Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers - Rolls Hall, Monmouth, Britain, 1-18-1985

This post was inspired by a post at the "Albums Back from the Dead" blog a few days ago. That blog posted a "Volume Two" to the frustratingly short "Volume One" 1984 EP by Robert Plant and the Honeydrippers, by scraping up more songs done by Plant in the same style over the years. I thought, "What a great idea!" and decided to take an even deeper dive into doing the same.

It turns out the Honeydrippers never did anything else, if you consider the group to be Plant, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Nile Rodgers, as it was on the EP. But if you consider the group to be Plant plus a rotating bunch of other people doing the same style of rockabilly and other fifties-styled music, then it turns out there's a bunch more. Some of it has used the Honeydrippers name and some hasn't, but that's mostly a technicality, since the type of music played is the main thing.

I was most surprised to discover there was exactly one concert done by the Honeydrippers in the months just after the EP came out. They used the name "the Skinnydippers" instead (probably to keep a low profile), and it was a different bunch of musicians, but what matters is the vocalist was Plant, and they covered the exact same sort of music. Their sole show was a benefit concert at a small club in the obscure town of Monmouth in Wales. (There's a video of the entire concert on YouTube - trying searching for Plant's name plus "secret gig." And by the way, whoever posted that is wrong in that the Butterfield Blues Band has nothing to do with the concert.)

I was surprised at how hard it was to find a recording of this concert, because when I did find it, I discovered that it's really good! For starters, the sound quality is excellent. It clearly is a soundboard, to the point that the audience can barely be heard between songs. The performance is excellent too, especially considering this particular band would never play before or after this. But the main attraction is the song list. Plant sings lots of songs that he's never sang in public at any other time. (The only song that doesn't fit the theme is a cover of an obscure Moby Grape song.)

There's only two minor snags with the recording. The first is the end of the song "Going Down" got abruptly cut off before the song ends. But the vast majority of the song is there. I faded the song out a short time before the cut off to make the ending less jarring. The second has to do with the performance of "Georgia on My Mind." The band started the song and made it through about two minutes before breaking down and stopping. Then the band tried again and nailed it the second time. I simply deleted the failed first attempt. Oh, and I also removed some dead air time between songs to make for a better listening experience. I kept the dialogue though, and put the longer bits on separate tracks.

By the way, there are exactly zero songs performed here that are also on the EP, even though it came out a few months earlier. I presume that's because he did most of those EP songs at lots of concerts, including all of his 1985 tour, and this concert was him having fun doing something completely different.

I plan on making more posts involving the Honeydrippers, because Plant obviously loves this kind of music and it shows that he has great fun when he sings it. Frankly, I enjoy him doing this sort of thing more than a lot of his "serious" solo career. But this is a good way to get started.

01 Move It (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
02 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
03 Jailhouse Rock (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
04 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
05 Going Down (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
06 Every Little Bit Hurts (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
07 Crosscut Saw (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
08 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
09 All Your Love [I Miss Loving] (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
10 I Need Your Loving Everyday (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
11 True Love (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
12 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
13 Georgia on My Mind (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
14 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
15 Mystery Train (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
16 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
17 Born Under a Bad Sign (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
18 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
19 Roll, Roll, Roll (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
20 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
21 The Young Ones (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
22 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
23 Save the Last Dance for Me (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
24 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
25 Can't Be So Bad (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
26 Great Balls of Fire (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
27 talk (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
28 Little Sister (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852463/RobertP_1985_HoneydripprsRollsHallMnmouthBritain__1-18-1985_atse.zip.html

To make the cover, I considered using a still from the video of the actual Rolls Hall show, but the quality was way too low to look good. So I've used a photo of Plant at a concert in Houston in 1985 instead.