Did that show really happen?  Has it really been five years since that cold, cloudy London evening when I took the Tube from the Queensway station north of Hyde Park to Bond Street, changed from the Central Line to the Jubilee, rode some 40 minutes until the North Greenwich station where I disembarked for what would be the greatest and most surreal concert I've ever seen?

Yep.

Led Zeppelin hadn't played a full, two-hour-plus set in 27 years had been rehearsing like mad for this one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund that had attracted more than 20 million requests for tickets. Yet somehow this kid from Murray, Kentucky now working for KLOS-Los Angeles snared one--thanks to my friend Jeff Albright, who was unable to attend once the concert was rescheduled after Jimmy Page's finger injury.

Surreal doesn't begin to describe watching a band I hadn't seen since the 1975 Physical Graffiti tour and would probably never see again.  With the recent Celebration Day DVD & CD releases of the concert, everyone can see what the select few of us got to witness five years ago.  No band this big ever faced greater odds to leave a one-last-show legacy this tremendous. To this day, I look at these 2007 artifacts and shake my head in disbelief that the concert not only happened, but that I somehow weaseled my way in to witness it.  Funny how no concert since then has quite measured up--or could.