Get The Led Out: Irving Plaza New York City

Get The Led Out are billed as the American Led Zeppelin Experience, and the East Coast's premiere Led Zeppelin tribute. They pulled their multiple guitars, keyboards, theremin and drum stool - mounted high over the drum set for percussive purposes - into New York’s legendary Irving Plaza on Friday July 15th.

With it’s smaller than usual stage and hard curfew of 10:30, Irving Plaza posed challenges to Get The Led Out, including one less set of on-stage speakers. At the end of the night, however, nobody noticed. GTLO provided a tight, clean almost flawless performance.

Opening with In The Evening, Paul Hammond gave his Stratocaster’s tremolo arm a workout, and the six piece band played a cleaner, leaner version than Zeppelin tended to play live, giving the song the live energy with a studio like performance. The message was clear, this was going to be good.

And so it was. Throughout, GTLO stayed faithful, almost to a fault, to studio performance while still managing to give the material that Zeppelin live energy. Whether it’s Hammond’s soloing on Since I’ve Been Loving You, drummer Adam Ferraioli playing the drum stool on the acoustic part of Ramble On, or guitarist Jimmy Marchiano’s tasty and note perfect spanish flavoured acoustic solo on All My Love, GTLO put in a lot of effort to replicate the songs and sound of Zeppelin.

Highlights of the night were many, including deep cuts Down by the Seaside and Night Flight, the latter of which is a personal favourite, the three guitar attack on Black Dog, an astounding force, and a three song acoustic set which featured Paul Hammond’s mandolin playing and the beautiful Diana DeSantis performing a duet on Battle of Evermore with singer Paul Sinclair.

Sinclair, it should be noted, was strong throughout. He has the ability to sing the Robert Plant vocals all night, just as strong on closer Whole Lotta Love as he was at the start of the night. Keyboardist Andrew Lipke's playing is perfect, even where John Paul Jones wasn’t, and took up some work on guitar as well. So strong are the musicians in GTLO that Lipke took the guitar solo in Black Dog, and it was almost done before I noticed: the keyboard player may have been taking the solo but the music didn’t suffer because of it.

If I had to find fault with Get the Led Out, it is a quibble. Both Dazed and Confused and No Quarter are played at the faster, studio tempo instead of the slower tempo the originals used to play them live. The slower tempos made the songs more eerie and mysterious and they are better songs at the slower tempo. This is, however, a matter of opinion more than execution, and GTLO has decided to duplicate, as close as possible, the studio versions, tempo included.

If you are heading out and feel like Led Zeppelin some night, a tribute band can be a great way to go. Get The Led Out is among the very best, offering a very close aural experience to Led Zeppelin’s records, filtered through live energy and the concert experience. I can do nothing but recommend them.

Setlist
Set One

1. In the Evening


2. Trampled Underfoot


3. Good Times, Bad Times


4. Since I’ve Been Loving You


5. The Ocean


6. No Quarter


7. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You


8. Ramble On


9. Down By The Seaside


10. Dazed and Confused

acoustic set

11. Going to California


12. The Battle of Evermore


13. Tangerine

Set Two

1. Night Flight


2. All My Love


3. Moby Dick


4. Black Dog


5. Heartbreaker


6. Living Loving Maid


7. The Wanton Song


8. Kashmir

encore

9. Over The Hills and Far Away


10. Stairway to Heaven


11. Whole Lotta Love

Get The Led Out is

Paul Sinclair - Vocals and Harmonica
Paul Hammond - Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Mandolin
Jimmy Marchiano - Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Vocals
Billy Childs - Bass Guitar, Vocals
Adam Ferraioli - Drums Percussion
Andrew Lipke - Keyboards, Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Vocals, Percussion
Diana DeSantis - Special guest vocalist on "The Battle of Evermore"

Visit them at www.GTLORocks.com