Dancing Days Are Here Again

The KSO is presenting The Music of Led Zeppelin TONIGHT at 8 at the Civic Auditorium! The Civic will rock out to the likes of Whole Lotta Love, The Ocean (Ha! Last week we "Became Ocean"), Kashmir, and Black Dog. To my utter joy, all of the signature guitar hooks seem to be assigned to the cello!!!

Led Zeppelin's crunchy, high-energy sound has become a standard by which every other rock band is judged. Their 1975 tour included a stop at the Stokely Athletic Center on the UT campus, on March 2, although it doesn't appear that any other of their tours landed in Knoxville. A splinter group, “Page and Plant” performed at the Civic Coliseum on March 3, 1995 (wow, 20 years and a day later) and included many then-members of the KSO (mostly string players) who were hired free-lance.

Vocalist Robert Plant has since become a darling of the Americana genre, touring for a spell with bluegrass queen Alison Krauss in one of the most unlikely yet satisfying pairings in rock n' roll history. He has made sporadic appearances at Bonnaroo, just a couple hours west of here. Drummer John Bonham's death in 1980 signaled the end for the band. He was said to use the longest drumsticks available, which he called “trees.” I had always thought that his volume was high because his tracks were placed way upfront in the mix, but no, it was because he was just playing THAT LOUD.

Guitarist Jimmy Page got his start as a member of the guitar-heavy band the Yardbirds, which also boasted Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck as members at various times. Long story short, after that band dissolved in 1968, the original Led Zeppelin lineup was formed, and toured as “The New Yardbirds.” With some obvious copyright issues looming, (Who drummer Keith Moon suggested that the name would go over like a “lead balloon”), the name was changed to Lead Zeppelin, but the “a” in “Lead” was dropped in order to avoid mispronunciation.

Bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones (no relation to the “Father of the American Navy”) was the utility man of the group, playing just about everything that was not drums, guitar or harmonica. His mandolin work on Going to California makes that song the acoustic, down-volume gem that made our parents think that the band wasn't all that bad after all. If you were one of the lucky ones who saw the Dave Rawlings Machine concert a couple years ago at the Bijou, you witnessed Jones (now a cog in that Machine) playing that selfsame solo with Rawlings and Gillian Welch singing.