This site was started to record the countdown Nate & Fran's trip to London to see Led Zep for the Ahmet tribute in December 2007. Mission Accomplished, the rock music pilgrimage of a lifetime -- as described in prior editions.Then came May 31, 2008 and Pete Witkow's monumental Zep Out Live in Long Island, where
America's longest running Zeppelin tribute party (1988-present), metamorphasized from an album listening ritual to a live band throw down (full details below).Appropriately, given his persistence, Pete Witkow had somehow become the premiere exec producer of Led Zep since Peter Grant.
Since then, an egregious array of Zeppelin news has been burning up the teletype, from Plant/Krauss Grammy Dominance to Jimmy Page at the Beijing Olympics to JPJ reunion declarations to Jason Bonham named Drummer of the Year in Rolling Stone.
For a band that technically does not exist, Led Zeppelin are extremely happening.
I want to run down the key events in future posts, but let me open with two acknowledgements.
Happy Birthday, drum lord John Bonham. I can't think of a better tribute paid you in America
than the toast that Powderfinger, the Long Island band who played Zep Out Live, paused and offered from the stage to celebrate your 60th birthday (61 tonight). When Zeppelin tours again in front of Jason, it's going to be incredible.And speaking of absent friends, I want to pay my respects to Paul Molanphy, who left us in November '008 in a fatal car crash outside Austin. Paul was a schoolmate at CPS in Irving, TX in the 1980s, when a lot of this musical obsessiveness all began. He was
always a total music/pop culture cogniscenti. A classic rocker and pop radio believer to the core, I can still see Paul in his torn Rolling Stones 1980 tour t-shirt, running cross country in the vile Texas summer heat. Never without his signature smile. He was the first explicitly Irish character I ever knew. Paul, your bros from Cistercian miss you.More to follow on the past year and a half in Zepnology. Please stand by.
