Only eleven years later, I've located two sources for the Mesa '93 show. Robert does indeed say "I'll see you in Tucson in February" just before leaving the stage after the last encore. Maybe he was referring to something other than a gig?

I saw Plant in Indianapolis in June of '88, my first concert, actually. Mission UK was the opener and they didn't get booed, but the audience basically ignored them. Then I had tickets to see him in Chicago on Oct 11, 1988, but that one also got pushed to December 15, 1988 due to the shower incident. Joan Jett was the opener in Chicago, and she went over well.

I was watching the black comedy series 'Dead Like Me', which involves people (who are dead but look living) who takes the souls of those who are about to die. They have to do it before the actual death occurs so as to spare the soul the trauma of dying, and so much of the show involves figuring out who the target is and finding them without much info to go on. One girl is assigned to 'reap' the soul of a rock star, but it's difficult getting close to him due to the security. It all happens during a concert taping, and the tune he's singing is 'In My Time of Dying.' The episode is 'Rites of Passage', from the second season. It's a quirky entertaining show.

I You Shook Me, followed closely by I Can't Quit You II The Lemon Song III Hats Off to Roy Harper (though I really don't like SIBLY or Celebration Day, either) IV Misty Mountain Hop HOTH: The Crunge PG: Boogie With Stu P: Tea For One ITTOD: South Bound Saurez As a general observation, I don't care for Robert's singing on slow blues tunes....it seems like he's so busy trying to sing as high as he can that he never seems to bother with an actual melody. Whenever I hear the ending of the studio version of You Shook Me, I always think, 'Damn dude, you're gonna regret that!'

July 7, 1980, Berlin....Zeppelin's last concert. 30 years ago.

The previously-uncirculated audio of The Firm at Purdue University 4/29/86 is now available at a Cosmic tracker near you.

FWIW, all the above-mentioned articles were in the big archive file I sent you a few months back, Steve. Scanned from original copies.

May 6, 1937:

I've been reading a new crime novel called Rough Country by John Sandford, who is a pretty big name in the business. A couple of his detective characters are rock and roll fans, and chapter 15 has the following opening sentence: 'Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were working their way through 'Please Read the Letter' as Virgil backed his boat down the ramp into Stone Lake.' In Sandford's first (excellent) book, Rules of Prey, the cop takes a witness to see Aerosmith before taking her to bed, and so it's about time somebody from Zeppelin got their due.

Market Square Arena, Indianapolis. 1974 - 2001. Site of two Zeppelin concerts (75, 77), two Plant shows (85, 88), one Firm show (85), two Page/Plant shows (95/98). The '88 Plant show was the first rock concert I saw, and included a rare encore of 'Back in the USSR.' It was also the site of Elvis Presley's last concert (77). Lost Indiana: Market Square Arena Indy's Market Square Arena goes out in clouds of smoke Multiple video angles of the demolition at this link. LedZeppelin.com page for the '75 Zeppelin concert.

I wouldn't say anything bad about Basie.....they're still one of the greatest bands you'll ever hear. Different genre, but jaw-droppingly good!

Getting back to the Fremont Club, I think one of the issues it had was during the construction of the 'Fremont Street Experience', the whole street was torn up for at least a year while they were putting up the canopy, and that really hurt business. Plus, when it was finally done, it was a big let-down.

I managed to google up this image on someone's flicker account.

When I was working in a reggae/funk band in Phoenix, we'd sometimes play in Vegas at a (now gone) place called Fremont Street Reggae and Blues Club. It had two stages in separate rooms connected by a little hallway, and two bands would alternate sets. We split shows with Dread Zep at least once. They'd come over to check us out, and we'd throw Zeppelin riffs at them in the middle of a tune, and they'd laugh. I remember once we had a moment in one tune where the band would stop and the horn section would play something alone for a few bars. It was different every time, and that night I called 'Heartbreaker', a riff you don't often hear played by a horn section. But we playd it and they liked that one. They put the bands up in a real dive called the Rainbow Hotel. It was across the street from the jail. If you watch that horrible movie Showgirls, when they're coming out of the jail you can see glimpses of the Rainbow. Apparently the chick in the movie was supposed to live near there, so you know she lived in a hell-hole. Before the gig, we rode the elevator up to the rooms once with an ordinary-looking heavy guy, and then got ready for the gig. When we got back on the elevator, Tortelvis was standing there waiting to go down also. It was the same guy, but we didn't recognize him on the way up without his wig and electrical tape sideburns. [Edit] I forgot to mention, the hotel was a couple of blocks from the gig, and so he must have had to walk the whole way in that outfit. I guess Vegas is the one place he could get away with it and not be looked at strangely. [Edit again] Somewhere I've got a postcard from the club listing the show, which would have been around 94-95.

I played with Percy Sledge a few days ago, and here is a view from the stage at America West Arena in Phoenix. This is the same stage Page/Plant were on in 95/98, though I have a feeling they made more money than I did. This is a shot during the opening act, Edna Wright and the Honeycone.

My favorite is when they play 'For What It's Worth' on the BBC version. Of course, that's one of things Jimmy left out when he released the official version.

I thought it was interesting that they separated 'The Rain Song' from 'Song Remains the Same', but I guess with Rain Song being on the acoustic guitar, it would have required too much messing around between songs.

I see what you're saying. So that was the only US date in which it was played? Seems like a lot of work to only hear it played a couplefew times!

It's also on the 2/17/96 recording from Nagoya, Japan.

I've been checking out some of the audio and video floating around from the 96/96 tour, and have enjoyed some of the rarer tunes, such as Ten Years Gone, Tea For One, Dancing Days, etc. I realize Ed Shearmur must have done all the orchestrations for the locally-hired string ensembles, but I'm wondering if those tunes were something he had to throw together on the spur of the moment for the Japan shows, or if he had all the string stuff put together at the beginning of the tour. In which case the sheet music for the above tunes would have sat there unused for months before it was actually played. It's doubtful he could have thrown together a chart Tea For One on a day's notice, but who knows. It also seems like it would have been disappointing to do a chart and only have it played once or twice. Or were those tunes played multiple times earlier in the tour? Did they ever use brass other than on the MTV shows? Seems like, again, it would have been disappointing to write all that music for brass and only have it played for the two shows they filmed. Anyone know the whereabouts of the charts now? In Shearmur's possession?

Hopefully this isn't a repeat, but a few years ago on JPJ's website, I saw where he had answered a fan's question about the phone that can be seen on his keyboard in the Knebworth video. He said something to the effect that it appeared there one day and it never rang, and he didn't know what it was for. I think I can shed some light on it: such phones are used for performers to communicate directly with the soundman (who has a similar phone at his end), without having to broadcast it over the PA. So if a bandmember had wanted to tell the soundman to turn up the stage monitor or some such, they could have done so privately via that phone. Though it's odd that a phone like that would be put in place without telling the band what it was for!

Robert takes a toke and then sort of flips the joint right into the camera as they're leaving the stage for Bonzo's drum solo.

I've finished up converting the audience recording of the Purdue show to CD. There were a number of mishaps, such as my wife unplugging the digital recorder I was using to capture the audio while it was running, so she could use the vacuum cleaner! Then the next try I had the volume too high and it distorted. But I got it on the third try, such as it is. The audio is pretty rough, and the audience is going nuts most of the time and drowning out the music. I applied a little bit of EQ, but there was only so much that could be done. The set list: The Firm Purdue University, W. Lafayette, Indiana 4/29/86 1. Fortune Hunter 2. Closer 3. Someone to Love 4. Make or Break 5. Prelude/Money Can't Buy 6. Satisfaction Guaranteed 7. Drum Solo 8. Radioactive 9. Live in Peace 10. All the King's Horses 11. Bass and Guitar Solo 12. Cadillac 13. Midnight Moonlight 14. You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling 15. Spirit of Love 16. I Just Wanna Make Love to You 17. Somebody to Love I read earlier in this thread that the guitar solo was incorporated into The Chase from the Deathwish 2 soundtrack, but it's been a long time since I've heard that album and I wouldn't recognize that tune.

If only it had been 'my act' instead of me being a sideman in the backup band! We were playing for Heatwave and some other 70s acts.

I mentioned this to Steve in a PM, but that letter to the editor was what really made me aware of Page. I was a freshman at Purdue at the time and fairly clueless about rock and roll, and while after reading it I still wasn't smart enough to buy a ticket to see the Firm (I've been kicking myself ever since), I started listening to Zeppelin shortly after that. A couple of years after the show, I looked up the back issues of the newspaper on microfilm and made copies for sentimental reasons. They've been sitting in a file cabinet for over 20 years until last week.