The price of loving Led Zeppelin

What happened

The surviving members of Led Zeppelin are reuniting Monday night for a long-awaited, one-time performance in London to honor the late Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records who launched Led Zeppelin in the United States. Guitarist Jimmy Page, 63, will be joined by John Paul Jones, 61, and singer Robert Plant, 61, along with drummer Jason Bonham, who is the son of the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. (AP in The Boston Globe, free registration)

What the commentators said

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For the clueless, said The Canadian Press via Google, “this is big—really big.” Millions entered an online lottery for a chance to buy one of 14,000 tickets “at $250 a pop before the system crashed.” And that was the bargain of a lifetime—“one rich Scot paid $170,000 for a pair of tickets put up for auction.”

The show will be well worth it, said a London Telegraph blog. “Led Zeppelin is no ordinary band.” Its four musicians were all “technically brilliant.” Everyone “lucky enough to hold tickets” will be treated to a reminder of why this band was “responsible for perhaps the quintessential tableau of Seventies rock.”

If anyone is disappointed by this concert, said Joanna Corrigan, also in the Telegraph, it will likely be fans with deep pockets who shelled out thousands of dollars for tickets from scalpers. Only fans with a special code obtained in the ballot, photo ID, and the credit card that paid for the tickets will get in. The band warned it was playing hardball with scalpers—so fans who paid a fortune but get turned away “have only themselves to blame.”