Page, Black Crowes Turn Back the Clock

Heavy, man. Georgia blues-rock band the Black Crowes and former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page played classic riffs for two hours at the Greek Theatre on Monday, and the audience dug it like a rock dream come true.

Cynics might have called it merely an expert display by the world’s greatest bar band, but that would be discounting the enthusiasm and bliss driving this limited-edition pairing of the Crowes, whose retro-minded music helped repopularize bluesy hard rock in the ‘90s, and the English guitar god, who helped define the genre.

Echoing the recent London club date that inspired their six-show U.S. mini-tour (including a scheduled second night at the Greek on Tuesday), the seven musicians performed a few Crowes numbers, some vintage blues songs and a whole lotta Zeppelin.

Belting, wailing and soul-screaming once or twice, singer Chris Robinson gleefully rode the waves of thunderous bounce ‘n’ grind, dancing and vamping like a little kid having the time of his life.

A low-key legend, Page sometimes delivered his familiar leads from the fringe of the sextet, but he moved among the players with easy camaraderie. Having him along with guitarists Rich Robinson and Audley Freed let the Crowes achieve the full effect of Zeppelin’s layered, complex sound, as well as elegantly nuance their own songs.

Though such a giant nostalgic blues-rawk party could have sprawled into infinity, the pace moved from surprisingly swift to tastefully expansive.

If the throbbing crunch of it all ultimately proved tedious for the least faithful, the crowd reveled as time rolled backward, obliterating punk, hip-hop, techno and all the other pop movements that were supposed to kill this stuff.

Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay, indeed.