Robert Plant's O2 Rockwell set consists of two reworked Led Zeppelin numbers

No "unique collaborations" of note by Robert Plant onstage at the O2 arena in London tonight, but his solo set at the Rockwell charity gig was comprised of a pair of Led Zeppelin songs.

Twitter users said Plant's awesome set brought the house down with African-style renditions of the classics "Black Dog" and "Whole Lotta Love."

Between the two was another song, a similarly reworked version of the blues tune "Funny in My Mind (I Believe I'm Fixin' to Die)" Plant included on his 2002 album Dreamland. For this version, the singer pulled out a harmonica and took a solo between verses.

Onstage with Plant for his set was Justin Adams, a member of the Strange Sensation lineup that contributed to Dreamland and its 2005 followup, Mighty ReArranger.

Among the musicians with them onstage was Juldeh Camara, a Gambian instrumentalist and vocalist who released an album called Soul Science with Adams this May.

Camara and Adams have been touring far reaches of the world this year in support of their disc, and in April their headlining set at the WOMAD music festival in Abu Dhabi was boosted by a special guest appearance from Plant.

Singer Beverley Knight wrote on Twitter during the O2 Rockwell show, "Robert Plant is a total legend! My GOD, awesome. Xxxxxx." Afterward, she had her photo taken backstage with Plant, as seen at right. This prompted her to comment, "OMG! Me and the (wolves) legend Robert Plant!!!!"

Among entries from the LedZeppelinNews Twitter feed during the concert:

• RT @MikeSouthon Robert Plant doing a folk/african version of 'Black Dog'
• RT @MikeSouthon Robert Plant doing 'Whole Lotta Love, with his cracking folk/african band. bliss!
• RT @RyanQuadri Robert Plant's on!!! F***ing cool!!! Two Led Zeppelin classics including 'Whole Lotta Love' playing now!
• RT @andylopata Sanity restored thanks to Mr Plant and a whole lotta love!
• RT @paul_hide What a whole lotta love, Robert Plant brings the house down. Rockwell O2
• RT @pauldoussay ROBERT PLANT JUST PERFORMED WHOLE LOTTA LOVE :-D

Update: And now the first YouTube videos arrive!

Robert Plant's Womad finale

See http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090426/NATIONAL/704259836/1001 for a report on Robert Plant's gig last night in Abu Dhabi with Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara.

This morning, I think I heard Robert Plant's name on the Speed network's coverage of the Formula 1 race in Bahrain. I know the announcer said Eric Clapton was there, but I think he said Robert Plant was too. Their fellow countryman won the race.

Early Zep stint in Detroit ranks among top all-time shows

Journalist Jaan Uhelszki has written about Led Zeppelin on several occasions, but her latest mention of the group calls an early show in Detroit one of the 50 best gigs ever. The group's three-day stint in January 1969 at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit was attended by Uhelszki, as she recounts in the October 2007 issue of Uncut magazine.

Led Zeppelin's first album had just been released only days earlier when they spent the weekend in Motor City. They were only a few weeks into their first tour of North America. A print ad appearing a week earlier in the Fifth Estate misspelled the band's name as "Led Zeptelin." That's just how unknown the young group was at the time.

Pam Brent was at the third show reporting for Creem magazine. Despite using the word "capable" to describe the talents of both Robert Plant and John Bonham, she admitted in the article that appeared on March 29 that the band didn't leave a huge impression on her personally.

The opposite was true for future Creem reporter Uhelszki, then a 15-year-old working at the concert venue. She explains in Uncut that her job afforded her opportunities to stand onstage during performances, and that was the case for the Led Zeppelin weekend as the band made an instant impression on her with a show she recalls as containing only nine songs.

"Making sure I didn't ruin my brocade satin trousers, I managed to squeeze in behind Jimmy Page's Marshall stacks, moving centimetre by centimetre until I was almost on the same latitude as John Bonham's drum kit," Uhelszki writes. "So moved and transfixed by 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You,' and 'How Many More Times,' I found myself leaning on Jimmy's amps in order to take it all in.

"All four wore impossibly tight jeans and leather jackets, looking very little like the foppish dandies they later became," Uhelszki continues. "Page smoked a cigarette, the ash dangerously dangling only inches from his black leather jacket -- while we waited for Bonham to tighten some doo dad on his rather modest kit."

Led Zeppelin returned to the Grande Ballroom for a fourth show on May 16. "After that they sold out auditoriums," writes Uhelszki. She spoke to Page and Plant during the 1977 tour and reported on ticket sales of 700,000 in four cities, in a piece that first appeared in New Musical Express on June 11 and was reprinted in Creem the following month.

The October 2007 Uncut magazine is sold with a CD that includes the version of "Win My Train Fare Home" Plant recorded with Justin Adams in Timbuktu, Mali, at the Festival in the Desert in January 2002. The CD, titled Global-A-Go-Go! Celebrating 20 Years of World Music, also includes a cut by Tinariwen, a group from Mali that Plant in recent years has cited as one of his favorite acts. He has performed with and alongside Tinariwen, both at a tribute concert for the late Ali Farka Touré and at the 2003 Festival in the Desert (DVD, CD).

Uncut's "Best Gigs" feature lists Tinariwen's performance at the premiere Festival in the Desert two years earlier as No. 11 (Led Zeppelin in Detroit makes No. 46, topping shows by only the Arcade Fire, Nirvana, Guns N' Roses and Oasis). Nigel Williamson recalls the performance as "the most remarkable, unforgettable night I have ever experienced." Tinariwen just beats out an early U.K. show by The Who.

Jeff Buckley, another of Plant's favorite performers, also makes the cut, at No. 21, with a solo show on March 18, 1994, that started in the basement of one London bar and continuted at another venue down the street. "Bunjie's was too hardcore to bother with mics, and the somersaulting range of Buckley's voice was more apparent than ever," writes John Mulvey. "He played for an hour or so, and wanted to play longer, but the venue was closing."

Everyone there followed Buckley to the 12-Bar, where the singer-guitarist sat unaccompanied on a "miniscule stage" and "tried to play every songs he'd ever heard: The Smiths; Led Zeppelin ...," Mulvey writes. In fact, Buckley had covered the Page-Plant-Jones composition "Night Flight" from Zep's Physical Graffiti during a performance the previous summer in a New York cafe; a recording of that is now available on the Legacy Edition of Live at Sin-é released 2003.

BBC broadcasts Plant's 'Whole Lotta Love' from Mali

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

A new Robert Plant version of "Whole Lotta Love" recorded this month in Mali and broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Andy Kershaw show can be heard online here.

'Hey Joe': Robert Plant song review of the day (No. 5 of 10)

This news originally appeared in an edition of the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Today's song is "Hey Joe." It's a traditional song although sometimes credited to Billy Roberts. Other times, it's credited to the lead singer of Quicksilver Messenger Service -- Chet (or Chester) Powers, a.k.a. Jesse Oris Farrow, born as Dino Valenti.

Prior to the most famous cover version by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967, "Hey Joe" was covered and reshaped many times by bands including the Byrds, Love, the Leaves, the Shadows of Knight, the Music Machine and Tim Rose. Then came the Hendrix version, after which almost every cover of "Hey Joe" sounded mostly the same: Nearly all tried to sound like Hendrix! (Even Plant took a shot at it in the same year as Hendrix, recording a demo version in the Band of Joy with John Bonham on drums.)

But the new arrangement by Plant and the Strange Sensation is definitely different from any previous version. From the first note, that's obvious. Justin Adams' contribution is not on a guitar but a three-stringed Northern African instrument called the gimbri (and spelled various ways).

Conventional guitar? You'd better believe there's conventional guitar there too. Porl Thompson handles the electric guitar duties. Drawing from a lesson learned in the Jimmy Page technique, Thompson echoes some of Plant's higher vocal lines.

An underlying drone supports the verses while Plant sings the call-and-response lyrics. He told the BBC, "I made it sort of like a news broadcast, a sort of adventure in the middle of a drama. The musicians make it into this amazing soundscape."

"Hey Joe" sounds like a really good film score ("The Robert Blake Story," anyone?). The whole band leads the song into a very gradual crescendo, but what stands out most instrumentally are the drums. Throughout the buildup, Clive Deamer lays off and then sporadically inserts fills around Plant's vocal lines.

The drone of the verses finally gives way to a fortissimo peak. At that time, the band switches into the song's familiar rolling bassline, only uniquely played at lightning speed.

The instrumental break of this song is one of my two favorite moments on the entire album. At the end of it, Charlie Jones quotes from the descending bassline of "Dazed and Confused," whether intentional or not. I'll describe this song with only one more word. Exciting!

Plant to debut new guitarist on tour this month

This news originally appeared at the Web site for the newsletter "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History."

Robert Plant is to begin touring later this month with a revised lineup of his band, the Strange Sensation. Guitarist Liam "Skin" Tyson of the Liverpool band Cast, has joined, replacing the outgoing Porl Thompson, formerly of the Cure.

"At the moment I can't commit to the touring side of the band," Thompson told Lemon Squeezings in one of two e-mails received March 14. He articulated the point in another e-mail two months to the day, writing:

"Due to other projects and family commitments, I am unable to do the tour. So the band have drafted in 'Skin,' the guitarist from the band Cast, to take over. They sound great in rehearsals, and I wish them lots of love and luck with the tour."

When Thompson confirmed in March that he would be replaced on the tour, he commented:

"This was a hard decision to make as there is a good vibe between us all, but it was never my intention to get back into a full-time band situation, and this had always been said from the start."

He said that he hopes to carry on with Plant in the future. He told Lemon Squeezings in March:

"We have talked about doing some unusual type gigs and things together and some more recording at some stage, but as to when and where -- ?"

No further comment on that was available.

Plant's upcoming tour (see scheduled dates below) is set to commence with three dates in Portugal on May 22, 23 and 25. Some concerts and promotion in the U.K. in May and June are expected to include a London concert date later to be announced and a May 31 homecoming for Tyson in Liverpool, England.

In July, Plant will begin headlining some shows in the United States. The first of these is currently slated for July 20, where promoters at Cadott, Wisconsin's Rockfest say Plant will top the bill on the third of the festival's four nights.

The majority of Plant's tour dates after that are to be as a special guest opening for the second and third legs of the Who's U.S. tour in July, August and September. This will include a four-night stand at New York's Madison Square Garden July 31-Aug. 4, with a night off on Aug. 2.

Thompson said May 14 that Plant's tour will continue "on into winter," a statement he articulated with an exclamation point.

Plant's new album is expected to be released in the United Kingdom on Monday, June 24, and in the United States the following day. His seventh solo effort will be called Dreamland, according to the most recent reports. Previous reports had pegged the name as Head First.

The album will have some new original material but will mostly consist of cover songs recorded in 2001 with the previous lineup of the Strange Sensation. Tracks will include revamped versions of 1960s classics like "Hey Joe," the Youngbloods' "Darkness, Darkness," and "Morning Dew."

The latter is expected to be released as a single, which would precede the album release by one week.

The new album will be Plant's first for Universal Music Group.

Plant's most recent solo album was in 1993, called Fate of Nations. However, he has since collaborated with Jimmy Page to write and release the 1998 album, Walking into Clarksdale, which earned them their first Grammy award with the single, "Most High."

Plant's Strange Sensation is made up of new guitarist Liam "Skin" Tyson and four other musicians: Justin Adams on guitar and an African stringed instrument known as the gimbre, Charlie Jones on bass guitar, John Baggot on keyboards and Clive Deamer on drums.

Tyson joined the band in 2002 after the album was recorded. Porl Thompson described his own guitar sound on the album as "over loud" and "uncontrolled."

Europe & U.K. 2002

• Wed 5/22 Lisbon, Portugal Aula Magna
• Thu 5/23 Lisbon, Portugal Aula Magna
• Sat 5/25 Porto, Portugal Coliseum
• Thu 5/30 Bangor, England Bangor University
• Fri 5/31 Liverpool, England Liverpool University
• Mon 6/3 Isle of Wight, U.K. Isle of Wight Festival
• Monday, June 17: New single, "Morning Dew," to be released
• Monday, June 24: New album, Dreamland, to be released

U.S. headliners 2002

• Sat 7/20 Cadott, Wis. Rockfest
• Mon 7/22 Milwaukee, Wis. Eagles Ballroom

With The Who 2002

• Fri 7/26 Mansfield, Mass. Tweeter Center
• Sat 7/27 Camden, N.J. Tweeter Center
• Mon 7/29 Hershey, Pa. Hersheypark Stadium
• Wed 7/31 New York, N.Y. Madison Square Garden
• Thu 8/1 New York, N.Y. Madison Square Garden
• Sat 8/3 New York, N.Y. Madison Square Garden
• Sun 8/4 New York, N.Y. Madison Square Garden
• Fri 8/23 Auburn Hills, Mich. Palace
• Sat 8/24 Tinley Park, Ill Tweeter Center
• Sun 8/25 Noblesville, Ind. Verizon Wireless Music Center
• Tue 8/27 Grand Rapids, Mich. Van Andel Arena
• Wed 8/28 Columbus, Ohio Polaris Amphitheater
• Fri 8/30 Holmdel, N.J. P.N.C. Bank Arts Center
• Sat 8/31 Wantagh, N.Y. Jones Beach Amphitheater