I spent last Sunday evening standing on queue with a bunch of doppelgangers. Men in their fifties and sixties with grey heads, grey beards and glasses, each one carrying some measure of the paunch of resignation. Trying desperately, some more successfully than others, to cling to and carry the fading relevance of their distant youth. Committed to their defiance of accumulated years, eager to release that living, breathing vibrant teen spirit that resides trapped in their ramble, shamble frame, now six decades old. Longing to remind themselves, remind the world, that they were not always this way, that their youth was real and beautiful and fraught with action and energy. They want to convey this message but are not quite sure how to present it. Some just look awkward out of their day suits, sporting Converse low tops, pierced lobe, skinny jeans and younger second wife. Some wear leather and long hair like it has never left their body. Most just slip on an old concert tee or a favorite shirt or a button or a buckle that might serve as a talisman of adolescence. I know each and every one of these old men. I see their reflection every morning in my mirror.

The occasion for the gathering of this antediluvian alliance was the chance to see a bona fide Rock God in the person of Robert Plant. When I heard earlier this summer that he was coming to LouFest, I briefly considered seizing the opportunity to see, live in concert, one of the few icons of that golden era of arena rock that I had not yet had the pleasure of seeing. And then I considered the crowds…and the heat…and the parking, and I quickly put the thought out of my head. That is until the organizers of LouFest, blaming everything but bad management, cancelled the event in the eleventh hour. The wonderful and unexpected outcome of this festival folly was how the city came together to try and reassemble what was left asunder. Many of the acts scheduled to play were promptly booked at other venues and many of the vendors left holding the bag found other popup outlets to sell their product. Resourceful folks from all over St. Louis took the lemon that was LouFest and squeezed it till the juice ran down the leg of the Arch and voila, lemonade! Suddenly Robert was to play the cozy confines of The Pageant. Under these circumstances the thought of seeing the show instantly became a lot more appealing. Thanks to the persistence of my buddy Kurt we ended up scoring a couple of tickets to a show that sold out in short order.

4:00 pm on a late summer Sunday afternoon almost demands the necessity of a nap and what sounded like a good idea on a Friday night was beginning to acquire an air of regret. But I shook it off, spurned my easy chair and by the time we were rolling down Delmar felt once again eager with anticipation. As we came up on the Pageant about an hour before show time, the lines for admittance were already wrapping around both sides of the building. Being practical gents and savvy general admission standers, we saw no need to languish in line when there was beer and grub available within easy walking distance. We strolled right past those long lines and made a beeline to the bar. And that’s where the first rumblings of old age aggravation and impatience started bubbling in my gut.

Meet Derek. Derek is a forty-something year old grown man who ran away from home with a knapsack on his back. Derek needs a friend. Derek sat perpendicular to us at the bar as we chatted over our beer and almost immediately inserted himself into the proceedings. By way of introduction he interrupted our conversation to extoll the countless merits of marijuana as well as expounding on the sundry shortcomings of his wife and daughter from whom he had just ran away. He ended his soliloquy by telling us that he loved us both and that he had $2,000 cash and some weed in his backpack if we cared to smoke with him. I thanked him for his generosity and hoped that our food would be served quickly so we could settle up and move on. Derek was drunk or stoned when he walked in and proved the kind of drunk who can’t simply run away from his problems and sit sullen and quiet at the bar like a respectable drunk might do. Not Derek. Derek is a sharer. We heard of his financial conquests, his triumphs and his tragedies. About every 20 seconds or so he stopped short with, “I apologize, I’m obnoxious, I know. I love you guys!” We soothingly assured Derek that he was not in the least obnoxious and that we greatly appreciated his affection; anything to try and stem the Derek-tide until finally our food arrived. Derek needed a friend but not half as much as I needed my sweet potato waffle fries. I wolfed down my plate making sure to keep a mouthful at all times thereby providing an excuse not to respond to Derek’s inquiries and assertions. We paid up and beat it out of there so fast that the last thing I saw were the whites of the bartenders eyes as we abandoned him to Derek. Poor guy. Poor Derek. Poor Derek’s family.

When we arrived back at The Pageant they had only just begun to let people in. We went to the back of the snaking line but it moved fast and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves snugly tucked in the lower level confines next to the mixing boards. Nothing left to do now but subtly inch forward, filling any void left open in the shifting, shuffling crowd. And here is where all the shrunken prostates scattered about the room pay off. You gather a bunch of old men drinking beer and standing around for a couple of hours and you are bound to have frequent vacancies open up. Not me though, I’ve trained myself like an astronaut to resist evacuation at all cost. The din of the preshow chatter was ever increasing, as the crowd grew larger until finally the lights went down. This is where the chatter is supposed to cease.

The opening act was a wonderfully talented Bluegrass musician out of Nashville by the name of Lillie Mae who played fiddle and guitar, spoke openly of her nervousness and sang like a bird. I would venture to guess that the opportunity to open for Robert Plant might be a highlight of her young career, though her credentials are rightly solid, her latest album being produced by none other than Jack White. It didn’t take long for me to realize that though Bluegrass was alluring enough to entice rock idol Robert Plant to cut an album with a legend of the genre, Allison Krauss, it was not the preferred cup of tea to a good number of the self-important old slobs surrounding me. The idea that ridiculous people of any age can’t keep their mouths shut as a simple matter of courtesy while a performance you paid for is taking place steams me to no end. I don’t expect miracles; I’m no better than anyone else at keeping my phone in my pocket during a show. There are limits to my discipline but I promise you I am capable of silence. Lord how I wish I could say the same for some other people. You just had two hours of standing around with your group to discuss your fantasy football results and your workweek ahead but you saved that shit for after the show begins? It does not matter a lick that you don’t care for a particular act, it is your duty as the audience to shut the hell up regardless. Consider that someone else might be enjoying the performance and would like to do so without enduring your asinine, indulgent prattle. The worst of the offenders were a group over my left shoulder that I didn’t think could possibly get any louder until their class clown, ass-hat, mascot drunk, reunited with his crew. With a booming Daws Butler voice that sounded like H.R. Pufnstuf with a fifth of tequila in his belly, he proceeded to tell the Canterbury length tale of how he had been all over the building trying to find ‘you guys’. He was down in front on the floor, he was up in the balcony, he searched stage left and stage right, but mostly I think he was at the bar. You know the type, yellow-gray haired, crimson-red faced, raised on K-SHE and only K-SHE. “Y’all need to get off the stage and bring on Robert! LED ZEPPELIN!” He actually shouted this in the middle of a particularly quiet and touching rendition of Waltz Across Texas. Given his Huckleberry Hound drawl and honky-tonk countenance you would think he would have lapped up the tune like white gravy on chicken fried steak while a giant Texas tear rolled down his cheek. Just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Talkers and tall guys have spoiled more shows than Beatle Bob under a spotlight. My aggravation continued right on through Lillie Mae though I did my best to ignore the floorshow all around me. I managed to make it through the interval without killing anyone. Eventually the house lights came down again and Robert took the stage. With that came the inevitable slight surge and jockeying for a clear view that resulted in the hairless wookie that had been in front of me to my left, deposited directly in my field of vision. Now I understand that tall people like music too and being of average height about 5o percent of the guys in the room have a good chance of being an obstruction. I’m not so cranky with age and unreasonable as to suggest that tall people can’t attend concerts. My occasional concert companion Kurt is six foot something but he always makes an effort to allow those around him a clear view. It is only if you suffer from clinically diagnosed acromegaly and gigantism that I might dare suggest you stand to the back of the room; again, as a matter of courtesy. If you refuse, then at least stand still so I can make my adjustment rather than your swaying around in the high troposphere! I am of the belief that there was nothing at all political in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I think John Wilkes Booth was simply trying to watch the play and got so fed up with Honest Abe’s constant bobbing and weaving in front of him that he pulled out his derringer and shot the great man in a fit of frustration. He intended to shout “Thus always to giants!” as he leapt from the box but due to his poor grasp of Latin it came out “Thus always to tyrants!” At least the guy in front of me wasn’t wearing a beaver skin hat.

So despite all my old guy fist shaking and consternation was the aggravation worth it? You bet it was!

Coming of age in the latter half of the 1970’s there was no bigger band than Led Zeppelin. Sure Kiss had it’s army, Pink Floyd had it’s Wall and The Who had it’s tragedies but you could not go anywhere without seeing the Led Zeppelin Icarus logo on T-shirts and belt buckles. Their music was blaring all around you and they always had the biggest posters in the head shops and gift shops at Six Flags. Sadly, I never got to see the band in concert. The last time Zeppelin played St. Louis I was just 12 years old and I’m fairly certain I couldn’t have convinced my parents to let me disappear into a fog of dope smoke at The Checkerdome to watch the most hedonistic band in the world. No, I missed it by a year. In 1978 they relented to my pleading and I saw my first concert, Rush. I guess they figured three guys in silk kimonos who read books to unwind couldn’t harm me too much. But Zeppelin was never to be. The untimely and unseemly death of John Bonham ended their triumphant run.

In one of the first songs he played this evening came the line, “I’m trapped inside your radio, turn it on and let me out”. Robert Plant’s voice has been trapped inside my radio and my record player for as long as I can remember. One of the very first records that I can recall playing in heavy rotation was my sister’s 45 of D’yer Mak’er which I spun over and over again. I was eight when that came out. 45 years later K-SHE still plays a daily dose of Led Zeppelin, an honor I don’t believe is afforded any other band. The opening guitar vibrato followed by Plant’s piercing, pleading, promising moan on Black Dog absolutely defines the 70’s for me. To witness him sing it Sunday night was a highlight of my concert going career. His growl is a little deeper and slower but that just makes it all the more authoritative. The long curly locks are now mostly gray giving him the stage stalking appearance of the oldest lion in the pride. Not much else has faded but the years. The swinging swagger is still there and no one before or since will dangle a microphone or rest the mic stand on his hip with more ease or more cool than Robert Plant. When he followed the Bluesy slow burn version of Black Dog with a spot on perfect rendition of Going To California, it afforded me the resemblant opportunity to experience that ’77 show after all. Mentioning Going To California brings me to his phenomenal band, The Sensational Space Shifters. In their case phenomenal, layered with sensational, doesn’t seem in the least redundant. Pack on a few more superlatives if you like, they’ve earned them. The guitars always get my attention and the towering talents of Liam “Skin” Tyson and Justin Adams were on constant display from Tyson’s gorgeous acoustic intro on California to Adam’s Chochranesque, raucous rockabilly beat down in the middle of Funny In My Mind (I Believe I’m Fixin’ To Die). The remainder of the band were every bit as amazing and it was a delight to watch Plant step aside and watch them perform with a look of true joy and appreciation on his face. Still another Blues chestnut, Leadbelly’s Gallows Pole found Plant at home in his element clearly enjoying the music he is so drawn to. The aforementioned Lillie Mae joined the band for the bulk of the set and shined brightly on a cover of the Bluegrass standard, Little Maggie. Before kicking off the number Plant recalled his record making time in Nashville saying, “Those Bluegrass guys were really nice, we went to bed early and played a lot of fucking really old songs.”

The set closed with In My Time Of Dying and Plant asking, “Who needs a festival anyway?” before exiting the stage. Who indeed? Not this old man but I do have enough energy to contribute some noise toward an encore. We were graced with a double doozy of Bring It On Home and Whole Lotta Love. Pissing and moaning aside it was a wholly satisfying, bluesy show that was as equally Zeppelin as it was his solo work.

I exited the Pageant with a full belly, an empty bladder and my ears ringing no more than they were when I entered. Tinnitus; did I mention that I’m old? God bless and keep the remaining gods of rock and God bless Derek, wherever he may be tonight.