As Laura and others said, for those of us who weren't around back then, it's a treat to read such a detailed, exciting concert experience story. I literally got goosebumps a few times. Reading your post made me think of how I'd never been a huge fan of TSRTS (the song) until I heard it live at my first Page/Plant concert. So powerful and I remember thinking the atmostphere was like Beatlemania when they opened with it. It almost blows my mind to imagine what it must've been like to see those songs performed by the actual Led Zeppelin in their prime, but you did such a good job of describing it, I guess I don't have to Some months ago I went to the Jason Bonham Zep Experience expecting myself to enjoy a great cover band and get some Bonzo history. I think subconciously I had never had any serious thought of actually hearing some of those Zeppelin tunes live in person, as clearly that era has passed...or really anything even convincingly sounding like I'd imagine the proficient and powerful Zeppelin had sounded back in the day. So I was totally caught off guard to find myself choked up at points, able to close my eyes and let my imagination convince me I was hearing, at least, the original Led Zeppelin playing live. ...especially since some of those songs Page/Plant never got around to doing (and anyway, Page/Plant had a different feel, IMO). So it was a very satisfying experience and if I had forgotten what the band meant to me back when I discovered them at 14 and then spent the next decade obsessing, I was viscerally reminded of it then. Anyway, the point to that little aside is ...reading your story also took me to that place. So thank you for that. Only thing that makes me wonder about is your age. 10 years old? You were probably still wetting your bed a few short years prior and now you're engaged in minutes-long passionate french kisses in public and thinking things like "baby steps...baby steps"? Assuming your main source was your jounals, the way you recognized and analyzed the show's goings-on is almost unbelievably adult. It's impressive that you understood the significance of what you were witnessing. Obviously, a lot of it was written from your now-adult perspective so maybe if I reread it I'd see it was consistant with that explanation. As for your girlfriend...Robert Plant might as well have been a geezer to an 11 year-old girl. Pre-teens like Justin Beiber, teenage Leif Garret types, not hairy chested guys who could pass for 30, no? But I've never been an 11 year-old girl. EDIT: oh, though the part about your girl literally getting scared during Dazed sounds pretty legitimately like a kid experience, haha.

No, "metal" is not it. We all recognize that many other LZ songs do things well that are also done well in ALS. That's a copout on your part. The important point (some of which are recaps) is that it has one of the most memorable, gripping intro/outro riffs of all time (the way the intro riffs start out out of time and then come together), a main riff that in the words of one of my past roomates (who wasn't even a LZ fan) is "not a riff you forget" (I was surprised he recognized it after I lazily played a few bars of it on my guitar one day...prompting his resonse that I still remember to this day), the best solo in the LZ catalog, the gripping military drum rythym in unison with the bassline (that changes slightly when repeated during the solo...to chilling effect), the non-standard song structure that doesn't just work but works magnificently, the only 10+ minute song I've ever heard that has never gotten tiresome even one time that I've ever listened to it, the cool uniqueness of the galloping bassline, the guitar/vocal in unison section (especially the syncopated rythmic playing Jimmy does in between the repeating unison lines), one of Bono's greatest drum showcases not just for technical difficulty but for how perfectly it lifts the song, the way it's seemingly overproduced but yet everything works perfectly to create its epic feel (don't slight its production merits; I've heard many well-written songs get held back by poor decisions made in the mixing and instrumentation...to get it perfect is always an accomplishment), the magnificent lyrics, and then ending the way it begins ...leaving you still holding that breath half-in while you let your adrenaline wear off. There's much more if I was to take the time/effort. I even like how in the last military rythym section Jonesey unexpectedly drops out for just a couple of beats. It seems your error is in thinking it has to all be summed up by one thing. Its all of those things. There are not plenty of songs in Zep's catalog that do so many things as well as ALS does. There must be a dozen moments in that song capable of inducing goosebumps. That doesn't impress you? If you read those things I listed off and think "I'm not sure what he's talking about", then you need to listen again, because it's what the rest of us are hearing. I normally am quick to write off differences in opinion as legitimate differences in taste, but since you're obviously a fan of Zep's music, I can't write if off as "well, you just don't like that type of music. Don't cop out.