Now THAT'S A Rock Concert

One of the greatest moments of my rock n roll fandom, was the announcement that Robert Plant & Jimmy Page were reuniting and going on tour. Zeppelin was our all time favorite band. Seeing them in concert had never even been a notion to us. So when the No Quarter tour was announced we all freaked. We were the first ones in line to purchase tickets, and then we counted the days until the show. Finally the day came.

It was amazing. Every song was absolutely incredible, and Robert Plant was in prime form. It was all we could have ever hoped for. The only problem was that it had to end. My friends and I all crashed out at my house after the concert. The next morning we decided to go out to breakfast. All they were talking about on the radio was the second show of The Page & Plant concert, that was going to be that night. It was going to be broadcast live on KSJO.

All the hype and the fact that it was going to be live on the radio, made us feel even crappier that we had only been able to afford to buy tickets for the one show when they had gone on sale. Of course both shows sold out immediately, so there was no way we were going to get to see Page & Plant one more time. Or so we thought.

As we smoked our after breakfast smokes in the parking lot at Denny's, the radio announced that not only had an additional 100 tickets had been released to the public, but they were being sold at general admission price, AND they for the rows directly behind the stage! It only took us a moment to get it together and collect enough money for tickets. It was mad dash, but we pulled it off. We were going to see Page & Plant, one more time.

We did have some concerns that maybe the second night wouldn't live up to what we had experienced the night before. We were so wrong. We got to the event center just in time to get to our seats, where we found those rows behind the stage, were EMPTY. We never were clear on why they were empty, just that they were. So there were the six of us with an entire section to ourselves a stone's throw away from the stage.

There was an electricity in the air that was different than the night before. As the lights came down and the opening strings of In The Evening began filling the arena, we knew it was going to be awesome. And it was. We were a group of very loud girls in a section all to ourselves so we got a number of waves and laughs from both Plant & Page. Which was incredible. When they ran off the stage before the encore Robert Plant jumped up and grabbed my hand and smiled. We drove home in a complete daze.

The coolest part of that amazing concert was my mom. That night back home she had taped the entire thing onto three blank cassette tapes off the live broadcast on the radio. So to this day I have that entire concert on tape to relive whenever I want. Everytime I pop them in and hear those opening strings to In The Evening, chills run up my spine.