Review: Which One's Pink and Led Zepagain at Vault350

So on Saturday night I drove to Long Beach to check out this pair of tribute bands, covering Led Zeppelin (Led Zepagain) and Pink Floyd (Which One's Pink), respectively.

The Vault350 club is a brand-new facility in the middle of downtown Long Beach. It is actually a very nice area. I had never been there at night, and I had not been near downtown Long Beach in years. When I got to the door I was surprised at the amount of people that were there. I got there at around 8:30 and the club was already quite packed. It is about the size of a Key Club or House of Blues, and I was not really expecting it to be that full just for a couple of cover bands.
Even more surprising, the crowd was very young, with a lot of kids and other teenagers attending, even though the music was purely classic rock material that I didn't think would attract such a crowd.

When I first entered the club, they were playing the "Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii" DVD on the giant screens. Nice. It was a nice prelude for the show, but for a minute it made me wonder whether I had missed the Led Zepagain opening band, as the doors had opened at 7pm.

But I was proved wrong when the show finally started at 9pm. Led Zepagain came on stage, and started playing a couple of classic Led Zep songs. Their rendition was actually quite amazing. Especially their singer did a very convincing impersonation of Robert Plant, reproducing his postures and voice amazingly accurately. All band members were dressed like the original Led Zeppelin members from 20 years ago, and they did pull a very solid performance of all of the material they played. Since it was the 30th anniversary of the release of the "Led Zeppelin IV" album (to the day!), they played it sequentially, in its entirety. Their show ran for about an hour and a half, and while I wasn't too close to the stage, I was already quite deafened by their loud set. ;-)

At the intermission, I moved closer to the stage so that I would get a better view of the Pink Floyd cover. I secured a spot at the very forefront. When the curtain went off again for Which One's Pink, I was literally hugging the stage for their whole performance.

They started with their full performance of the legendary "The Wall" double-album, to celebrate the anniversary of its release 25 years ago. Man, was it a good month for the anniversaries of great albums. The stage had a huge brick wall set up in the background, made from cardboard boxes. It also appeared that the guitarist from the previous band (Steve Zukowsky), Led Zepagain, was also a member of Which is Pink (they had two guitarists).

At first it was a bit odd as the lead members of the band seemed so young, especially the lead singer / bass player who was taking the place of Roger Waters. However it quickly appeared that they were all very talented, and pulled an amazing and very faithful performance of this legendary album. It really made me realize that it was one of these few perfect albums, where every single song on it was great! To aid them in the task of performing this epic album, they add a few backup singers (including a few teenage girls doing backup vocals), and a couple of guys doing the other non-singing parts. All in all, the end result was very impressive and I had a great time watching this. At the end of the album, they tore down the mock wall they had set up on the stage.


After they finished performing the two discs worth of material from the Wall, they went on and performed more classic Pink Floyd songs : Pigs on the Wing, Dogs, Money, Time, Wish you were here, Brain Damage / Eclipse. Adding almost a full hour of music!

The show ended near 1:20am, and they had played almost two and a half hours of great music to a packed audience. It must have been even harder for guitarist Steve Zukowsky, as he had been playing in Led Zepagain right before and ended up playing for 4 hours straight this evening.

I was lucky to be so close to the stage, so I was able to snag the printed set list that was taped on the ground in front of me, before they closed the curtain. You know you are in for a treat when the set list for the show takes two pages! I did take a few pictures of the band as well. It looked like the show was being filmed, so it may end up on DVD or something in the future.


So I was very glad I went. It was a great show and ended up being better than I expected. From hearing the reaction of the audience as I walked out, it seems like I was far from being alone in thinking that. They also mentioned that they would be playing again in Downtown LA this coming Friday. I doubt I would go see them again so soon, but who knows...

Hopefully the Musical Box show on December 1st will be lots of fun as well. Everybody seems to agree that they are amazing to watch.