Features
One Letter Changes Everything
The band’s called Lez Zeppelin. Looks like somebody at the Associated Press never saw the "Sunday Morning" special that featured the band along with Rain: The Beatles Experience and other tribute acts.
When Bonnaroo announced its initial lineup February 6th, the all-girl band was part of a lineup that includes My Morning Jacket, Jack Johnson, Pearl Jam, Kanye West and Metallica. But somewhere along the line, a ghost got into the machine and Lez Zeppelin became Led Zeppelin. The AP, along with NME and dailies like the Chicago Sun-Times, had the announcement up within hours. Pollstar even ran with it online for about 20 minutes.
At least one member of the original Zeppelin is already attending the June 13-15 festival in Manchester, Tenn. Robert Plant is scheduled to perform with Alison Krauss, performing songs from their Raising Sand collaboration. Whether the oft-rumored, oft-denied reunion of Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and, likely, Jason Bonham will perform is not on the books.
Led Zeppelin mania is at a fever pitch. Harvey Goldsmith, organizer of the reunion show at The O2 arena in London, was amazed to see Led Zeppelin tickets online at secondary ticketing Web sites for shows that didn’t exist – an occurrence he noted during his CIC keynote.
At least one conspiracy theorist thinks Lez Zeppelin was put on the lineup to throw off the "false" Bonnaroo fans who would snatch up tickets as soon as Led Zep was announced, leaving no space for the faithful. Then again, Lez Zeppelin is a cool band, so it’s all good.
Lez Zeppelin agent Mark Lourie of Skyline Music told Pollstar he and the band were thrilled at the extra publicity garnered from the erroneous reportings, but said if any of the confusion was intentional, the band was not in on it.