MITCHELL LIERMAN
liermanm2@lopers.unk.edu
When people think of a Led Zeppelin cover band, the typical view is that no one could ever come close to recapturing the magic the legendary rock group brought to listeners around the world; their heavy blues tones and mystical lyrics have yet to be paralleled. While many have tried, no band has ever quite recreated the raw power of Led Zeppelin, and according to many fans, no band ever will.
As a result, covering such an iconic band becomes far less about producing a fresh, faithful rendering of older work and more about celebrating the band’s accomplishments with other fans. This is the approach that cover band Get the Led Out brought to the table, and it’s easy to see why this worked so well for them.
Each of the band members clearly had a lot of personality — from the Howard Stern look-alike front man Paul Sinclair, to the Sam Hagar clone guitarist Jimmy Marchiano, to the cowboy hippy keyboardist Eddie Kurek, each of the band’s six members brought something unique and interesting to the table.
While the original Led Zeppelin only featured four musicians — John Paul Jones, John Bonham, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant — it was clear that the addition of the extra two was necessary to make such a great show possible.
The show opened with the classic “Heartbreaker”, taken from the 1969 album “Led Zeppelin II,” which was the band’s follow up to its debut “Led Zeppelin” which was released earlier the same year.
This was possibly best illustrated by some of the jug bandesque sounds Get the Led Out managed to create. The lead singer got a chance to show off his harmonica chops on “When the Levee Breaks,” a track which was reworked from a country blues piece into the slow rock jam that followed the mandolin-laced “Going to California.” This folksy tune also got its time to shine towards the end of the first segment of the show. The band members took their seats further upstage to deliver the ballad, much to the delight of the crowd after the band’s powerful rendition of “Dazed and Confused” had brought listeners to the darker side of Led Zeppelin’s discography.
The final two songs were far from unexpected, but would have been sorely missed. The second to last was the band’s iconic “Stairway to Heaven”, one of the most listened-to and analyzed pieces of music in rock history. This masterpiece is the true test of whether a band should cover Led Zeppelin tunes, and Get the Led Out passed with flying colors. Following the riveting performance of this classic, the band wrapped up with “Whole Lotta Love.” This song featured upbeat guitar riffs that were impossible to ignore as they came pounding out of the amplifiers — the perfect way to punctuate an evening of celebrating one of the most influential rock bands ever.
Get the Led Out could not have been more surprising to audience members who came expecting to see a small-scale attempt to cover such a grandiose group as Led Zeppelin.
The stage show was complete with impeccable lighting design and practical effects which perfectly complemented the musicians as they led the charge into rock’s vibrant history.
