Rambling On with Celebration Day Thoughts

Celebration Day movie report 

Tuesday, November 13, 2012.  I just got back to the motel room after having seen Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day (LZCD) at a theater in Albuquerque, NM.  I had been waiting for this with the kind of anticipation and excitement that I last felt as a kid at Christmas.  Now that it's over, I feel like I've had about 50 cups of espresso.  My cheeks are sore because apparently I was grinning from ear to ear the whole two+ hours of the movie, and I keep feeling like I want to cry.

What a totally awesome and profound experience LZCD is. I am so grateful that I got to see it (at last!), so happy I have the opportunity to see it over and over on the DVD that I pre-ordered and that will come in the mail in the next few days.  I am also so very thankful that Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham gifted the world with the music of Led Zeppelin one last time.

I hadn't expcted to feel quite as emotional about seeing the movie as I did.  After all, I was in a movie theater not a real concert, and there weren't thousands of people around me sharing their energy - just a small and very restrained audience this evening.  Just about everyone was grey haired, including me - but I was clearly the worst behaved one there.  I bounced in my seat like it was 40 years ago, little squeals of pleasure leaking out of my mouth.  Every time Jimmy Page smiled, I smiled.  Every time his guitar wailed, I melted. Every time the O2 audience cheered, I couldn't help but cheer - but quietly, darn it.  I was dazed and confused because I kept forgetting I was in a theater, five years after the actual event.

Commemoration, Proclamation, Solemnization

Every Led Zeppelin concert has always been its own unique experience, each providing  valuable clues as to the musical vision of the individual performers as well as the band itself.    LZCD is no exception.  The movie is a true celebration of the band that was, while not trying to duplicate the past.  As with all of the more than 600 other performances, this concert, too, was its own unique experience - but unlike the others, this one was a recapitulation (a musical term - a musical theme repeated in an altered form and the development is then concluded).

And this is why I keep feeling I want to cry.  Led Zeppelin has not been a band since that awful day in 1980 when the world lost John Bonham.  I know that in my head.  I have no reason to doubt Jimmy Page and Robert Plant when they say that there will never be another tour as Led Zeppelin.  But what stabbed me in the heart was the unavoidable fact that the 2007 concert was not just a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, not just a great, fun showing off of extraordinary musical expertise and partnership - it was also, finally, a good-bye to all of us from the band that was Led Zeppelin.

O bittersweet music!

If there were going to be tears, they would be a mixture of sadness and joy, because the O2 performance was not just an ending, it was a joyous celebration of the artistic achievements of what many of us consider to be the world's best rock band, arguable a musical group worthy of being considered an example of the best of the best of any musical category.

Each of the 16 songs (14 set, 2 encore) was performed in the here and now of 2007, fully embracing the limitations and the added experience of the passage of nearly 30 years.  It was glorious music - not the music of 1968 or 1980, but the music of who and what Led Zeppelin was in 2007 - still extraordinarily emotional, complex, pure, simple, mysterious and Magickal.  It was an expression of the What Is of that music in that time and that place that could not have existed without what had come before it.

I might have chosen a few different songs - but this set list was about Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham, not about me or you.  What is important is that these songs were picked carefully by these musicians to make a statement of their choosing, something like This is who we were and this is who we still are.  No one like us then, now or ever again - ain't it grand!  


And then it was over

If I had not already known the set list, I still would have known that the last song was being played when I heard the opening notes of Kashmir.  Still the most mysterious and meaningful Led Zeppelin song, this 2007 version might actually have been the best performance of it, ever.  No Egyptian ensemble, no orchestra, just a few extraordinary musicians making Magick right there on stage.

For oh yes, there was Magick - there can be no doubt about it hearing what I heard.  Let me put it this way: My reality was absolutely changed.  I was pulled out of myself into another place and time.  My awareness of Self was replaced - willingly, with permission - by  music that filled up the vacancy that had been created.  It made me another person.  It changed who I am, if only for those hours.

If that isn't Magick, I don't know what is.

And then they were gone

And so, when the lights came up and the noise of commercial movie theater Muzak replaced the music of the gods that had filled my heart and soul for the past two hours, I was a conflicted emotional wreck: Happily high and miserable at the same time, mourning the end of something monumental while bouncing out of my skin from having been exposed to the music of the masters.

Zowie!

THE MOVIE
Because the movie is not even yet released for purchase as of the date of this post, I am not providing YouTube links to any videos of LZCD except what has been officially released.  Please support Led Zeppelin by buying the music, not just watching on YouTube. The choices below reflect differences in media format, content and packaging.

Officially released by Led Zeppelin on YouTube

Black Dog

Kashmir