Led Zeppelin again. I love this version of Communication Breakdown from Earls Court, May 25th, 1975.
In context, it's mind blowing - they're back in their 'home town' of London after a long period playing other countries. Their nerves are showing throughout the available Earls Court videos. They want to please England; they don't have that desire to dominate, to smash, that you can see on some of the American footage. Jimmy Page looks less like a panther and more like a puppy here. (Oh, all right, like a panther puppy.) They've just done a whole week, three and a half hours each night. This is the very last song of the run; an extra encore they didn't play on the other nights - this, with with the other extra encore, Heartbreaker, is pushing the show to three and three quarter hours. (That's almost an average marathon time - 4 1/4 hours - for men of their age group.)
The crowd's insane. Plant knows his voice has gone and it doesn't matter. Bonham "collapses" at the end (I'm sure it's a joke). Plant's so stoked by the response that he fails to say anything nasty about Dennis Healey, Charles Shaar Murray or Nick Kent.
It's amazing. It's an event - there's more going on here than can ever be captured on tape. But you can still see it. There's always some of that magic fairy dust left, even in a 425 pixel wide YouTube window.
5 comments:
Hi Sis
Funny you should be talking about LZ its at least a week since your last "ramble on" about them. Which brings me nicely to my point, on the way home tonight Radio 2 had "Ramble on" full version all 4'24" of it, but it seemed like at least 10 minutes. Can't remember when radio 2 last played LZ, but the old air guitar was going even though I was driving, brilliant!!
Yep, Zeppelin are indeed brilliant!
I love the Earls Court shows for their melancholic whimsy. Kudos for choosing Communication Breakdown to post. I forgot how awesome, and fun, it was. Thanks! Great blog, btw. I'm going to add you to my blogroll.
Thanks, Mark. I had a look and your blog, http://www.youdopia.com/ is pretty cool.
You're always writing about the sort of thing I want to read. If I remembered how to change my blogroll, I'd put you on mine!
Hey, I figured it out!
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