To be honest it's not brilliant but for a one-off reunion it's not that bad. Plant does sing most of the songs in a lower key but considering most of the originals are in a key that few mortals can reach, he's entitled to drop them a bit at his age.

And since you've never been a big fan anyway, it's not really surprising that you're not impressed with it.

 

You just described my band almost perfectly Andy.

Me too.

I think Celebration Day is alright. I'd rather hear a comfortable Robert Plant than not, because I suspect it wouldn't be a cool listen hearing him try to hit all those high notes. 

 

Listening to it now, I wish my voice was as "shot" as Plant's, he can still sing higher than I can!

 

The only bit I can hear him "letting the audience sing" is the "ah ah" bits in "Black Dog", which he's done for years anyway.

 

Jimmy Page was very accomplished as a player in the early 60's...but what the hell happened? I have recording sessions of Page with Sonny Boy Williamson where his guitar contains zero distortion. His sound has the tone quality of a George Benson. He was much cleaner when he played on the YARDBIRDS album LITTLE GAMES..but still on a downslide at that point in time and specifically on electric. He was VERY schooled in the area of the open tuning style European Folk. He mastered most or all of the guitar styles evident on Pentangle and Fairport Convention albums. Some of the Led Zeppelin songs contained more than 14 or 15 chord variations, yet his electric playing was often horrific. What the hell happened to him? Jeff Beck was his understudy so figure that one out? I just never understood how a guitar player with all that knowledge could end up sounding like a 10 year old frustrated with the pentatonic scale.  

 

Actually, I find some of Plant's vocals are improved in the lower register. I don't hear his vocals as horrible at all.

 

 

1- Oh you didn't like it? So don't buy it, don't download it, don't listen to it. Is it so hard?

2- Form a band and go sing almost 50 years after you formed it. Let's see if you can sing so well as back then.

Ha! Ha! I hadn't expected any opinion to go that far. 

If we're going to criticize the CDay event, how about TSRTS ? Bonham's power-play was efficient, Page was moving good on stage, and obviously it was huge for all of them to experiment. But of course for those who prefer listening to carefully crafted pieces live, much of the magic in the albums was lost. 

Even then Plant's voice was half broken already. His tendency to behave like an over-excited pulcinello was at its top, hence the vision of him as a fantastic punching bag; and I wonder which one of you has enjoyed when he shouted in a semi-choked voice "Pew-ush, pewush, pewush, pewush, pewush" like someone was behind him. No wonder that, suddenly feeling the magic gone after two or three hours in Heaven, a sad and lonely Plant shied away to his room, then for most of the night sweated desperately to get something off his johnson in order to calm down before sleeping (This last information is unverified but I've figured it out because he said about the crazy times that  he was in bed by eleven every night). 

 

That works for me......,in the past (70's) I've seen several great classic rock bands and they all had some issues when they played live.

^ this

I actually saw the infamous final show on the '77 tour in Oakland (the one where Richard Cole and Bonzo beat up Bill Grahams son backstage and LZ refused to play unless Peter Grant was given $25,000 cash and it turned out to be LZ's last US show - at least I think those are the specific details).  

Two things I recall very clearly from that day.  One, LZ came onstage about 2 hours late (opening bands were Rick Derringer & Judas Priest).  During the delay a roadie was sitting onstage with Pagey's red doubleneck while every 20 minutes someone would come up to the mic and announce "we're having a little trouble with Jimmy's doubleneck, Led Zeppelin will be on soon".  It was pretty ridiculous though of course none of us punters in the crowd had any idea of the drama unfolding backstage.  Two, LZ were awful!  Completely and hopelessly terrible!  No Quarter seemed to drag on for at least a half hour and it was pretty clear the band didn't care much about the performance (which makes sense knowing the backstage drama that was occurring).  I saw nearly all the big prog bands at least once between '76 and '80 but this was by far the worst performance I ever witnessed.