Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation – 04/12/05 – Hammersmith Palais

Definitely the best gig we’ve seen Robert Plant perform. And at a legendary venue; one of the many we lost in London in the first decade of this century. The Palais was a wide venue, with a set of tiered walkways at the back, if I remember rightly. Only went there twice, for this and the final Beautiful South tour, but liked it as a venue.

I was never a massive Led Zeppelin fan, nor of Plant’s solo work, until the ‘Fate of Nations’ album, which was rougher, more folk rock and featured Richard Thompson. A decade later, after performing on and off with some guitar player he’d worked with in Led Zep, Plant returned to the good stuff. ‘Dreamland’ showed promise, and Janet played it to death after seeing him play the acoustic tent at Glastonbury. However, Mighty ReArranger was the pay-off.

The Strange Sensation band featured South African Justin Adams and Cast’s ‘Skin’ as duelling guitarists and the result was incredible. Skin brought the Jimmy Page inspired Gibson guitar sound, while Adams brought African rhythms and techniques that plainly excited Plant and gave him a whole new musical palette to play with.

This was what Plant does best – continuing his musical journey into new territory while still acknowledging where he came from. So we got a huge chunk of the new album, plus songs made famous by Zep, but radically re-worked. ‘When the Levee Breaks’ was closer to the original blues than before, while ‘Four Sticks’ was delivered like a slave gang chant – bare bones and dust. Plant was having fun and Adams was a revelation – basically playing rhythm, but pulling the band behind him into these unfamiliar rhythms and melodic frameworks that were quite lovely.

The audience were what they always are at a Plant concert. Two-thirds are hoping for a Led Zeppelin reunion: applauding the songs but hating the rearrangements while being confused when Jimmy Page fails to appear. The rest of us are there for the ride. Standing next to me was one of the former. He stood there for 90 minutes, barely nodding his head. Didn’t applaud, just stood there. I don’t think he was dead, but he certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.
One item of note was trying to buy a t-shirt. Janet got first choice, and hers is much better than mine. I wanted a similar one in purple, but the guy selling merch looked at me incredulously: “They’re women’s t-shirts!” So, did he have one for large women? “No”. Okay, so what colours have you got for men? “Black”. In a voice that declared that men would only ever, had only ever, could only ever wear black t-shirts, and thus I was obviously one of THEM. Arsehole.

Plant went on to decide that he could make an Americana album if he wanted to and thus split up the band to work with Alison Krauss. Thankfully, Justin Adams keeps coming back in all the other bands Plant forms, which shows just how well they work together. Meanwhile, I believe that as Ray Davies once sang about another venue: “Now there’s a car park where the Palais used to stand.”