(updated to include the gobs and gobs of text that were eaten by a stray HTML tag)

Got to see Robert Plant & The Band Of Joy last night.

I'd seen him once before (89-ish) but I don't remember anything from the show - except that, from my little spot of mud near the back of the lawn @ SPAC, his guitar player at the time looked like Jimmy Page (and everybody was hoping it really was!). It wasn't.

So, I needed to refresh my memory. I haven't really been grabbed by what I've heard of his recent releases, so I wasn't sure I'd be all that into it. But hey, it's Robert Plant, so at the very least I'd get to see him and maybe he'd do some Zeppelin songs.

Well, he did do a bunch of Zeppelin songs (joy!), all of them countrified to one degree or another. "Black Dog", on one extreme, was almost unrecognizable except for the words. On the other end of the spectrum, "Tangerine", already fairly folky, was basically the same as when he did it on Zeppelin III, 41 years ago. There were a half-dozen others, too. None of them sucked and most of them rocked, but in a different way than the originals. He also did a couple of songs from his mid-80s period: "Mood For A Melody" and "Tall Cool One". I'd totally forgotten about those two, and was hoping that, if he was going to do songs from that era, he'd do "Big Log" or one of the Honeydrippers songs (ex. "Sea Of Love", "Good Rockin At Midnight"). Oh well.

Of course, he also did a bunch of newer songs and traditional country/gospel songs, and most of them sounded pretty good - though I couldn't tell you their names.

The "Band Of Joy" is his current band, and includes, among others, Patty Griffin (a successful country singer/songwriter in her own right), the legendary Buddy Miller (who we've seen with Shawn Colvin, all kinds of people @ Merlefest, and with his wife, Julie Miller). Miller, Griffin and [insert name of random stringed instrument]-player Darrell Scott each took over vocals for a song of their own, sending Robert fucking Plant to go stand in the back doing back-up vocals (ha!). Luckily they were all very good. So, that was a treat. Everyone but the drummer sings, and so many songs had impressive five-person harmonies. Also a treat.

Great show, really. Like I said, I wasn't sure if I'd really like it, but I did. They put on a good show. Having seventh row seats didn't hurt, either.

And, to make things even better, the rarest of things happened before Plant took the stage: the opening band didn't suck! In fact, the opening band was fucking awesome. It was Luther Dickinson (of the Black Crowes, North Mississippi All Stars, etc.) and his brother, Cody, doing the drum-and-guitar duo thing. Luther Dickinson is a monster of electric slide guitar. He just fucking Tears. It. Up.. for example. Their set also featured someting I'd never seen before: the psychedelic, stereo-flanged, wha-and-delay washboard solo. Sounds like a horrible idea, but it was actually really cool. So, bonus.

No pictures. I've had some issues with taking pix at that venue before so I didn't bother bringing a camera last night ... unlike everybody else in the audience. Sigh.