God I'm just loving this thread!
I love hearing stories from all ages and groups as I can really identify with most of the things that have been said so far.
I was born 9 years after the group has disbanded so of course never got to see them in the 70's, let alone in any projects after that. I missed all the good stuff I guess^^ Anyways me and my daddy always used to listen to records on our player while I was growing up from all sorts of musical genres. Soul, Jazz, Rock, just about anything. Funnily enough Zeppelin wasn't amongst these things cause my dad, alhough having grown up in London, never got into Zeppelin. He would have had the right age as well to see em in concert, but he somehow just wasn't interested.
Fast forward to 2004: when I was 15 I was a pretty normal girl music-wise, listened to contemporary stuff just like everybody else. That was the time when I recall my first conscious encounter with Zeppelin which was the Immigrant Song. I rather liked the song, but never bothered to sit down and listen to it properly (BIG MISTAKE!!). So a few years passed by until 2008 when I heard the same song again and finally made my mind up that I would go on Youtube, search for the song and listen to it. So I did and I still liked it, but it didn't quite "hit" me if you know what I mean. At that time I was caught up in another passion (or obsession, call it whatever you like) with another group so maybe the time hadn't come yet.
On Youtube you always get these suggestions on the right hand side and the first was Black Dog and the second was Rock N Roll. I listened, rather liked them and put them on my iPod. And then came Since I've been loving you. Don't ask me how I found the song, but I did and slowly but surely the flame inside of me became bigger and bigger, but not quite hitting its pinnacle yet. That was my fav song so far and I listened to it quite a lot, got Led Zeppelin III on CD for Christmas 2010, but never did I dream that Zeppelin would ever explode into my life like it did. I even had a poster of them on my wall which I bought in 2010 while I was in England and still they didn't quite inflame like they did a few months later.
Fast forward again to April 2011: I was going through some turmoil in my life. I was unhappy with loads of things and people (mostly people who called themselves friends but weren't) and I knew that I had to change something but as I'm a little coward I waited a while until I finally did something. What was my incentive to do something you might ask. Well, it was Zeppelin.
One day in April I was still pondering over my next steps and tried to find answers to my questions to no avail so, as always, I put on some music (music is my elixir of life you know). I went on Youtube cause I couldn't be bothered to use my iPod and Since I've Been Loving You was my first choice. Amongst the suggestions was Going to California from the 2003 DVD (which I didn't know then) and, I don't really know how to say it else, I was totally drawn to this video. I'm a spiritual person and I believe in fate and something inside of me just told me to click on that video, so I did. You see the crowd at the beginning, then you see Robert and Jimmy and the Robert starts to sing "Spent my days with a woman unkind, smoked my stuff and drank all my wine"..I had never heard that song before and as Jimmy proceeded into his solo with Jonesy I was in tears. I had rarely in my life heard such a beautiful melody and such beautiful lyrics. Maybe it's because I'm a lost flower-power child born in the wrong decade that this song appealed to me. The final blow for me came when Robert sang "Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams, Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems"..That did it for me and I never looked back. This line provided all the answers I was looking for, it provided someone who told me not to worry and that it'll all fall into place. And it did. I'm playing the video right now as I'm writing this and it still gives me the same feeling as it did 5 months ago. The same feeling of safety and love.
Since that day I bought all the CDs and DVDs I could get my hands on, spent time trying to find my way through the huge Zeppelin universe. With every day that passed I came to appreciate Zeppelin more and more and with every new song I heard I came to fall in love more and more. There is something very special in their songs that cannot be put into words, a feeling of content and passion for what they do which is conveyed to the listeners. Same goes for their live performances.
There are absolutely no words for all the feelings I have when listening to them, let alone watching them, but I would say that it's a mixture of respect, appreciation and sheer amazement. Since Zeppelin entered my life I feel different, like I've found what I was looking for.