This show was originally scheduled for Sunday March 6 but was postponed to Wednesday July 20 due to Robert Plants laryngitis.The show was scheduled to start at 8:00PM but the band didn't even leave Marriotts Camelback Inn Hotel until after 8. The show finally began a little before 9:00PM to the thunderous opening of The Song Remains the Same. Jimmy Page was dressed in the black dragon pants that he wore at Earls Court in 1975, with a simple black tee-shirt and white scarf.The beginning of the show seemed decent enough except Jimmy wasn't moving around much. He seemed rather content standing almost perfectly still throughout the performance just in front of John Bonhams drum riser. During the guitar solo in Over the Hills and Far Away, Jimmy miscalulated where he needed to be in order to switch his guitars floor effect, with Robert actually doing it for him. After the accoustc set things began to change from a promising performance to one that bordered on the bizzare....
After turning in a lost and wandering guitar solo during Trampled Underfoot, Jimmy straped on the DanElectro and played just a few bars of Black Mountain Side,completely ignoring White Summer, before going into Kashmir......but without the rest of band who joined in one by one.
After the opening bars of Achilles Last Stand, a protechnics miscue went off, an extremely LOUD explosion with blinding white light. You could see Jimmy going over to the side of the stage raising a closed fist presumably to a roadie. The explosion caught Jimmy off guard and actually knocked him back a foot or two. After the song Robert announced that the explosion was not meant to happen and that the person responsable would shortly be casterated.
After Achilles the band performed Stairway To Heaven, John Bonham seemed in a hurry to get the show over with and was off his drum stool and gone before Robert finished the last lyric of the song, thus you did not have the customary cymbal flurry at the end.
And then that was it.... the band were done for the night...NO ENCORE!!!!
I have the DVD of the Seattle show three nights earlier on July 17 and despite what you may have heard about that show being lacklustre it was better than what I saw.
Nevertheless I am still fortunate that I got to see the band live.
Tempe would be the second to last US city that the band would ever perform in.
I sat a mere 75 feet away from the stage, excellent seats.
I just wished the band had been more into their performance

Ed Ortiz