By Matt Koelling
It’s no secret that almost anyone who grew up on classic rock and roll loves Led Zeppelin. At some point, usually in adolescence, Zeppelin’s musical impact kicks in like hormones for most self-respecting rock fans. Get The Led Out lead vocalist Paul Sinclair was no different. “I was 12” he recalls, “Zeppelin II was the one that first got me…it’s still my favorite to this day”. It’s a rush the Blue Bell, PA native has been chasing ever since.
That feeling which first reeled him in is what he tries to give everyone in the audience five nights a week with his band of 13 years, Get The Led Out. Which means it’s the feeling of a rumbling, thumping bass and drum combination that rumbles thru your chest. It’s a triple-threat, four-neck-guitar attack. It is also the sinewy and rock-star-skinny veteran lead vocalist Sinclair, who through an alcohol-and-tobacco-eschewing lifestyle has managed to keep his instrument in the kind of shape required to hit the high notes on a nightly basis five notes a week that Robert Plant himself stopped being able to hit when he was only half Sinclair’s current age. Sinclair’s mannerisms and approach at times will mirror Plant’s affectations on stage but in both his approachably humble and humorous nature, as well as his blue-collar Americanized ethos, he probably more closely resembles his other rock singing hero: Steven Tyler. The Tyler/Plant hybrid works, particularly since Aerosmith in their early Toys In The Attic/Rocks heyday were sort of an American answer to Zeppelin, albeit with more band members and less musical versatility.
The more band member aspect works for Get The Led Out also, because their goal is not to actively mimic what Led Zeppelin did live onstage. The goal is to get as close to humanly possible to replicating what Led Zeppelin did on their studio recordings, recordings that as Sinclair says “the world is conditioned to hearing the way they have heard them on classic rock radio or on the albums they’ve owned since they were young”. Sinclair goes even further down this dangerous path by being the leader of a Zeppelin tribute band by uttering what at first sounds like a semi-heretical statement: “I’m not really a big fan of Zeppelin live”. When the phrase was first uttered it for a split second causes a bit of a reflexive recoil but after further clarification as well as the obligatory “no disrespect intended, obviously those guys are heroes and Gods to me” it’s a bit easier for the medicine to go down. Because the truth is we as Led Zeppelin fans weren’t raised on the live How The West Was Won live set that dropped in 2003. You’d also be hard-pressed to name a single song from the 1976 concert film soundtrack The Song Remains The Same that even equaled, let alone improved upon, the strength of its studio released counterpart. “We’ve been conditioned for the past 30-40 years to sing along at this part here, to get ready for the double-time drum sound right here, to follow along to the notes of this guitar solo right up to this change” Sinclair continues. By the time you’re done talking with him, what may have at first been hard to admit you might soon start to concede is absolutely true. People want to hear the Led Zeppelin they know and love, not the four-piece band blues-jam-excursion-taking band that could sometimes be hit or miss onstage, while also depriving the occasionally sloppy Jimmy Page of his magical weaving of multiple-part guitar overdubbing and production ear which lent the band their unique, rich texture on their studio albums.
Having seen two Page/Plant tours and then two packed shows by Get The Led Out at Ocean City’s Music Pier on Monday and Tuesday night, allow us to make a somewhat heretical statement of our own: Get The Led Out sounds more like Led Zeppelin than any incarnation of Led Zep has since the band’s dissolution following drummer John Bonham’s death in September of 1980. Meanwhile, with all apologies to OC Music Pier’s earlier Summer Concert Series performers, the fantastic veteran Pink Floyd cover band The Machine, as well as the incredible all-female Los Angeles-based Sabbath-honoring act Black Sabbitch, Get The Led Out is fairly convincingly the best tribute band currently working.
We’ve all heard these songs so many times that our classic-rock conditioning has been conditioned. Yet for most who never saw Zeppelin live, as well as even for some who have like Delaware County’s Joe Gabe and his wife Rhoda who did on Houses of the Holy tour back in ’75, you have not heard them in a close-to-capacity capacity crowd who’ve come to revel in these epic songs together over multiple nights; at levels loud enough to get your rib cage rattling and leave your ears ringing. The power with Get The Led Out is both in the attention to detail as well as the sheer sonic power of the performance.
While Paul Sinclair is the band’s spokesman as well as its spiritual leader, the nucleus of the group has been playing together in this incarnation essentially for the past ten years. Get The Led Out’s co-founder, guitarist Paul Hammond, was recently featured with a full chapter dedicated to his axe-abilities in Pete Braidis’ new book “Unstrung Heroes: Fifty Guitar Greats You Should Know”. Fellow GTLO guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Marchiano tore thru some of Page’s most iconic solos on both nights with reckless abandon while somehow maintaining near note-perfect precision. Andrew Lipke was the band’s Swiss Army knife, providing assistance on keys, guitars and vocals depending on what each individual song required. Bassist Phil D’Agostino locks in with drummer Adam Ferrairoli nightly while guest vocalist Diana DeSantis soars angelically in the Sandy Denny singing slot on “The Battle of Evermore”.
The highlights will be in the ears and eyes of the beholder, likely depending on which Led Zeppelin songs you’d prefer. However it is clear that while “Stairway to Heaven” and “Whole Lotta Love” occupy the obligatory last two slots in their three-song encore mostly due to their status as two of the most iconic songs in the genre’s history, there is an even simpler reason why “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” and “Kashmir” remain fixtures in a set list that changes by “approximately sixty percent every night” according to Sinclair. GTLO’s ability to take those songs into the stratosphere necessitates their survival in the nightly selection process.
Many in the crowd on Tuesday were return customers from Monday. Laurie Hurwitz from Delaware County has now seen the group for her fourth and fifth times after seeing both shows at the Pier this week. According to Laurie “they never fail to deliver, every time, that’s why I keep coming back”. Her married companions on Monday night, the previously mentioned Joe Gabe and his wife Rhoda, had never seen Get The Led Out before but came away wholly impressed. “Musically, technologically, on the keyboards, the Theremin and every other instrument…they really just left no stone unturned” Rhoda gushed. Her husband Gabe, who just so happens to be a professional singer himself who performs everything from Phantom of the Opera to Led Zeppelin songs every Saturday night on the Ocean City Boardwalk at Crabby Dick’s, wholeheartedly agreed with his wife, smiling before adding one additional word to her summation to describe Monday’s performance: “perfect”.
Perfection is a hard bar to set, however when it comes to rock and roll music, part of what made Jimmy Page such a visionary as a performer/producer was knowing when to leave in the take that contained that one beautiful mistake, that he’d subsequently leave in the mix for us to hear over and over for eternity. Get The Led Out works hard to honor those mistakes, handling the catalog with care so that each night they come just a little bit closer to getting all those mistakes right.
Monday Night 4/22 Set List: Good Times Bad Times Custard Pie Dancing Days No Quarter Babe I’m Gonna Leave You Ramble On Nobody’s Fault But Mine Acoustic: Going to California Battle of Evermore Tangerine Your Time Is Gonna Come Moby Dick What is and What Should Never Be In My Time Of Dying Bring It On Home Kashmir
Encore: Misty Mountain Hop Stairway to Heaven Whole Lotta Love
Tuesday Night 4/23 Set List: When The Levee Breaks Trampled Under Foot Dancing Days Good Times Bad Times No Quarter Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You Dazed and Confused
Acoustic: Going To California The Battle of Evermore Hey Hey What Can I Do
In The Light Thank You Ramble On Moby Dick In My Time Of Dying The Rover Kashmir
Encore: Out On The Tiles Stairway to Heaven Whole Lotta Love
