Led Zeppelin - Celebration Day

On December 10^th 2007 the seemingly impossible happened. Led Zeppelin, the world’s original super group and one of the few bands in history who could rival The Beatles for fame and popularity at their height, reformed for a one off concert at London’s O2 Arena for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert. The show set a world record for ticket demand with over twenty million people (including myself) registering online for a chance of one of the 20,000 tickets. Like close to twenty million others I didn’t get a ticket for a show that myself and other fans had been waiting for, for over twenty five years.

Fast forward nearly five years to October 17^th 2012 and the concert was screened for one day worldwide in cinemas ahead of a DVD and Blu Ray release on November 19^th. This time demand wasn’t so high and I managed to get two tickets for a screening at my local multiplex. While in no way the same as seeing the band, my favourite of all time, live, the two hours I sat in the cinema were amazing. The band showed that despite having barely played together in thirty years and missing original drummer John Bonham whose death in 1980 was the trigger for the band’s breakup, that they are still able to rock with the best and sounded close to as good as they have on any other live recording I’ve seen.

En Vivo!

En Vivo is a live concert film from British Heavy Metal group Iron Maiden. Filmed in Santiago, Chile in front of 50,000 fans in April 2011 it was part of their Final Frontier Tour. While not technically a film, it is the most cinematic concert film I’ve seen.

The film starts with a montage that includes the band landing, preparing and arriving for the concert and is interspersed with some pretty poor computer graphics of explosions, planes and the band’s mascot, Eddie.

The concert is nearly two hours long and includes a total of seventeen songs, of which six are from their latest album The Final Frontier. Classics such as Iron Maiden, Fear of the Dark and Number of the Beast also feature. There are many notable absentees though such as Run to the Hills but when a band has a back catalogue stretching back to 1980 there are bound to be a few tracks that could have been included which weren’t. Many older songs have been featured on previous concert DVDs anyway. For my money, the best performed and received songs were Dance of Death and Iron Maiden.

The film uses split screen to great effect which gives the viewer the chance to see several pieces of the action at once. It is a great technique and something I haven’t seen before. It allowed the audience to feel more a part of the proceedings and gave greater insight to what was happening on stage. The editing is superb.

I’ve seen Maiden once, in 2005, and remember being amazed by the amount of energy they bought to their performance. Now, with an average age of around 57 the band still run and jump around like six year olds and its sometimes a bit funny. The band has never been known for their great fashion sense and some of their outfits are also pretty amusing. Iron Maiden isn’t Lady Gaga however and they let their music do their talking and it is incredible to see 50,000 people all jumping up and down in unison to some of the greatest heavy metal music in history. Eddie inevitably makes an appearance but his ‘Eddie cam’ doesn’t really work. His second appearance as a giant head and hands behind the set is very impressive however.

I think this is a concert that can be appreciated on an aesthetic level even if you aren’t an Iron Maiden fan. It looks stunning on Blu-Ray and the split screen editing works marvellously. The old songs still sound great after 30 years and their newer stuff has to potential to become the classics of the future.  

8/10