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Robert Plant duet adorns Fairport Convention's latest live album

By Steve Sauer, www.LedZeppelinNews.com

Friday, February 13, 2009

The duet of Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore" sung by Robert Plant and Kristina Donahue at the Cropredy Festival last August will make it onto a new CD of highlights from Fairport Convention's performance, called Live at Cropredy '08.

The song was performed as a tribute to Fairport singer Sandy Denny, whose memory was being specially honored in 2008, the 25th anniversary of her death. Part of this new live CD serves the same purpose, according to the band's official Web site:

"The centre section of the recording, like the festival performance itself, concentrates on Sandy Denny's wonderful contribution to Fairport's repertoire. Contributors include Chris and Kellie While, Kristina Donohue [sic] and Robert Plant, and Vikki Clayton."
At Plant's invitation, Denny guested with Led Zeppelin in the studio when recording "The Battle of Evermore" for the band's fourth album.


Video and audio of Plant and Donahue's duet were uploaded to YouTube two days after they ran through it onstage at Cropredy, but the recording on the album is far superior. For the album, the recording was by Paul Smith, and remixed and produced by John Gale. A 30-second MP3 clip of the recording of the song used on the album can be heard here.

Festival organizers have been unveiling the lineup of acts for this year's event, giving an opportunity recently to Fairport's Simon Nicol to be quoted in the North Devon Journal as to why Plant and other hugely popular artists are attracted to perform at or attend Cropredy each year. Nicol says it's the casual interaction among musicians and fans:
"Everyone who plays there and wants a drink has to go out to the bar and stand there with everyone else. That is a tradition now and everyone respects it. Even huge stars like Robert Plant can come to the festival and people won't pester him for autographs. It's a unique experience for him and he really enjoys it. If he goes anywhere else he's got to have blacked out windows on the limo. It's crazy."

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Posted by Steve Sauer at 12:14 PM  

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1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Robert Plant does not travel in blacked-out limos when he is in Nashville. He does his grocery shopping at Harris Teeter alongside Belmont/Vandy students and blends in effortlessly (with a few exceptions). Perhaps that is why everyone on the LZ official forum residing in the Midlands, UK engages in meltdowns everytime the "Robert is moving to Nashville" rumor resurfaces.

February 19, 2009 at 4:41 PM  

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Led Zeppelin Reunion


Photo courtesy of Simon Keeping

The surviving members of Led Zeppelin regrouped in 2007, with Jason Bonham on drums, to perform a year-end tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. Their widely praised concert was witnessed in person by fewer than 20,000 people. It is likely never to be repeated, and there are no announced plans to release the concert for home viewing. However, clicking the image above will bring up multi-cam footage of the entire Led Zeppelin performance as it happened on Dec. 10, 2007, at the O2 arena in London.

Many posts on LedZeppelinNews.com have centered on the possibility of a full-scale Led Zeppelin reunion, noting particularly the inaccuracies reported by the popular press.

Page


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LedZeppelinNews.com provided a review of "It Might Get Loud" at that time.

"It Might Get Loud" will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on Dec. 22 in the United States. Click here to pre-order on DVD or Blu-Ray. Prior to this, "It Might Get Loud" will be available on iTunes for two weeks beginning Dec. 8.

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Plant


Just prior to the Led Zeppelin reunion concert in 2007, Robert Plant released the album Raising Sand with Alison Krauss. Their partnership has been the subject of much critical and commercial success, including victories at the Grammy awards two years in a row.

A follow-up to that album has been in pre-production, but Krauss's current priorities are new recordings and eventual touring with her signature band, Union Station. Progress on the second Plant/Krauss album is anticipated following the completion of the Union Station tour.

More recently, Plant entered the studio with famed U2 producer Daniel Lanois for some recording sessions, the nature of which has not been disclosed.

Following the breakup of Led Zeppelin, Plant went on to a rewarding career as a solo artist. He released six albums of his own between 1982 and 1993, two collaborative albums with Jimmy Page between 1994 and 1998, and two more solo albums since that time. Yet until Raising Sand, his biggest commercial success came in releasing an EP of classic cover material under the name The Honeydrippers.

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John Bonham's death in 1980 left such an impact on the surviving members of Led Zeppelin that they knew immediately they could not continue as they were. Yet Jason Bonham's familiarity with the band made him a shoe-in to join his father's bandmates on the few occasions reunion concerts have taken place.

This year marked the 20th anniversary of Bonham's most successful album release to date, the Platinum-certified disc The Disregard of Timekeeping released by his band, Bonham. To mark the milestone, he recently toured with a new band and played under the banner of "An Evening with Jason Bonham."

In the past, Bonham has also toured and/or recorded with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Foreigner, UFO, Paul Rodgers, Joe Bonamassa, Virginia Wolf, Airrace, Healing Sixes and Motherland. He also acted in the movie Rock Star and appeared on the reality TV show "SuperGroup."

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