On This Day 10 December

Beyond amazing and into the realm of Magick.

10 December Jimmy Page's On This Day (published 2020)

1998 and 2007 - 10 December On This Day, Page & Plant at Amnesty International Show
and Led Zeppelin/Jason Bonham at Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert, O2
Videos: Black Dog  Gallows Pole

• 1966 The Yardbirds - Bristol, England at Student Union, Bristol University
• 1968 Led Zeppelin - London, England at  Marquee Club
• 1975 Led Zeppelin - St. Helier, UK at Behan's Park West (guest appearance with pianist Norman Hale)
• 1998 Page & Plant, Amnesty International Concert - Paris, France at Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy
• 2007 Led Zeppelin Ahmet Ertegun Tribute - London,England at O2 Arena  

1975

Robert Plant was still recovering from his August car accident, and the four members of Led Zeppelin were in Jersey for a few weeks. John Paul Jones and John Bonham were at a club where the resident pianist, Norman Hale, invited the two onstage to jam. Instead the full band showed up a week later for a 45 minute set with Hale at the piano and Plant seated on a stool, performing to an audience of a few hundred lucky souls.

1975 Led Zeppelin - St. Helier, UK at Behan's Park West
(guest appearance with pianist Norman Hale)

1998
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant performed When the World Was Young, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, Gallows Pole, and Rock and Roll at the last Human Rights Concert to benefit Amnesty International. The full 1998 performance with Page & Plant, among others, is available on Amazon.

1998 Page & Plant, Amnesty International Show, Paris

2007
Ahmet Ertegun (1923-2006) was a powerful figure in Led Zeppelin's career. He was founder and president of Atlantic Records and was a chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After hearing Led Zeppelin's demo recording, Ertegun immediately signed the then unknown band to his label.

At age 83 Ertegun was backstage at a Rolling Stones' concert at the Beacon Theater in New York when he tripped and fell, hitting his head on the cement. During the Led Zeppelin induction to the UK Music Hall of Fame on 14 November, 2006, Jimmy Page announced that Ertegun had gone into a coma. Ahmet Ertegun died on December 14, 2006 and was buried in his native Turkey.

The remaining members of Led Zeppelin organized an Ahmet Tribute Concert to raise money for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund for university scholarships in the UK, US and Turkey. Although other performers were to share the stage, it was the reunion of Led Zeppelin, with Jason Bonham taking his father's place, that stole the headlines.

Over 20 million people tried for tickets.

2007 February, Led Zeppelin statement on passing of Ahmet Ertegun

2007 10 December, Led Zeppelin reunion, with Jason Bonham,
at Ahmut Ertegun Tribute concert, O2 Arena, London

2007 O2 ticket

2007 Dave Grohl with Scarlet Page and the "secret" setlist, before the show
(Ross Halfin photo)

Setlist:
Good Times, Bad Times
Ramble On
Black Dog
In My Time of Dying
For Your Life
Trampled Under Foot
Nobody's Fault But Mine
No Quarter
Since I've Been Lovin' You
Dazed and Confused
Stairway To Heaven
The Song Remains the Same
Misty Mountain Hop
Kashmir

Encore:

Whole Lotta Love

Rock and Roll

2007, the Concert of the Century

2007 Jimmy Page at the mic, O2

2007 Jimmy Page, O2 (Ross Halfin photo)

2007 Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, O2

2007 John Paul Jones, Jason Bonham, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant at O2 (Scarlet Page photo)

2007, the Concert of the Century

It's rock and roll, baby.  It's Jimmy Page.  It's Magick.

♪

♪  Full set (Page & Plant, Amnesty International Paris 1998) YouTube

♪  When the World Was Young (Page & Plant, Amnesty International Paris 1998) YouTube 

♪  Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (Page & Plant, Amnesty International Paris 1998) YouTube
♪ Gallows Pole (Page & Plant, Amnesty International Paris 1998) YouTube
♪  Good Times Bad Times with concert intro (Led Zeppelin with Jason Bonham, Ahmet Tribute Concert at O2, 2007) YouTube

♪  Black Dog (Led Zeppelin with Jason Bonham, Ahmet Tribute Concert at O2, 2007) YouTube

♪  Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin with Jason Bonham, Ahmet Tribute Concert at O2, 2007) YouTube

♪  Kashmir (Led Zeppelin with Jason Bonham, Ahmet Tribute Concert at O2, 2007) YouTube
♪  Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin with Jason Bonham, Ahmet Tribute Concert at O2, 2007) YouTube

♫  Rolling Stone review by David Fricke

♪ Mage Music 1 playlist at YouTube
♪ Mage Music 2 playlist at YouTube

Soundcheck

Eight years ago today, just about now (allowing for the time difference and when you read this), the final O2 rehearsal/soundcheck was happening.

Tickets for the show itself, available through a lottery system, had been snatched up by some 16-18,000 lucky devils, with literally millions of us losers sobbing about it.

Some lucky suckers had gotten access to the rehearsal/soundcheck, too.

2007 Led Zeppelin O2 rehearsal

Meanwhile, back home millions of us remained crying into our beer (or wine, in my case), not having won
one of those precious concert tickets or an invitation to the soundcheck. But we were not idle. No we were not. We were searching online for every scrap of information, any report - first or second hand, or even rumor. Anything at all.

Much had been kept secret, but in this day and age, there are always leaks. What was out there was hard to distinguish from rumors, but you had to find trustworthy sources and, well, trust them. Early feedback from Cameron Crowe (who was not there but had heard from someone who was) was that the soundcheck was thrilling.

The few hundred or so blessed witnesses to this penultimate performance were not allowed to record, but yes, that happened anyway.

The setlist for the sound check included:
 Good Times Bad Times

 Ramble On

 In My Time Of Dying

 No Quarter

 Nobody's Fault But Mine

 D'yer Mak'er

 Communication Breakdown

It was already common knowledge that the band had been practicing For Your Life, a song they'd never played live before.

Afterwards, some of the blessed met up at the Pilot Inn/Pub for a Led Zeppelin fan club meeting arranged by Dave Lewis, who, after all was said and done, referred to the whole experience before, during and after, as inhabiting Planet Zeppelin.

Amazingly, after all these years I'm still upset that I wasn't there and I'm still green with envy even as I type this blog post. So go ahead, ticketholders.  Torture me. Post your story of O2 in the comments.

♪

♪  Rock and Roll (Shepperton Studio, 05 December 2007) YouTube

♪ Mage Music 1 playlist at YouTube
♪ Mage Music 2 playlist at YouTube

On This Day 12 October

And now's the time, the time is now

1999 12 October Jimmy Page with The Black Crowes -  NY at Roseland Ballroom

• 1969 Led Zeppelin - London, England at Lyceum Ballroom
• 1995 Page & Plant Unledded Tour - Ames, IA at Hilton Coliseum
• 1999 Jimmy Page with The Black Crowes - NY at Roseland Ballroom
• 2012 Jimmy Page with Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Jason Bonham at Celebration Day London premiere 

Not that numbers matter to anyone who knows and loves Jimmy Page's music but...

1969:

Led Zeppelin was paid the highest fee for a one night performance in the UK at that time. Freddie Mercury was in the audience. 

1969 Led Zeppelin backstage at London's Lyceum Ballroom (Chris Walsh photo)

2012:
The initial screening of the Celebration Day movie in more than 1,500 theaters in 40 countries, grossed over $2 million US.

2012 Jimmy Page at the Celebration Day movie premiere in London

2012 Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and Jimmy Page at the London premiere of the Celebration Day movie

♪

♪  Full set (Led Zeppelin, London 1969) YouTube
♪  Thank You (Page & Plant,  Ames IA 1995) YouTube
♪  Oh Well (Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes, rehearsal Roseland Ballroom 1999) YouTube
♪  Full set  (Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes, Roseland Ballroom 1999) YouTube
♪  Ramble On (Led Zeppelin, 1969/2014 remaster) YouTube
♫  Jimmy Page interview with Absolut Radio at London premiere of Celebration Day 2012
Note:  I've got Ramble On on this playlist just because I love it so much. Doesn't really have anything to do with today's On This Day but it rounds out the playlist nicely.

On This Day 12 September

Oh, oh, O2!

1976 11 September On This Day Jimmy Page and John Bonham record Bonzo's Montreux in Montreux Casino Studios
(2015 post date with different headline)
♪ Bonzo's Montreux (Soundcloud)

1976 11 September On This Day Jimmy Page and John Bonham record Bonzo's Montreux in Montreux Casino Studios
(2011 post date)
♪ Bonzo's Montreux (Soundcloud)

• 1968 Led Zeppelin - Stockholm, Sweden at Tivoli Grona Lund,Stora Scenen
• 1976 Jimmy Page and John Bonham recording in Montreux Casino Studios
• 1998 Page & Plant - Mountain View, CA at Shoreline Amphitheatre
• 2007 O2 show announcement 

1968 Led Zeppelin - Stockholm, Sweden at Tivoli Grona Lund,Stora Scenen

1968 Billed as Yardbirds - not even the new ones

1976:
Bonzo's Montreux is one of my favorite pieces of music ever. Of course, I say that about so many of Led Zeppelin's and Jimmy Page's music, but this is different. Bonzo's Montreux is music at it's most basic, what humans have heard in the plink of raindrops and the slap of windshield wipers, the thing that makes toes tap and bodies sway.  This one song is music stripped to a fundamental component of human life, "the spacial representation of time as rhythm" (Ursula Leguin, The Dispossessed).  It is truly, as Jimmy Page puts it, John Bonham's drum orchestra.

Keyboard mentioned in Jimmy Page's On This Day post

1998 Page & Plant - Poster for Mountain View, CA show

2007 Led Zeppelin announces O2 show

2007:
"O2" of course, refers to the one-off "Led Zeppelin Reunion" (Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham).  The official name of the show was the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert.  It was a benefit to help raise money for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund for university scholarships in the UK, US and Turkey.

The 12 September announcements for the event mentioned a lineup that included Pete Townshend, Foreigner, Paolo Nutini, and Bill Wyman And The Rhythm Kings, with rumors of Mick Jagger playing the gig. Tickets for the show were £125 each, limited to two per person, distributed by ballot via online registration. Registration was supposed to close on Monday, 17 September, but in fact the website exceeded its bandwidth and crashed almost immediately upon the announcement.  According to Guinness World Records 2009, a world record was set for the "Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert". Depending on the source you believe, there were no fewer than one million or as many as 20 million requests for tickets.

Pete Townshend declined to perform, reportedly saying, "They really don't need me."  It didn't matter whether he or anyone else showed up. For most of the world there was only one band that was going to play that night anyway: Led Zeppelin.

2009 5 March, Jimmy Page/Ross Halfin studio photoshoot

2009:
I posted this photo today because I like it. Is there any other reason necessary?

♪

♪  Bonzo's Montreux (Led Zeppelin, Coda 1976) YouTube
♪  Bonzo's Montreux (mix construction in progress) (Led Zeppelin, Coda 2015 remaster) YouTube
♪  Ramble On (Led Zeppelin, O2 rehearsal Shepperton Studios 2007) YouTube
♪  For Your Life (Led Zeppelin, O2 rehearsal Shepperton Studios 2007) YouTube

The Futility of Want

"Seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it?”
~Jimmy Page, October 2012 interview response to a reunion question. Mr. Page pointed out that the reunion concert had been five years prior and that if there was a chance they were reuniting, people would have heard about it.

“..just look at the facts: The O2 was seven years ago… there hasn't been any movement so it’s unlikely. It is what it is.”
~Jimmy Page, April 2014 BBC Radio 4 interview response to a reunion question.

Mage Music 82 

We never seem to change, do we? We who love the music of Jimmy Page are a greedy bunch. We want more, more, more – no matter what the man himself has to say about it.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it - why can’t we just use Magick to get what we want?

Sad news, friends: Magick isn't going to work if it is used on someone else to control them. There are no love potions that will make someone love you if they don’t already want to. There are no spells that will force a person to submit to your will. Contrary to what every sword-and-sorcery fantasy will tell you, it is futile to use Magick to get what you want by attempting to change someone else. If you keep trying, you are doomed to failure.

The power you get from Magick is to change your own reality. This may make it seem like Magick is a small, pitiful thing but it isn't. New discoveries in quantum physics are finally catching up to what humans have always known: A sentient being shapes the Universe by paying attention to it.

That is, frankly, damn powerful.

But did you notice:  It's not attention to other people and what they are or aren't doing - it's attention to the Universe. That’s where the energy of Magick is.

Attempting to change someone else is just spending that energy to build an insurmountable obstacle for yourself. You're trying to control something you have no control over. It’s like flooring the gas pedal and just spinning wheels. You use up fuel but you don’t get anywhere and you may end up by trashing your car. You have to work with the reality you've got, not try to impose your wants over the reality of others who have their own desires and will.

Feeling frustrated lately? You’re spinning wheels, my friend. Stop trying to change people around you. Use Magick to change your own reality.


But you still want that reunion!

If sheer numbers alone were sufficient to make Magick happen, then you’d think that there would be another Led Zeppelin reunion tomorrow because there are millions of us out here wishing and hoping for something just like that. Sure, we've got remasters coming but does that mean we are satisfied? No way. We want more.

But hey, Jimmy Page himself says it is unlikely we’ll see anything like O2 again. That doesn't mean there will never be a reunion, but Mr. Page is a realist. A good Mage has to be. Jimmy Page would be the last person to underestimate the power of one, but he also knows that as powerful as he is, he can only change his own reality and not that of anyone else.

So what would a reunion take? Nothing less than the desire of all parties to change their individual realities in tandem, to hold the same desire with the same will. With that, a reunion concert or tour would then be the ritual that would allow the Magick to shine through. The music we all hunger for insatiably.

While “all parties” includes you and me, obviously the most important participants in such a Work would be the musicians. But... just because they are really, really good at what they do and are key to the ritual doesn't mean that they can change how Magick works. Even Jimmy Page can't do that.

 

Co-creation 

Anyone can change reality with Magick to some degree or another.  A powerful Mage can create a big change in his reality that affects a lot of people who are open to the Magick.  But ritual of a band the caliber of Led Zeppelin requires co-creation: choosing alignment of desire and will to a common goal -- not just being on stage at the same time.

I have previously posted in this blog about how emotions control automatic biological processes, which in turn close or open the Mage to the energy of the Universe and thus to Magick. When it comes to co-creation this means that if any one party to a co-creative Work has no joy in it, if all parties are not in alignment of desire and will, then the desired reality is not going to happen, no matter how much any one (or the millions of us) want it to.

For some things in this world it doesn't matter if a group of people want to drive the same car, or even take the same road when they desire to reach the same goal at the same time. But if the process is Magick, if the ritual is music, then there had better be agreement on the fundamentals of means and path, because it's everyone's foot on the same gas pedal, everyone's hands on the same steering wheel.

So the chance of a reunion is what it is: unlikely. You can figure out why without knowing anything more than what you've read here.  It's futile to want something you have no control over.

Mage Music 20: Let's Celebrate!

The O2 concert is coming!

To me, any day I can listen to music of Led Zeppelin – or, more specifically, Jimmy Page – is a Celebration Day, but I've been really, really happy with the news that finally the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert, featuring a reunited Led Zeppelin (with Bonzo’s son, Jason Bonham, on drums) will be available in movie theaters in October and on DVD in November.

The movie opens on six continents (apparently not in Antarctica) on October 17, 2012 and you can check to see where online at the official Led Zeppelin website. Some locations are already offering tickets – I’m sure that getting them early is a good idea because although there are 1500 theaters world-wide showing Celebration Day, there are millions of Led Zeppelin fans. Just like the O2 show, there will likely be folks who want to get in who won’t be able to get a ticket. Me – well, the nearest theater is a couple hundred miles away so I might have to wait for the DVD.

The DVD (and other formats) is scheduled for release November 19.  I hope I can order in advance.  I'm thinking I might need to order multiple copies, because... well, just because.

Till October – or November – there’s the Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day DVD/movie trailer to tide you over and to whet your appetite.

I’ll be posting info as it I learn of it on a page of its own here on the Mage Music blog that I've created just for that purpose (check out the tab at the top of this page) so it’ll be easy for you to find.  Plus I've posted some stills from the movie trailer.  You might want to bookmark the page.  Heck, it's my own blog and I've bookmarked the page!  CLICK HERE

♪

Future post: I'll be returning to regularly scheduled programming next weekend, I promise!  Meanwhile, use the links below to listen to the studio versions of the setlist for the O2 concert.

♫

YouTube Playlist - Studio versions of O2 setlist plus the Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day trailer and also studio version of Celebration Day.

Individual songs (in the O2 setlist order)

1969 ‘Good Times Bad Times’ Album: Led Zeppelin
1969 ‘Ramble On’  Album: Led Zeppelin II
1971 ‘Black Dog’  Album: Led Zeppelin IV
1975 'In My Time Of Dying' Album: Physical Graffiti

1976 'For Your Life'  Album: Presence
1975 'Trampled Under Foot'  Album: Physical Graffiti
1976 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' Album: Presence
1973 'No Quarter'   Album: Houses of the Holy
1970 'Since I've Been Loving You' Album: Led Zeppelin III
1969 'Dazed And Confused'  Album: Led Zeppelin

1971 'Stairway To Heaven'   Album: Led Zeppelin IV  

1973 'The Song Remains The Same' Album: Houses of the Holy 

1969 I Can't Quit You Baby' Album: Led Zeppelin

1971 'Misty Mountain Hop'  Album: Led Zeppelin IV
1975 'Kashmir' Album: Physical Graffiti
1969 'Whole Lotta Love'  Album: Led Zeppelin II
1971 ‘Rock And Roll’ Album: Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day movie trailer

Cinema opening: October 17, 2012 Tickets on sale October 13

DVD release: November 19, 2012 Sales info will be posted here soon as it's available

Note:  This info and updates are also posted on a permanent blog page HERE or just click on the tab above

ARE YOU EXCITED YET????