Robert Plant releases his ninth solo album, Band Of Joy

This month Robert Plant releases his ninth solo album, Band Of Joy.  The title taken from the name of a group he was in with John Bonham before both joined John Paul Jones & Jimmy Pages to tour the USA as the New Yardbirds, subsequently renaming the band Led Zeppelin. The rest is history!

Led Zeppelin became the biggest rock, loudest, heaviest heavy rock group in the world and Robert Plant had a voice to match.  The band continued their phenomenal global success until the untimely death of John Bonham in 1980.  Since then Robert Plant has refused to tour as Led Zeppelin and only played a handful of one-off gigs for charity and friends.  Instead he has continued to broaden his music horizons releasing both solo albums and collaborating with artists from many music genres.

In 1994 he recorded and toured the critically-acclaimed No Quarter with Jimmy Page.  The album was mainly acoustic and influenced by folk rather than blues rock, and included a great version of Led Zeppelin’s Gallows Pole.

In 2007 Robert Plant collaborated with bluegrass-country singer Alison Krauss to release the Grammy Award-winning Raising Sands, bizarrely voted Best Album of 2009.

On his official Robert Plant website, he explains why he named the latest album after one of his first groups:

“In the Band of Joy, when I was seventeen, I was playing everybody else’s stuff and moving it around, and it’s kind of…time to reinvoke that attitude and sentiment.”

Band Of Joy is similar in parts to the acoustic-led No Quarter and sees Robert Plant return to his musical roots.  Accompanied by guitars both acoustic and electric, as well as mandolin and banjo, the Band Of Joy themselves produce a perfect traditional, organic folk music; and the steel-guitar on tracks like Harm Swift Way & Falling In Love Again give the album an authentic country ingredient.

But the album twists and turns from folk and country-inspired blues to the dark & moody Monkey, with its controlled feedback and distorted electric guitar, reminiscent of Bauhaus and guitarist Daniel Ash; and then there’s Silver Rider with its verses like a calm ocean before a distorted guitar comes crashing like stormy waves on jagged rocks.

Praise must be given to Robert Plant as he still looks to widen his musical output rather than succumb to reforming Led Zeppelin and playing for easy money.

Robert Plant – Band Of Joy Track listing:
1.    Angel Dance
2.    House of Cards
3.    Central Two-0-Nine
4.    Silver Rider
5.    You Can’t Buy My Love
6.    Falling In Love Again
7.    The Only Sound That Matters
8.    Monkey
9.    Cindy, I’ll Marry You Someday
10.    Harm’s Swift Way
11.    Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
12.    Even This Shall Pass Away

Robert Plant European Tour 2010

In October Robert Plant and his Band Of Joy embark on an eleven date tour of Europe.
Robert Plant European Tour dates include UK concerts in Edinburgh, Gateshead, Liverpool, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester & Belfast.

14th October
Annext, Stockholm, Sweden

16th October
Sentrum Scene, Oslo, Norway

18th October
Edinburgh, Usher Hall

20th October
Gateshead, The Sage

21st October
Liverpool, The Olympia

24th October
Paris– Palais De Sports, France

26th October
St David’s Hall, Cardiff

27th October
Symphony Hall, Birmingham

31st October
Palace Theatre, Manchester

1st November
Olympia, Dublin, Ireland

2nd November
Waterfront Hall, Belfast

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With Dave Grohl on drums of course, John Paul Jones on bass and the guitar and vocals from Josh Homme it is easy to see why Them Crooked Vultures are attracting so much attention.

The Supergroup first performed live in early August at the Metro Chicago in USA and spent the last half of the month performing at major European festivals including Lowlands, Pukkelpop and Melkweg.

The busy month continued with the band appearing for one night at Brixton Academy as support for the Artic Monkeys before playing at Reading and Leeds and ended the month appearing at the Rock en Siene Festival in Paris, where they performed under the name Les Petit Pois.

Them Crooked Vultures will be arriving in the UK in December as part of their Deserve The Future tour that starts in North America in October. They will play in Plymouth, Portsmouth, Blackpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh and will conclude the tour with two night’s at London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

Despite the band having made no records, tickets for the UK leg sold out in just 12 minutes of going on sale. It is still possible to get Them Crooked Vultures tickets online, but they are going to be hot property without doubt.

Clips showing the band performing have appeared around the internet but they disappear quite rapidly too, with rumours that the group themselves are policing the net for any infringements.

This is a clip that has managed to stay up, it isn’t the best camera work but it gives a good idea of what to expect. This was shot at Lowlands 2009 Festival by a fan, the song is Gunman.

The hard rock/metal supergroup Them Crooked Vultures will be performing at the following venues in December:

10   Plymouth Pavilions

11    Portsmouth Guildhall

13    Blackpool Empress Ballroom

14    Birmingham O2 Academy

15    Edinburgh Corn Exchange

17    London  Hammersmith Apollo

18    London  Hammersmith Apollo

Them Crooked Vultures Ticket Information

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The special cinema screening will be welcomed by the many Foo Fighters fans who missed the original gigs at Wembley Stadium, the high point of the band’s career according to frontman Dave Grohl this week.

Foo Fighters were famously joined on stage by members of Led Zeppelin for the final night, June 7th. Rumours were rife all the previous week that Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones would join Grohl and his band on stage for their last night at the stadium.

In a rousing finale the ’supergroup’ performed classics Rock And Roll and Ramblin’ On, with Grohl switching to drums and Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins on lead vocals.

Grohl had primed the audience early in the show, saying “We’re gonna do something that we have never done at a Foo Fighters show and its gonna blow your shit out the door! Tonight this is gonna be the show that we’re gonna be talking about for the next 20 years!”

As Page and Jones left the stage an emotional Dave Grohl announced:

“Welcome to the greatest fucking day of my life!”

For further details of this unique cinematic experience and to check the location of the cinemas involved visit the MyVue site.

The Foo Fighters set list:

‘The Pretender’
‘Times Like These’
‘No Way Back’
‘Cheer Up Boys, Your Make Up Is Running’
‘Learn To Fly’
‘This Is A Call’
‘Long Road To Ruin’
‘Breakout’
‘Stacked Actors’
‘Skin And Bones’
‘Big Me’
‘Marigold’
‘My Hero’
‘Cold Day In The Sun’
‘Let It Die’
‘Everlong’
‘Monkey Wrench’
‘All My Life’
‘Rock And Roll’
‘Ramble On’
‘Best Of You’

UK Music Festival Tickets

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According to the NME report, the website has already attracted over 8,000 signatures, on the basis that it wasn’t fair that UK fans got to see the band at the 02 arena, and they should now, as a consequence, tour the globe.

The organisors of the petition claim to that the band are “excited over the interest”  that the petition has received so far.

Check out the site here

Page also spoke about the effort that was put into the O2 concert, saying that the planning, rehearsals and staging of the event, took as much work as some put into a world tour. He described the event, labelled as the music event of the decade as “exhilarating, fantastic, every week was a week to look forward to. We did the show and it was great.”

So what did the ancient monument settle on? A good blast of Captain Beefheart, we are informed.

And to set Zeppelin fans hearts fluttering, he goes on to say that the band have arranged a meeting in January to discuss further developments that may include the prospect of  a tour. “It could be fun to do more stuff” says John Paul Jones.

Tonight Led Zeppelin will be playing their first concert in almost 20 years, and fans who have been fortunate enough to buy tickets for the London’s O2 Arena performance have been warned they may be turned away at the door because of security measures in place to beat the ticket touts.

Touts have been selling tickets on auction websites such as eBay. The Telegraph reports sellers on eBay have been asking up to £1,550 for a pair of tickets, with one asking £4,000 for two and promising to grant access to the VIP guest area.

The BBC reported yesterday evening that tickets and wristbands were being collected 24 hours before the concert to avoid tickets being passed on, and the promoters have said that only fans with photographic ID and the credit card that paid for the tickets will be allowed in.

Over one million people applied for tickets there are bound to be problems tonight as some fans turn up hoping to buy a ticket outside the venue.

Considering it is almost impossible to get tickets for most music gigs these days, it will be interesting to see if the measures the promoters have taken are successful in tackling the lucrative, growing problem of ticket touting.