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Led Zeppelin/related Archives - New Orleans


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Hello again Forum members "new" and "old". It's been a while for me. I've finally managed to find some free time to attempt/create a thread specifically for Led Zep and related (Plant solo, Page solo, Jones solo, Page/Plant, The Firm, etc) - archives, strictly dealing with New Orleans. There is "The New Orleans thread" that I assembled way back when, but I prefer this to deal with Zep and related material, "ONLY". Please feel free to contribute (as long as it's New Orleans based) if at all possible. Thanks in advance. With all of the audio/video footage, articles (new and old) that's out there from the New Orleans area, I thought it would be cool to try and archive all of this stuff into one thread.

*** 1971 ***

Led Zeppelin's first concert (to my knowledge) in New Orleans was August 29th, 1971 @ The Municipal Auditorium. The date ironically was the same as Hurricane Katrina, 34 years later. How strange is that?!! Based off of the incredible audio footage available of the show following this date (in Orlando Florida - 8/29/71) the band must have been "smokin"!!! I wish to God, this was available. I have had no luck in finding it.

If anyone has something to add from this performance, please post (Articles, reviews, newspaper clippings, etc.)

Side note* A friend from High School told me that his dad saw Zep here earlier than 71' on a Natchez River Boat or something....He swears to this. I don't believe they visited before 71'. There is no evidence of it. If anyone can prove or disprove-please add.

*** 1973 ***

Led Zeppelin perform @ The Municipal Auditiorium on May14th. The best known bootleg of this show is "The Drag Queen".

Below is a clip. Again, feel free to add anything to this. (vids, articles, etc) That goes for any show.

*** 1975 ***

Led Zeppelin perform @ the LSU Assembly Center on February 28th. The best known bootlegs of this show are "Rampagin' Cajun" and "Freeze".

http://youtu.be/XNYjQNixs60

http://youtu.be/QjjqynVQ5-A

*** 1977 ***

Led Zeppelin perform @ the LSU Assembly Center on May 19th. Only video footage of this show exsist. No audio has surfaced.

http://youtu.be/-1J8BGt2968

Later that year, while in New Orleans preparing to play their biggest concert yet - to a sold out show @ The Superdome - Robert Plant receives the phone call that would change his life,,,and the band.

It would be very time consuming (more than I have the patience for) to do a chronological deal. Maybe it will turn out that way......with your help? Here (below) is the most recent show from Robert Plant, which happened two nights ago @ the Mahailia Jackson Theatre.

July 17th, 2013.

I was hoping to write a first hand essay/summary about the show, but there are some really amazing videos- (I'd like to share) that speak for themselves, so there really is no use in me describing the tunes, since this footage is available.(thankfully)

However, I will tell you guys that the energy level was very high. I believe it was a sold out show. I have seen Plant roughly 5-6 times since 1988. I've seen better performances from him, but that's not to say this was a "bad" gig. He never disappoints. The band (as good as they are) seem to play a low-key role, making Plant the star of the show, more than the instruments/virtuosity - taking precedence.

Some songs were better than others. My favorites from the night were, "The Enchanter", "Tin Pan Valley", 'Fixin to Die", "Friends", "Four Sticks" and "Whole Lotta Love". His voice was strong throughout, and he teased the crowd with some chants and wails from back in the day- giving reference to "that confounded bridge" and screaming "push. push"...The Golden God was there to please.

Fell free to add anything to the Archives "new" and "old"..(New Orleans).. and please enjoy the footage from Wednesday night. It "twas" amazing!

In the meantime-I'll do my best to keep up with this.

See Ya'll.

RH

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Before I forget...Here's a quick pic of me and the wife before the opening band "Lil' Band O' Gold". (from Lafayette, LA) A great swamp-Pop outfit-that Plant just happened to play with @ Tipitina's a few years back. He also recorded with them on the Fat's Domino tribute "Goin' Home". And lastly, the guest appearance Plant made in B.J,'s bar, the night before his gig here, had members of this band join him onstage. So-they're "connected".

post-8224-0-86552400-1374294759_thumb.jp

post-8224-0-81835900-1374294773_thumb.jp

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Thanks so much for this RH. I was at the '73 show; only 11 years old. Super-Debs was there as well. I'll never forget it. I also saw Plant and Krause at Jazz Fest in 2008, I think that was the year. And I was lucky enough to see Robert at Tipitina's and that was really something.

I'm glad the show here in NO on Wednesday was so good. I wound up not being able to go due to being called out of town on business. I cried. I know the band loved New Orleans, I mean, why wouldn't they?

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Great videos RH. Not all the way through them yet, but WIAWSNB was the last one. Great being up that close. Although you put the two parts of The Enchanter here out of order. No big deal! Plan on watching the rest shortly. Although, I'm leaving for the show in about 1 1/2 hours from now.

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Before I forget...Here's a quick pic of me and the wife before the opening band "Lil' Band O' Gold". (from Lafayette, LA) A great swamp-Pop outfit-that Plant just happened to play with @ Tipitina's a few years back. He also recorded with them on the Fat's Domino tribute "Goin' Home". And lastly, the guest appearance Plant made in B.J,'s bar, the night before his gig here, had members of this band join him onstage. So-they're "connected".

Great photo and thread!! I'll try to add things soon. Still can't believe justawoman, pottedplant and I were at the same concert in 73 :peace:

Edit: Thought about this tonight. He was the GM during the Zeppelin Days. Great Hotelier!

Archie Casbarian, the restaurateur credited with resurrecting one of the oldest, best-known French-Creole restaurants when he took over Arnaud's 31 years ago, died Saturday night of esophageal cancer at a Metairie hospice. He was 72.

Mr. Casbarian was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and educated in that country's British school system. He later graduated from L'Ecole Hoteliere de la Societe Suisse des Hoteliers in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. In the mid 1960s, when a job with Sonesta Corp. brought Casbarian to New Orleans, he had already worked in luxury hotels in Switzerland, Egypt and Curacao, as well as in New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles.

Mr. Casbarian rose from assistant general manager of the Royal Orleans Hotel to, by the mid-1970s, a regional vice president in the company, overseeing the Royal Orleans and the Royal Sonesta Hotel, in addition to a property in Houston.

"He was considered in the industry an outstanding hotelier," said Ron Pincus, the vice president and chief operation officer of Hotel Monteleone and a longtime friend. "He was erudite. He spoke five or six languages. He always took a great interest in food and wine."

The Royal Sonesta is across the street from Arnaud's, the restaurant founded in 1918 by a French-born wine salesman named Arnaud Cazenave. By 1978, when Casbarian toured the property with the idea of taking it over from the founder's daughter, Germaine Cazenave Wells, the restaurant was a shadow of its former self.

"I don't want to say anything too disparaging, but it was in disrepair," Pincus recalled.

Billy Wohl, a friend who worked with Casbarian for most of his New Orleans career, remembers "pigeons on the second floor and holes in the roofs."

According to the "Arnaud's Restaurant Cookbook," Casbarian, along with his wife and business partner Jane, invested $2.5 million dollars in the renovation of the sprawling network of connected buildings on Bienville Street.

The physical reconstruction of the restaurant took nearly a year. Diners who arrived for the grand opening on Feb. 29, 1979, found dining rooms lit by chandeliers. They ordered bottles from the beginnings of what would become a very respectable wine list.

The tile floors and etched glass were restored. The menu contained trout meuniere, oysters Rockefeller, brabant potatoes and this message from Arnaud's new proprietor: "Tonight marks the rebirth of a grand and noble restaurant and heralds a new era in the history of a world-famous establishment."

It turns out the restaurant business suited Casbarian.

"He ran Arnaud's like a hotel," said Wohl. "He had sales departments. His chefs were like

managers."

"There was general agreement (Arnaud's) was better than it ever had been under the Cazenaves," said former Times-Picayune restaurant critic Gene Bourg. Casbarian "wasn't just the owner of Arnaud's. He was someone who appreciated everything New Orleans Creole culinary culture represented."

Arnaud's weathered the oil bust and recession of the 1980s, surviving to enter an era when New Orleans restaurants became increasingly well-known nationally.

"He probably ate four or five nights a week at his restaurant," Wohl said. "He basically had lunch there every day."

According to his friends, Casbarian suffered from retinitis pigmentosa, a retinal condition that caused his eyesight to grow progressively worse over the years.

"Everywhere he went in the restaurant he went with Jane on his arm," Pincus said. "The amazing thing is, he never ever complained about his eyesight."

Beyond food and wine, Casbarian had a fondness for cigars and poker -- the four aces he once drew in a game were framed and hung in his office. And the extrovert blended well with local hospitality professionals.

"When Adelaide Brennan was still alive at Commander's, one of her beaus went to Archie and said he wanted Archie to do something special for Adelaide for Thanksgiving," recalled Wohl, referring to the late former co-owner of Commander's Palace. "So Archie had a live turkey delivered to Adelaide with a diamond necklace around its neck."

"There's not too many people who understand hospitality and the restaurant industry in this country as well as Archie," said Jim Funk, president of the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

Jane and Archie Casbarian's children, Archie and Katy Casbarian, followed their parents into the restaurant profession. Today, both serve as vice presidents of their family's restaurant.

In addition to his wife and children, Casbarian is survived by a grandson, Archie Alexander Casbarian, and two brothers.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/archie_casbarian_owner_of_fabl.html

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Thanks for this Deborah J. Quite interesting and seems some sort of an era is gone. Never been to N"Awlins, but when I finally do, that's where I want to stay as it's so well known in the Led Zeppelin lore, is a great hotel, centrally located in town where I want to be and great cuisine there. The perfect choice! It will happen!

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Link found on New Orleans A.M radio station page

http://www.wwltv.com/news/entertainment/214796721.html Robert Plant takes Zeppelin songs to new places

— Robert Plant knows his fans want Led Zeppelin and he's happy to comply. On his own terms.

Plant is on the road this summer with a new band, The Sensational Space Shifters, and he's offering up fan favorites — rejiggered a bit to keep him excited about the music he's been performing for more than four decades.

"You just hit it, give it a good bang," Plant said. "It's sort of like taking a can of wasps and giving it a good bang with a stick, and then opening the lid. It's just like, 'Ooooh!' That makes me sing better and it makes me go back to not feeling that I'm a cliche, that I'm not actually just going through the motions. ... This is obviously a gig but nonetheless you can still make it into a great pleasure dome for yourself, which is what I do."

Plant is on tour with The Space Shifters through July. He's hitting Red Rocks in Colorado and the Forecastle Festival in Louisville, Ky., this week with stops in Atlanta, North Carolina and Boston before wrapping in Prospect Park in Brooklyn July 27 after successful runs in South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

He and former Zeppelin bandmates Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, who ended the band when John Bonham died in 1980, incited public hope for a reunion when they appeared in London and New York together last year to promote "Celebration Day," the film and music release of the band's 2007 concert at London's O2 Arena. The band testily deflected questions about a reunion.

"We rode on the crest of every wave for a period of time, us bunch of guys," Plant said in a phone interview from San Francisco. "And sadly that couldn't last because one of the guys vanished. And so what happens now is I'm a man of the world like so many people, like in his own way Ry Cooder and Peter Gabriel. ... You pick up so much stuff along the way, you know, and you put it all together, you switch the power on and people smile and then they dance and then they sweat and then they scream, and it's either that or sit on a stool and sing George Jones songs."

The tour effectively marks the end of a seven-year Americana period for Plant that started with "Raising Sand," his 2007 Grammy Award-winning collaboration with Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett, and continued through his most recent work with girlfriend Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and Band of Joy.

The Space Shifters turn it into something of an abrupt ending.

"I went back to the U.K. and I said to my pals, 'Let's go urban, let's go British, let's go African. Let's turn the volume up and let's just stick the fire underneath it again,'" Plant said.

As the name suggests, the band brings a spacey, psychedelic and sometimes improvisational quality to Plant's back catalog. The group consists of four players Plant used before his Americana period — guitarists Justin Adams and Liam Tyson, bassist Billy Fuller and John Baggott on the keys — and recent additions, drummer Dave Smith and Julmeh Camara, a specialist in traditional African instruments from Gambia.

Once the run ends, Plant may return to the studio for a follow up to "Band of Joy." He says he's already completed an album's worth of material with Miller and will soon take 20 songs with him to Los Angeles where he'll begin work with a producer he coyly would not name.

"I'm going to make an amalgam of all these various elements I've been creating, then I'm going to get a guy who has a bag of fairy dust and sort of chuck it over the whole thing so that it melds together," Plant said. "I need a personality that runs right through the whole lot and I think I know exactly who is going to do it, and how and when. And then I'll go back and be an archaeologist on the Welsh border for a little bit."

___

Online:

http://robertplant.com

___

Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Robert Plant shows up at Bywater joint
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By Alison Fensterstock, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

At BJ’s Lounge in the Ninth Ward, Monday nights are always anything but dull. Normally the home base of King James and the Special Men, who traditionally kick off the week with their nasty, sweaty brand of vintage New Orleans R&B, the corner bar has this summer been the province of guest stars Guitar Lightnin’ Lee and his Thunder Band. The Lower Ninth Ward-born bluesman, a former student of “Boogie” Bill Webb and Jimmy Reed, has filled in over the past few weeks as the Special Men make their first foray up the East Coast and their debut at New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Monday night, July 15, was a little more crowded than usual as Lightnin’ concluded his first set of swamp pop and blues. Just before midnight, fans taking a break from the smoke-filled air outside got a hint at the reason why: first, Li’l Band O’Gold guitarist and frontman C.C. Adcock parked his black Cadillac beside a hydrant on Lesseps Street at the corner of Burgundy. A group of polite Englishmen spilled out, greeting the crowd of onlookers cheerfully, as Adcock remained outside on his cell phone, giving driving directions to someone who didn’t know the neighborhood: “OK, you’re on St. Claude Avenue?” he said. “No! Don’t go over the bridge!”

Adcock slipped into the bar and strapped on his guitar soon after, navigating the band through the Rolling Stones’ version of Louisiana bluesman Slim Harpo’s “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRKAWWs8hUY.” Who he’d been directing on the phone became clear shortly, as Guitar Lightnin’ announced with a flourish: “Ladies and gentlemen, C.C. Adcock, and my very good friend, Robert Plant!”

Lightnin’ had met the former Led Zeppelin frontman in early 2007, during a tribute to Fats Domino at Tipitina’s in celebration of “Goin’ Home,” the 2006 Fats benefit album produced by the Tipitina’s Foundation. Adcock and his Li’l Band O’Gold had been paired with Plant in recording a track for the project, which led to a musical friendship that landed the group six opening slots for Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters band; Li’l Band O’Gold and the Space Shifters play the Mahalia Jackson Theater together Wednesday night, July 17. In town a couple of days early, Plant had, apparently, decided to make the most of his trip to South Louisiana.

BJ’s Lounge doesn’t, technically, have a stage. An archway, festooned with Christmas lights and “Happy Birthday” pennants in preparation for blues guitarist Little Freddie King’s birthday party next weekend divides the bar from the performance area. During regular evenings, the space beyond the arch is an extension of the bar, with comfy seats and eccentric posters on the walls. As Lightnin’s band played Monday, the Sensational Space Shifters, and Plant, hung out there, smiling and tapping their feet. When Plant took the mic, performing Slim Harpo’s “Sugar Coated Love” and “Got Love if You Want It,” as well as Earl King’s “Lonely Lonely Nights,” the Chess Records classic “Hoochie Coochie Man” and others, the Thunder Band slowly switched out with the Space Shifters, playing an easy, laid-back juke-joint jam session.

The bar was crowded, but frankly, a jam-packed room at BJ’s amounts to about 75 people. Ian St. Pe, the native New Orleanian co-founder of the buzzy garage-pop band the Black Lips, was in town visiting his family and had stopped in for a beer. Told why it was so crowded, he said, “You’re kidding,” and muscled to the front for a look.

At BJ’s Monday night, Plant was less of a performer than an enthusiastic, participating visitor. He teased with a two-second quotation of the Zep’s “Ramble On,” then briefly fronted the Thunder Band, rousing the crowd into a singalong for the opening hollers of Jesse Hill’s “Ooh Poo Pah Doo,” before slipping away quietly to the living-room area of the rear stage. As a Sensational Space Shifter sang lead, with a combined backing band, on “Let The Good Times Roll,” Plant was visible in the back of the room, sipping a Miller High Life; grinning ear to ear, he pulled out his cell phone and shot video of the action.

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(1986) PATRICIA ECKER:
When Jimmy met her, she was a waitress who worked at the restaurant at the French Quarter of New Orleans. Jimmy recalls: "When I met Patricia I guess it was love at first sight". Before, she was a model. Jimmy married Patricia Ecker in 1986 and they had one son, James Patrick Page Jr. born on 26th April 1988, named after his father. Patricia helped Jimmy a lot to quit drugs and drink, and Jimmy felt himself younger with his baby son, he felt more alive.
On the 16th of January 1995, they divorced.
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