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Dante_Cubit

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  1. Thanks, SW. I have to say that watching the DVD was a kind of religious experience for me. I bought it the day it came out. Unlike many Zep fans, I did not own a ton of bootlegs, so I had never seen the Royal Albert Hall footage until the DVD. When I pushed "play," I tossed the box aside because I wanted to be surprised by the set list, as if I was attending the show. It made me feel very happy, and it is currently my favorite DVD compilation of any music act.
  2. Alright. I guess I'll bump this back to the top. This is my early history with LZ. Back in the mid-Seventies, I was big into KISS, as were all of my friends. I got a KISS magazine once, and one of the ads mentioned another fan magazine you could buy that featured a band called, "Led Zeppelin." I'd never heard of them before. They seemed to look like hippies with none of the cool costumes that KISS had. The magazine said something like, "Which Band Is Better: KISS or ZEP?" And I thought, who is this band that people are comparing to KISS? I just dismissed it in my mind and continued with my KISS listening. Through this time, I had never heard FM rock radio. My parents gave me an AM radio in the early Seventies, and that's where I listened to most of my music. (For you kids, that means listening to a lot of "light" Top 40 Seventies music.) Led Zeppelin was never played on the AM stations I listened to, so I was woefully ignorant of their existence except for that one ad I saw in the magazine. To me, they seemed like a niche-band. Something I probably wouldn't like. One day I received an FM radio from my parents, and I finally discovered the Album-Oriented-Rock radio format popular at that time. It was around 1978 or so when I first started listening to hard rock FM radio constantly, and it was the first time I got to hear Led Zeppelin's music. I liked it, but it didn't really sink its hooks into me until I heard one song... Black Dog It's difficult to explain to people who didn't live in the Seventies, but guitar rock was king. And everyone always argued about which guitar player was the greatest. Around the mid-Seventies, the contenders would have been guitarists like Ace Frehley (of KISS,) Pete Townsend (of The Who,) Steve Howe (of Yes,) Eric Clapton, Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones,) etc. Every hard rock band seemed to try to one-up each other with riffs and arrangements. But when I heard the first riff of "Black Dog," I was blown away, and Jimmy Page was my new guitar god. It made me giddy with delight, and I thought it was the greatest rock song I had ever heard. (Not realizing that it was about six or so years old at that point.) So, I went to a record store, found the album "Black Dog" was on, and I begged my Mom to buy it for me. She did, and thus was my baptism into Led Zeppelin. A few years later, in middle school, Zep was all I could think about. I distinctly remember my local rock station in L.A., KMET 94.7, doing a contest where the grand prize was an all-expenses paid trip to see Led Zeppelin play in Chicago in November of that year during their next world tour. The year was 1980. I was too young to be entering into contests, but I just imagined how great it would be to see Led Zeppelin live. Then, the radio broke the news that John Bonham was dead. I was numb. The news was surreal. And I remember going to school soon after learning of his death. I sat in a history class, and tears began to stream down my face. That's how Led Zeppelin meant to me then, and my love for the band has only grown since then. To this day, I have seen a ton of bands, a ton of great performances, and had a great time, but my one regret is that I will never see my all-time favorite band live in concert. That's why I am here, in a way. To fill that gap in my heart. EDIT: Typo.
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