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Led Zep Tribute Band - Physical Grafitti?


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Hey everyone,

I am new here and a long time Zeppelin fan. I was wonderign if anyone has heard of the New England based tribute band "Physical Grafitti". They used to play Connecticut a lot in the 90's and seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. DOes anyone know of them or what may have happen to them?

I just saw "Hammer of the Gods" The Led Zeppelin Experience last night. Great show!! They did a really nice job!!

dave

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I saw them about ten years ago at a club in Norwalk. Don't remember the name of the venue. I thought they were excellent. Great musicianship and a setlist to match. They all had the moves down. Not sure what has become of them. I've heard Led Zepagain is quite good as well as a friend of mine saw them last year in the San Diego area. They seem to just perform on the west coast.

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Hey everyone,

I am new here and a long time Zeppelin fan. I was wonderign if anyone has heard of the New England based tribute band "Physical Grafitti". They used to play Connecticut a lot in the 90's and seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. DOes anyone know of them or what may have happen to them?

I just saw "Hammer of the Gods" The Led Zeppelin Experience last night. Great show!! They did a really nice job!!

dave

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I saw them in 93, I believe, in Allentown PA. I video taped there show and went back stage to party with them after the show. The guitarists name was Matt but my drunk buddy kept calling him Jimmy. LOL I had to apologize for him a few times. They were very good, but I never heard anything else from them after that.

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david - if you are looking to see a great tribute show, you should check out the Zeppelin Rock Symphony at the Brookhaven Ampitheater on Long Island. Tix just went on sale for July 26 show. This is the 4th year its running, and will be my 4th time to see it. Fantastic show, great people, fun tail gating.

cheers

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Hey everyone,

I am new here and a long time Zeppelin fan. I was wonderign if anyone has heard of the New England based tribute band "Physical Grafitti". They used to play Connecticut a lot in the 90's and seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. DOes anyone know of them or what may have happen to them?

I just saw "Hammer of the Gods" The Led Zeppelin Experience last night. Great show!! They did a really nice job!!

dave

Did Physical Graffiti play at the 1988 Led Zeppelin Convention in New Jersey? I remember seeing 2 tribute bands there and I think they might have been one of them.

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Did Physical Graffiti play at the 1988 Led Zeppelin Convention in New Jersey? I remember seeing 2 tribute bands there and I think they might have been one of them.

The correct answer would be yes.

Hard to believe it's 20 years ago now .

Chris Farlowe sang with them as well, doing tracks from " Outrider ".

Hummingbird and Prison Blues if I recall.

I have two rolls of film somewhere from that weekend .

It was cool , because at that time Jimmy was just starting the 88 tour and was sounding good.

I remember a privately filmed video from the " Outrider Tour " being sold from there and a ton of people standing and watching for hours. Of course we all bought one ------ lol

Physical Graffiti were pretty good.

I can't remember the other bands name as well.

Good times for sure . Where's the next convention ??

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I saw them over 40 times in the early 90s and they used to be quite good. I saw them a few years ago at Foxwoods and they were...not good. I think it was a 're-union' show they were laying as a one of. Matt was always great (except the Foxwoods show).

Now that I've seen Mr. Jimmy no tribute band could ever measure up. Those guys were sick!!!!

Mr. Jimmy Official site

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A funny Physical Graffiti story that just came to me. i first started seeing them when I was @13 and had gotten my first guitar. I got the chance to talk with the guitar player a few times and me being young and naive didn't really understand that he was heavily under the influence of...something. Any way I asked him how he learned all those Zeppelin songs and he said he had signed up for guitar lessons at a shop but his teacher was always late or never showed up and there was a guy in the shop who would teach him Zeppelin licks while he waited. He was a real prankster. Funny dude. And they wore 70s clothes for the entire day of the gig. They used to play this park a lot and you'd see them with bell bottoms and aviator glasses (waaaaay before that stuff was cool again) walking around the park high as kites, pretty funny really.

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  • 3 months later...
A funny Physical Graffiti story that just came to me. i first started seeing them when I was @13 and had gotten my first guitar. I got the chance to talk with the guitar player a few times and me being young and naive didn't really understand that he was heavily under the influence of...something. Any way I asked him how he learned all those Zeppelin songs and he said he had signed up for guitar lessons at a shop but his teacher was always late or never showed up and there was a guy in the shop who would teach him Zeppelin licks while he waited. He was a real prankster. Funny dude. And they wore 70s clothes for the entire day of the gig. They used to play this park a lot and you'd see them with bell bottoms and aviator glasses (waaaaay before that stuff was cool again) walking around the park high as kites, pretty funny really.

www.myspace.com/physicalgraffitius

we're still wearing bell bottoms, and aviators, and after many trips around the park, we're still high as kites.

Edited by Ricardo Cranium
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I saw them in 93, I believe, in Allentown PA. I video taped there show and went back stage to party with them after the show. The guitarists name was Matt but my drunk buddy kept calling him Jimmy. LOL I had to apologize for him a few times. They were very good, but I never heard anything else from them after that.

I Saw Physical Graffiti in Reading Pa. In 1994? or 1993. I found out about them from this "Variety Rock Shop" in York PA. It was called the Sound Bizzare. I saw a picture behind the desk that I swore had to be Zep 77' but it was PG. The owner knew them and told me they were playing the "Silo" so me and a buddy went. They were great. Their Guitarist was excellent, and their singer was great, the whole band was good. Another one that is good in the Baltimore area is "Never Never" They don't try to look like Zep, but they are awesome! I have heard from friends that "Get the led out" is the tribute to see.

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Since you bring up the "nearly mighty" Physical Graffitti:

I always loved to dance. From the time I was 3-4 dancing on the bar to "Summertime" by the Jaimies in '64 (hey, I was a little kid raised by wolves) to the "Twist" contest my sister and I won at a town picnic. I always dug the dancing.

When my brother and I went to see a local (East coast US) Zep impersonation band called Physical Graffitti (they were incredible, by the way) at supper club (tables and a dancefloor) in the 80's, I met this wonman named Rose. We compared pix of our kids, we were both married yada, yada, yada. Anyway we both were huge Zep fans.

The band came on and after a few songs the dancefloor was empty. She and I decided to dance. I just met her, but we had this incredible Zep-in-the-veins connection. We danced to 4-5 Zep numbers, as if we were ballroom dancing. Spinning, dipping, shuffling and clutching like no married people should be doing outside of their marriage. It was such a perfect moment of Zep in motion that after the band finished up the first part of the set, the band applauded us, and the whole joint acknowledged the moment. I've never danced professionally (I cannot stand the rehearsed aspect of dancing - if it doesn't come in a moment of inspiration I don't want to do it), I had never met this woman before, or since, but in a moment under the Zeppelin magic, even twice removed, we were like puppets to the music. We let the music be our master, so to speak. I'll never forget it.

All this to say that, I ALWAYS thought of Zep to be dance music. If you watch clips of Jimmy, it's clear that his Gibson was his dance partner. He just couldn't resist.

Edited by BUK
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  • 7 years later...

I had seen physical graffiti in Rochester ny a couple of times in the early nineties. I am extremely picky since I love zeppelin so much and play the drums myself. Unfortunately I cant play like bonham. This was the only zep coverband that I thought was any good. Since I play drums I tend to focus on them while I listen and this guy got the feel for bonham. Usually the drummers ruin it for me. Anyway I somehow found one of the guys from that cover band living in florida. He told me they played east coast but have since broke up. I think two of them live down there, I belive guitarist, dont know where the others went to. They were the best in my opinion and ive seen some that shouldnt be trying to cover zep. Wish I knew their names. Dummer did the solo pretty well, bass-organ,keyboard guy was amazing doing most of the talented john paul work. Guitar player awesome too probably was not as sloppy as page but that bit of fumbling page does is all part of the zep experience and mindset. Not that any of this rambling helped anybody but I do remember the band as prob the best zep cover band I ever saw.

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Yeah I saw this band a few times in the late 80's and at the NJ convention. I thought in particular

the guitarist was an apt choice as he got pretty close to Jimmy's 75' live sound, and he had a touch

of sloppiness but never sabotaging the music. One funny thing I remember is was his stage presence

was Jimmy times 4, so he was a whirling dervish on stage. He was either in great shape or must have 

drank a few pots of coffee before going on. But pushing everything to the breaking point is the Zep way,

so the band certainly succeeded.

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  • 5 years later...

Yes, everyone remembers they were a huge Led Zeppelin tribute band from Connecticut in the 90's, but I think I can actually address your question. I saw them about 3 years ago (2019?), older but still dressed in their 70's outfits, horsing around dangerously close to the edge of the earth. One of them (the bass player) actually slid over the edge and was grabbed at the last minute by I think the drummer, and they dangled that way for a while. They tried to form a human chain, but somehow the weight of the struggling musicians dangling over the edge was enough to pull the whole band over. So unfortunately they did literally fall off the face of the earth.

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17 hours ago, IvoryJoe said:

Yes, everyone remembers they were a huge Led Zeppelin tribute band from Connecticut in the 90's, but I think I can actually address your question. I saw them about 3 years ago (2019?), older but still dressed in their 70's outfits, horsing around dangerously close to the edge of the earth. One of them (the bass player) actually slid over the edge and was grabbed at the last minute by I think the drummer, and they dangled that way for a while. They tried to form a human chain, but somehow the weight of the struggling musicians dangling over the edge was enough to pull the whole band over. So unfortunately they did literally fall off the face of the earth.

Gary's higher calling as an engineer!

Robert

www.anextranickel.com

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  • 1 month later...

I saw "Physical Graffiti" perform many times in the late '80s / early '90s in the Boston area and in and around New England. The band frequently performed at a defunct Rock club called "The Channel". We caught most of the gigs they played at the Channel as well as a few other venues. The most memorable one was around the time of the Led Zeppelin box set in 1990, when they performed "Traveling Riverside Blues" and "When the Levee Breaks", as well as "Achilles Last Stand". I remember that gig well as I wrote a review of the show for a local paper. The original lineup was a great set of musicians, and probably the best Zeppelin tribute band I've ever seen. The guitarist, I think, used the stage name "Rex Kactis", a word play on the word "cactus". I never got the joke. Anyway, I last remember seeing the band perform sometime around 1995, then lost track of them due to the closure of a lot of the venues that the band performed at in the mid-1990s. I have some great memories of their shows. It would be good to find out what happened to them.

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10 hours ago, mysticman560 said:

I saw "Physical Graffiti" perform many times in the late '80s / early '90s in the Boston area and in and around New England. The band frequently performed at a defunct Rock club called "The Channel". We caught most of the gigs they played at the Channel as well as a few other venues. The most memorable one was around the time of the Led Zeppelin box set in 1990, when they performed "Traveling Riverside Blues" and "When the Levee Breaks", as well as "Achilles Last Stand". I remember that gig well as I wrote a review of the show for a local paper. The original lineup was a great set of musicians, and probably the best Zeppelin tribute band I've ever seen. The guitarist, I think, used the stage name "Rex Kactis", a word play on the word "cactus". I never got the joke. Anyway, I last remember seeing the band perform sometime around 1995, then lost track of them due to the closure of a lot of the venues that the band performed at in the mid-1990s. I have some great memories of their shows. It would be good to find out what happened to them.

Good memories, MM. You and I may have been at some of the same shows particularly if you got out to western Mass. I also saw them once at Hampton Beach, NH, a pretty big room for them. They opened with the classic TSRTS film 1-2 punch RnR-CB; mighty impressive.

Spot on re the guitarist. The singer's name was Doug Putnam. The drummer went by John Mack. The original bassist/keyboardist was a guy named Garry Fox and he looked the JPJ part as well. Don't recall his replacement's name; wasn't anywhere near the JPJ look-a-like - didn't even try - but a fine musician.

PG were easily the best cover band I saw as well.

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