Featured Post

WELCOME TO RUSSELL ARBEN FOX'S HOME PAGE

If you're a student looking for syllabi, click the "Academic Home Page" link on your right, and start there.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

Saturday Night Live Music: "Stairway to Heaven"

I'm going to revive this feature, for a little while anyway, and I can't think of a better song to start the revival with than Led Zeppelin's classic, performed just a couple of months back by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, one of the most accomplished and comparatively overlooked hard rock bands of all time. Jason Bonnham, son of Zep's drummer John Bonham, is on the drums, Shane Fontayne takes on Jimmy Page's electric lead duties (too bad Nancy herself didn't take a stab at it), a horn section and gospel choir with orchestral accompaniment rolls in to make the whole thing even huger, and Ann--despite an unfortunate effort to imitate Robert Plant's pronunciation right at the end of the final lyric--simply kills. An awesome performance. Watch Plant's, Page's and John Paul Jones's heads bob along to the music--you know that in their head it's 40 years ago, and they're still up on the stage, bringing it all to life.


No comments: