Real Tickets to Fake Led Zeppelin

I’ve always thought that if Led Zeppelin were to ever tour again I would jump at the first opportunity I got to snag a couple tickets to see them play. Well, On Friday, January 8th, Web Content Director Roy Harris and I went to see a Led Zeppelin tribute band by the name of Led Zeppelin II at the House of Blues in Chicago (I know…real original name there). Needless to say it wasn’t the same as seeing the real thing, but they were about as close to it as you could get. Even though two of the original members of Led Zeppelin are dead, if I saw the four guys in Led Zeppelin two walking down the street one day, I would have been convinced that John Paul Jones and John Bonham came back from the dead and joined Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for an evening stroll. They looked identical to the band members which I’m sure was due in large part to the wigs they were wearing. They played just as good as the real Led Zeppelin and if you closed your eyes you would have thought you were at a real Zeppelin concert. Nothing about their sound or the way they played would have made you think they were a cover band. So all in all, it was a fantastic concert and I was thoroughly surprised with their performance. My only complaint was the last 20 minutes of the concert. Jimmy Page was notorious for leaving the stage and coming back on with a violin bow and playing his guitar as if he were playing in an orchestra. This was cool for maybe 2 minutes, but “Jimmy Page” decided to drag it out for maybe 10 minutes. Then as if that wasn’t enough, he played a 10 minute solo where all he did was hit a single note and then would drag it out for 30 seconds, playing with the distortion and sound effects he had until the sound faded out. Then, he hit another note and did it again. For 10 minutes. Needless to say, it got old after awhile because it pretty much sound like nails on a chalkboard. Then, the drummer went on a 15 minute drum solo. Which, again, was cool for 5 minutes. So, we ended up leaving after the 15 minute part of the drum solo because after about a half hour of them just messing around it got to be too much. Other than that though, Led Zeppelin II was as good as it gets without seeing the real thing.

– Tom Moran
Assistant Program/News Director