Led Zeppelin Celebration Day

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). 

^ 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.