Jen Gray
Celebration Day effectively captures the verve of Led Zeppelin.
Celebration Day played two sold-out nights at the Pageant over the weekend, a late-February tradition for St. Louis’ all-star Led Zeppelin tribute band.
The show has become heaven for a crowd that has worshiped Zeppelin since Mondale was vice president, but the men in Celebration Day have earned rock-star status themselves by bringing the music to badass life with remarkable accuracy and muscle since 2006.
This year’s installment came with a massive, video-screen backdrop that provided close-ups of the band in action, embellished with psychedelic swirls and other trip-tastic effects. It was the kind of thing normally found only in arena-sized venues — but a welcome element here.
On Saturday night, the opening minute of the band’s namesake song made clear that singer Mark Quinn’s voice was resplendent despite having just performed three hours of prime Robert Plant the night before. Hitting the stage with his shirt tied in front, halter-top-style, Quinn is a painfully fit frontman, and while the band makes no attempt to physically resemble the members of Led Zeppelin, Quinn clearly knows his way around his wrist-cocked Plant-ian hand gestures.
Vocally, Quinn was a cyclonic force, belting every song in their original keys, never cheating a millimeter of a note — not on the Viking orgasms on “Immigrant Song,” the Mordor-cliffs-high notes on “Ramble On” or the chest-voice F5 on “Since I’ve Been Loving You.”
Quinn introduced guitarist Jimmy Griffin as “the Magician,” who proved Quinn right all night. Dressed in a riot of polka dots, Griffin got to all of his famous stage moves (the reverse bunny-hop, the knock-kneed squat, the backbend, the grinning leaner) and scratched the itch of Zepheads waiting for their favorite Jimmy Page moments — the Les Paul-mauling breakdown on “Heartbreaker,” the cello bow on “Dazed and Confused,” the slide solo on “What Is and What Should Never Be,” and even the space-out theremin sorcery on “Whole Lotta Love.”
Drummer John Pessoni had the herculean task of replicating John Bonham’s time shifts and Bonzo-bonkers fills all night, and there is no trick he didn’t turn — the inverted reggae of “D’yer Mak’er,” the herky kick-drum timing of “Kashmir,” the hi-hat-crazy cadence of “Rock and Roll,” the brawny backbeat of “When the Levee Breaks.”
Cubby Smith has the busiest right hand in the bass biz, ideal as he manhandled the runs on “Black Dog,” locked into the pocket of “Living Loving Maid” and zipped through the bumblebee lines on “The Lemon Song.” (Kudos also to the videographer for the salacious camera work when “The Lemon Song” got to the juice-down-the-leg bit.)
Keyboards ace Dave Grelle was nursing a broken finger, but you’d never know it. His big moment was a sense-altering extended solo in the middle of “No Quarter” — his left hand on organ, his right on electric piano — filled with improvisational winds-of-Thor avant-garde-jazz.
A midshow acoustic set saw Smith switching to electric mandolin and guest Jim Peters on lap steel as the band ran through “That’s the Way,” “The Battle of Evermore” (arranged as a lovely duet with Trixie Delight’s Kelly Wild), “Going to California” and “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You.”
Quinn dedicated a gorgeous version of “The Rain Song” to the “heavenly birthday of George Harrison,” who’d inspired Page to write the song and who would have turned 80 on Saturday.
Then the band took the night’s deepest dive with the Physical Graffiti track “In the Light,” with Quinn and Pessoni singing spooky harmonies and Grelle bending organ notes, at which point a fan in front of the stage got a bustle in her hedgerow and passed out. The band cut the song short as a medical team revived her, at which point Quinn returned to the stage wearing a timely “Nurses Do It Better” T-shirt.
After Homeric takes on “Whole Lotta Love” — with “Bring It On Home” and “How Many More Times” interludes — Quinn told the crowd, “We hope you got your money’s worth!” After three hours of serious Zeppelin, a still-energized Pageant let him know that the band had more than earned it.
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