far Away', one of my personal favorite Led Zeppelin songs. It might very well be the best song off Houses of the Holy and definitely the hardest rocking (other than perhaps 'The Ocean'). Starting off on a quietly strummed acoustic guitar, the song builds up into electric fury and Robert Plant's voice flies off into the stratosphere (where it remained and never came back down... haha sorry bad joke).

The fifth video is one of my favorite videos from the MSG concerts: 'The Ocean'. Any video that features Bonham on a mic is definitely worth hearing even if it's a bad song. And this is far from bad. I like this better than the How the West Was Won version. Everybody's in good form on this song especially Plant as he sometimes had trouble with those high notes after early 1973 (this is around Sept '73 I think).

The sixth and last video I'm posting will be 'Achilles Last Stand'. That song is Led Zeppelin at it's best I think. The running bassline inspired Heart's 'Barracuda' and made heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden thrive. In '77 while Zeppelin was touring they played 'ALS' way too fast and it became sloppy as a result. But in the '79 tour they seemed to slow it down to the studio version speed. In the video, you can tell Jimmy's sorta out of it from the heroin. But he still played great despite that.... this had to be one song that they breathed a sigh of relief when it was over because it's ten straight minutes of hard, fast rock n roll.