The History of Rock – Brierley Hill Civic Hall.

The History of Rock is a celebration of rock music covering the past 55 or so years with songs from the late 1960’s performed by a group of well-heeled musicians, some of whom will be recognised from other bands.

Much of the two-part setlist is dedicated to one of Britain’s best known rock bands – this tour is a Celebration of Led Zeppelin, a monster of a band formed in London in 1968.

As well as songs by Led Zeppelin there are plenty more well known rock anthems to sing along to in the set.

The band is made up of Rasmus Bom Andersen (Diamond Head) on vocals, Claire Genoud (Glytsh, BACK:N:BLACK) on guitar, Katie Patterson on drums, Jonny Coote on 2^nd guitar & Pete Gavin on bass.

The first half gets under way with a Guns & Roses classic (actually all the songs are classics so this is the only time I’ll use that term) – Welcome to the Jungle and that was followed by what is probably the outsider from the evening, Hammer to Fall by Queen. After this it was just one classic (oops) after another. Throughout the first set Claire Genoud played out of her skin – I’d almost forgotten how good a guitarist she is. Her efforts were interspersed with fine contributions from Jonny Coote. Both of these were well matched by Katie Patterson and Pete Gavin supplying the back beat and low notes respectively, while all four set up Rasmus Bom Andersen to deliver some fine, and varied, vocals. It didn’t take the audience long to join in in places and as the set wore on one or two even got to their feet.

The second half got going with Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. Machine Head, released in 1972, was one of my favourite Deep Purple albums and I bought it as soon as it came out. If you were there and heard someone singing (I use that term loosely) “We all came out to Montreux . . .” in a toneless fashion – that was me!

Songs from The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Ram Jam came next before the tribute to Led Zeppelin got under way with Good Times, Bad Times from Led Zeppelin I, another of those albums I bought around the time of its release. From this point onwards it was Led Zeppelin all the way with well-known classic (damn it!) songs from the first 4 albums culminating with the encore of Whole Lotta Love.

With so many well-known songs it’s difficult not to sing along sometimes and highlighting the music of Led Zeppelin was a high point but with so many fantastic bands from around the world contributing to rock history this is a project that should run and run. I’ll be interested to see which band gets celebrated next!