Led Zep at O2

[johnny9fingers]

No-one came through with last minute offers of backstage passes or posh comps so I didn't see it, dammit.  But apparently they did well for a bunch of old guys. Rather better than some of the up-and-coming bright young things, even. Zeppelin appear to have given the lie to the idea that rock 'n' roll is exclusively a young person's game. And however old they were, they were apparently dignified, as well as tight.
Few folk from Tin Pan Alley went for what has to have been the biggest gig of the year; perhaps even the biggest of the decade.
I saw Zeppelin twice: in '75 and '79. If they do tour I suppose I'll drag my tired carcase over to wherever they perform and do my best to remember what it was like being a thirteen year old fan.
Still have to check out the Dylan movie too.

Comments

[e-compass-rosa.livejournal.com]

Oh darn -- I liked imagining you there with your lighter held high (or was that just an American concert thing?). And, please, enough with the tired carcass bit. Ya ain't dead yet my dear.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Couldn't ever do the lighter thing, m'dear. Spark up a spliff maybe, but hold up a lighter....oh dear, no.
I not dead yet, but it's winter and I'm crabby. I'm practicing my 'Bah, Humbug' for Christmas (as one does) and shall enjoy it immensely.

[kdotdammit.livejournal.com]

Well drag the carcass to the Dylan movie first! Do we really need to see an old and tired Robert Plant? Why not listen to Sleater Kinney's Let's Call It Love instead -- which is riotious riot girl punk rock mommy's version of Whole Lotta Love?

[kdotdammit.livejournal.com]

I should add, though, that just four days ago I was extolling the fact that I have finally come to realize that LZ are ONE OF THE GREATEST FUCKING BANDS OF ALL TIME. But I like to keep them firmly fixed in the annals of music history. Aging rock stars depress me.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Aging rock stars depress me.

I do understand. Why can't they grow up and do something sensible with their lives? I jest, of course, as the same could be said of all of us. It's the æsthetics of the thing: Rock 'n' Roll should be skinny snake-hipped young gunslingers being a bit silly in an engaging fashion. Sixty-somethings rocking away seems so wrong, whether Page or Jagger or the Who or the Eagles or whomsoever. But the thing about doing something (like music) for a long time is you become good at it. Emotional expression in any art is not necessarily limited to the young, fashionable, and technically naïve, though once I may have argued otherwise: after all I was (briefly) a punk too.