One Year Ago Today...

...I witnessed Page, Plant, Jones, and Jason Bonham at the O2 Arena in London.

An incredible experience.

Here's one tiny part of a very rambling email retrospective I wrote for the Zeppelin email list For Badgeholders Only today about my emotions that night:

We waited fairly patiently through the opening acts. I hadn't had
anything to drink since around 2pm because I was intent on enjoying
every bit of Led Zeppelin without thinking about how much I had to go
to the men's room. This might not have been the most intelligent
idea, since I felt like I was literally going to pass out about three
songs into the set from a combination of locking my knees while
standing up for hours and the sheer unbelievability of the moment I
was witnessing, but at the time, it seemed imperative. Even though
the line we had been standing in was fairly long, it compressed down
into a surprisingly small area as we were assembled outside the inner
doors of the arena, prior to having our wristbands checked. I recited
to Laura the same thing I had been saying for the past few hours... I
had only seen Jimmy Page play once - in Pittsburgh in 2000 with the
Crowes - and for that reason, I would like to be on the right side of
the stage. However - if there was an obvious difference between right
and left in terms of how close we could get, I'd move like a bullet
for Jonesy's side (I had seen JPJ play three times and met him on two
occasions). Well, the crowd was seven rows deep on Page's side when
we race-walk/jogged in past the disapproving O2 staff, while the crowd
was paltry on John Paul's side. JPJ's side it was - and we settled
into the second row - able to grasp the rail when we needed it. We
were positioned just slightly to the right of Jonesy's Korg keyboard
rig, and I was understandably ecstatic about that turn of events. As
the concert transpired, the guys seemed to huddle around the drums
anyway, so I felt like we certainly made the right choice.

Prior to Good Times Bad Times:

I felt as if I was about to collapse. My back felt as if rigor mortis
had set in, but my legs were jelly. I clamped down on Laura's hand as
the tears welled up in my eyes and I yelled some guttural sound of
triumph and vulnerability. It was really happening, and I was there.
The culmination of ten years of becoming an increasingly obsessive
fan, over the years of 16 to 26 - the memories of subjecting friends
and relatives to hours of the albums and the bootlegs... I was living
it all in those brief moments, even as I was singing '...when I
whispered in her ear, I lost another friend...' From Puffy and Jimmy
on SNL in May 1998 all the way to December 2007...


Here's Whole Lotta Love (the first encore):