The drive from Piest’any to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is less than one hour. We kill time in Piest’any at two different bowling alleys. At the first, I manage to break 100. During a second game at a second bowling alley, I sleep in the car.

The venue in Bratislava is “Sub Club.” Sub Club is aptly named; it seems to be the dungeon, or at least the former basement, of Bratislava’s most famous castle. Promoter K., a disciple of an ideology I'll call "Punk Isn’t What It Used To Be And, Even If You’re OK With That, I’m Fucking Pissed," has been booking shows for “over 25 years” and welcomes us passive-aggressively. What follows is a very thinly fictionalized version of our initial conversation:

Me: Thanks for the show.
K: I think no one will come.
Me: Oh.
K: Do you want some muffins? They’re vegan.
Me: Sure.
K: I am so happy that you have been able to come to play!
Me: We really appreciate the show.
K: Too bad it will be shit. Everything sucks these days.
Me: …
K: Do you want some vegan apple strudel?
Me: Sure. [Chewing.] This place is cool. It used to be connected to the castle?
K.: No. This castle is shit. There is a better castle in a different part of town.
Me: Oh.

Promoter K. is right—with no local band on the bill, only nine people come to the show in the freezing pseudo-basement of the famous castle in the country my band has never played in before yesterday. Still, he pays us 200 euros, and we sell about 50 euros worth of merchandise.

The next day, we visit the "better castle"—or, more accurately, the ruins—recommended by Promoter K. Devin Castle is set amid lush, green hills on a misty hillside overlooking a river. I think of the scene in the Led Zeppelin movie The Song Remains the Same where Jimmy Page (or was it Robert Plant?) rides a horse around the English moors and saves a damsel in distress.

It’s unbelievable what rock bands got away with in the 1970s. Can you imagine if Britney Spears made a movie where she rode a horse around a medieval countryside? On the other hand, I guess Britney Spears made Crossroads. But on the other hand, Crossroads was an underrated film with a compelling plot directed by Tamra Davis. But on the other hand, there were no swordfights in Crossroads, or damsels in distress—unless you count Britney herself.

An unusual announcement popped up this week on The Yardbirds’ website: “We have heard NUMEROUS rumors THAT ZepFest, WHICH IS SCHEDULED TO BE HELD at National Harbor, the weekend of May 27, 28, and 29, HAS BEEN CANCELED. HOWEVER, DESPITE OUR REPEATED REQUESTS, THE PROMOTERS HAVE FAILED TO CONFIRM OR DENY THE RUMORS.”

For months, the Yardbirds have been booked to play Zep Fest, this month’s tribute to Led Zeppelin, the legendary titans of 1970s hard rock. They received a deposit from the event’s organizers. “The band is ready and willing and able to play,” Mike Oberman, who manages the modern-day iteration of the British blues-rock band that launched the careers of guitar gods Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, declared earlier in the week. The Yardbirds were simply waiting for their airfare.

But no one will be flying the band to the D.C. area on Memorial Day weekend. Originally scheduled to take place at National Harbor and the complex’s Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Zep Fest is now off. Not that anyone’s told Oberman or his clients. “WE AWAIT WORD FROM THE ZEPFEST PROMOTERS,” reads the note on the band’s site. “ONLY THEY CAN CONFIRM OR DENY WHETHER the rumours OF ZEPFEST’S DEMISE are TRUE OR untrue.”

The Yardbirds aren’t alone. As of Tuesday, the Gaylord hotel was still in the dark. So was MissionTix, one of the firms handling ticket sales for the festival. So was Jeff Krulik, the local documentarian—and well-established chronicler of heavy-metal fandom—who was slated to show a rough cut of a new film at Zep Fest. Krulik says he hasn’t heard from organizers in at least six weeks.

Mark Boudreau, Zep Fest’s main promoter, says fans will have their tickets refunded. As for the talent, he says he’s still spreading the bad news.

The performers have a right to be surprised. The festival had been in the works since last year. Despite a few red flags, it looked like it was still a go until this week. That’s when letters written in terse legalese reached performers—at least some of them. Everyone else found out via the notice on Zep Fest’s website. Though tickets will be refunded, fans who bought airplane tickets to travel to the show are out of luck. MissionTix, likewise, says it may take a loss on refunds. Boudreau says he and the festival’s financiers will lose much of their investment (though he won’t say how much that is).

As with any business, new rock festivals have a high rate of failure. Witness the recently aborted DC Music Fest at Yards Park. But just like Led Zeppelin—a band whose shamanistic performances once fueled rumors of Satanism—Zep Fest’s cancellation remains mysterious. In Boudreau’s telling, the collapse wasn’t just due to the box-office problems that typically doom over-ambitious promoters. (Tickets were originally set around $300 for a three-day pass, and eventually slashed in half). As for the real culprit, Boudreau doesn’t offer much elaboration. “We’re in the midst of the shutdown of the engine with notifications and such, so it’s not something I can really get into in grave, grave detail,” he says.

Zep Fest, of course, was based on a familiar concept: a nostalgia-fueled rock festival for baby boomers with cash to spend and memories to rekindle. Like many such events—such as Abbey Road on the River, a Beatles-themed festival that took place last September at National Harbor—Boudreau’s would’ve featured tribute acts playing covers and dressing the part. But that wasn’t all: The contemporary incarnations of ’60s bands The Yardbirds (which no longer has any members named Page, Clapton, or Beck) and Vanilla Fudge (an influence on Zeppelin) were set to headline. David “Honeyboy” Edwards, a legend of the Delta blues, was booked. So were bands who were influenced by Zeppelin, like Zebra, the ’80s hard rock band once known for singles like “Tell Me What You Want” and “Who’s Behind the Door?” Speakers, like Richard Cole, once Led Zeppelin’s road manager, and Dave Lewis, a Led Zeppelin historian, were on the slate. It was a rock festival, true, but it was also a history lesson.

Though he’s cagey about certain other details, Boudreau cites a very specific number when asked how many fans he’d hoped to attract: 15,200 per day. But he admits there wasn’t a huge frenzy to attend the festival, no matter how many factors contributed to its demise. That might be the biggest lesson of Zep Fest: that short of an actual Led Zeppelin reunion—which happened in 2007 at a one-off gig, to great fanfare—people no longer care very much about “the biggest band in the world.”

—

What happens when a music festival collapses? While marquee bands like The Yardbirds and Vanilla Fudge had contracts and guaranteed deposits, members of some smaller groups say they didn’t have anything on paper, just verbal agreements. “They just didn’t live up to their part of the bargain,” says James Elliott, who manages the L.A.-based tribute band Led Zepagain. “They didn’t want to pay us.” Elliott says he agreed—verbally—to an “all-in” deal in which the band agreed to pay travel costs, provided they were paid in advance. The money was supposed to come six months ago, Elliott says; a week and a half ago, when it still hadn’t arrived, Elliott says he finally decided to pull out.

Boudreau declined to elaborate on conversations with Elliott or other bands. Asked if he had bitten off more than he could chew by booking around 50 acts, Boudreau says: “Given the circumstances, some of the acts that are less well-known, maybe they bit off more than they could chew,” he says. “Maybe they expected a big payday.”

Boudreau says a number of factors led the organizers to cancel the show. Returning to the automotive metaphor, he says: “If you have an engine and it has eight cylinders and only five are firing on time and three are only working on an intermittent basis, the car will still run…but you’re not going to win some kind of race with it.”

Some of those factors, based on conversations with Boudreau, the venues, and the ticket sellers: sales of tickets (Boudreau wouldn’t give specifics), rooms booked at the National Harbor’s flagship hotel (convention events like Boudreau’s must commit to filling a certain number of rooms in order to book the place), and the cost of airfare for talent (an attempt to broker a sponsorship deal with an airline didn’t work out, Boudreau says). Boudreau also alludes to some sort of municipal licensing snafu, but declines to offer any details.

Joe Loverde, the founder of MissionTix, a Baltimore firm, won’t say how many tickets his company sold for Zep Fest. “It wasn’t as large [a number] as the promoters had once planned,” he says.

Amie Gorrell, a spokeswoman for Gaylord, says the hotel has been in weekly contact with Boudreau since last fall. She says the event had made very few hotel-room bookings, but says Boudreau assured officials that ticket sales were strong. For such events, room bookings don’t tend to surge until the final two to three weeks before an event, Gorrell says, so the hotel wasn’t worried. And last week, a member of Boudreau’s team did a walk-through. The loss won’t be huge for Gaylord but Gorrell says she hasn’t heard from Boudreau since the festival was canceled.

Boudreau is 50 and lives in Arlington. According to a November 2009 copy of his résumé—forwarded by a group he performed some contractual work for—he has a long history in “guerilla marketing,” managing marketing tours on a contract basis for brands like Boost Mobile and Maxwell House. He’s tour-managed for musical tribute acts. In the mid-’90s, he ran the restaurant Las Cruces on 14th Street NW as well as a catering company. Last year, he was contracted as an on-site operations manager for Abbey Road on the River, which took place in September, also at Gaylord. Boudreau says he has experience planning large events, musical and otherwise, but declines to further discuss his work history.

Gaylord’s Gorrell and Rocell Viniard, National Harbor’s director of marketing, say Boudreau was vetted, and that throughout the planning stages they’d had no concerns. Like every person interviewed for this article, neither knew how Boudreau was financing the festival—some referred to a group of backers based in New York. Again, Boudreau isn’t offering any sunshine.

Asked if National Harbor would work with Boudreau again, Viniard says: “Probably not at this point.”

—

It turns out that planning a nostalgia event is hard work—just as hard as booking a roster of contemporary acts. Gary Jacob, the founder of Abbey Road on the River, started his festival in Louisville 10 years ago, and added the D.C. version in 2010. “Anything can happen at these outdoor events,” he says. “What you have to do is put systems in place…so that the only X factors are weather and what P.T. Barnum said: ‘If the people do not want to come, you can’t stop them.’” When that happens, Jacob says, you have to scale back your production.

“When we came to Washington, I cut our expectations in half from what Louisville does,” Jacob says. Last year’s local version of Abbey Road on the River had 80 bands and about 15,000 festival-goers, he says.

Zep Fest, with about 50 acts booked, was shooting for about the same attendance. The only problem: A group dressed up in Sgt. Pepper’s outfits is a much easier sell than obscure bluesmen and skiffle bands, no matter what bearing they had on Jimmy Page’s guitar solos. Especially if tickets are $300.

Boudreau, who listened to Led Zeppelin as a kid and through it eventually discovered the blues, may simply have been too much of a fan for his own good.

“I wanted people to understand Pinetop Perkins...and witness the power of Vanilla Fudge,” he says. “Nobody wanted [Zep Fest] to happen more than I did.”

Update | May 19, 11:48 a.m.: According to The Yardbirds' publicist, Zep Fest finally contacted Mike Oberman last night to let him know that the event is now off.

Local filmmaker Jeff Krulik was scheduled to screen a rough cut of his film, Led Zeppelin Played Here, at the event. When Arts Desk contacted him about it, Krulik had no idea what we were talking about.

Zep Fest's publicity firm Trifecta Team only heard about the cancellation yesterday, and publicist Zack Bolno says festival director Mark Boudreau gave him very little specific information.

The festival's Twitter feed lends a very vague clue that things weren't right as of last week. On Thursday, Zep Fest tweeted: "Some folks just like to see others fail – can't be helped, but we say Peace & Luv anyway." But Canadian Zeppelin blogger Brian Gardiner wrote yesterday that things began to smell fishy more than a week ago, when bands began canceling en masse due to the festival failing to pay up-front. Southern California-based cover act Led Zepagain dropped out a week and a half ago after waiting six months for festival organizers to pay them.

"They just didn't live up to their part of the bargain," says Led Zepagain manager James Elliott. "They didn't want to pay us." Elliot had entered the band into an "all-in" deal in which the band agreed to pay travel costs, provided they were paid in advance. They were supposed to get paid six months ago; a week and a half ago, they were still waiting. Elliott finally decided enough was enough. "And the funny thing is I was getting calls from every band" on the festival, he says. Zep Fest "had the same problem with everybody." Boudreau has not returned multiple requests for comment.

As for Krulik, he's still not sure what he's going to do. Screening at Zep Fest wasn't about the money—he had no financial arrangement with the organizers. He was excited about possibly meeting former Led Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole, who could have lent him important information for his film, which is about a Led Zeppelin show that may or may not have taken place at a recreation center in Wheaton, Md., in 1969.  But Krulik also says he hadn't spoken to Boudreau in six weeks or longer, and the festival director had not given him any details about when or where his screening was supposed to take place.

"I'm still trying to decompress and comprehend this. I'm simultaneously relieved and confused. And bummed out too," says Krulik over email. "This was originally a great opportunity, to screen for an audience who really dug the subject matter, as well as uncover more source material...But, I guess back to the drawing board now."

Robots blindly follow popular trends and thrive by reinventing the lyrical wheel, while dinosaurs are archaic fossils, too old to compete in a game dominated by brash 20-somethings.

Carl "Kokayi" Walker, a Grammy-nominated veteran of D.C. hip-hop, fits somewhere in-between. While his 20s are a little ways behind him, he damn sure isn't a dinosaur, as evidenced by his raucous stage shows in Chocolate City and beyond. It's also unwise to merely call him a rapper. Sure, Kokayi rhymes occasionally, but his vast influences reside within the shattering drum cymbals and big guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin and KISS. "Everything I do has to be innovative," Kokayi told City Paper in a recent interview.

Such is the freedom of Robots & Dinosaurs, an unconventional long-player that proves that artists—especially those in this saturated rap region — can meld genres without sounding schizophrenic. What results is an exceptional record that is easily one of the best albums of the year, and the finest recording in Kokayi's small discography.

In hip-hop, rappers not named Shawn Carter seem to lose freshness by age 40, while rockers, blues, and soul singers remain relevant well into their 60s. It's a harsh reality that rests at the heart of Robots & Dinosaurs and its candid centerpiece, the piano-laced "Obdare." (pronounced O-ba-dare). Here, Kokayi raps: "Now can I tour at 60 like the rock idol/If I still can do it, my art is still vital/But I still got questions 'bout this mic in my hand/Should I hang it up for good and just play in the band."

Sonically, Kokayi's Robots trumps his last recording—2007's Mass Instructions—with its seamless song transitions, unblemished mixes, and flair for the unorthodox. That's not to say Instructions didn't dabble in the dramatic; as songs like "DCB," "Babylon Hey Nah," and "Stress!!" were particularly magnetic. Overall though, Kokayi's last offering was more reserved, forthright, and celebratory, while Robots is a full-scale assault on the mundane. On "RoxTar," for instance, he fuses psych-rock with bouncy synths to salute D.C.'s legendary bands and others, while the club-ready "Ninety 5," featuring QN5 labelmates Substantial and Tonedeff, persists as an even-tempered trunk-rattler.

While the album is mostly upbeat, it also has a reflective side. The chilling "Nicotine," a coming-of-age tale about childhood love, is the first of two concept songs that discuss love's precursors and aftereffects. "Only," with its somber piano loop and deep bass, tackles the struggles of bachelorhood and pangs of loneliness. "I'm not so lucky wit love, yo/I been 'round a time or two before," Kokayi sings on the chorus. "Autumn Rules," produced by fellow D.C. resident Oddisee, is by far the album's most personal song, detailing Kokayi's bout with depression and thoughts of suicide. Although remarkable, Robots has one blemish in the form of "Drive," an out-of-context, midtempo, West Coast groove that stalls the album's flow.

Although Kokayi is schooled in hip-hop, he defies the standard. Instead, he's a full-fledged musician with an album stamping his extensive skill set. With Robots & Dinosaurs, the Southwest native proves that urban music is not just a game for kids—there are enough toys for everyone to play nice.

Robots & Dinosaurs is available digitally on qn5 and iTunes. Physical copies will be available Oct. 19.

*NPR lavishes much-deserved attention on Jeff Campbell, the man behind D.C.'s Hungry for Music, which supplies underprivileged kids with used instruments.

*The D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities today announced the audition schedule for the 2010-11 American Youth Chorus.

*In the Post, Jonathan Yardley goes to bat for John Waters, who (he notes) "will be pulling Social Security checks any day now, leaning back in his Barcalounger and reminiscing about the good old days when porn was really porn and dog poop was on the menu." Yardley also calls the pencil-mustachioed auteur "a greater National Treasure than 90 percent of the people who are given 'Kennedy Center Honors' each December." (Waters' autobiography, title, is out now courtesy of FSG.) For further lively reading, check out Mike Riggs' excellent interview with the man himself from this past December. For EVEN MORE LIVELINESS, enjoy the video above. It's one of Riggs' favorites!

*ALSO IN THE POST: I haven't yet heard the new record from Bettye LaVette, but it's a beautiful concept: free-handed covers of the Who, the Beatles, and Zeppelin recast over gospel-funk.  (I've only seen LaVette once—at the "We Are One" Inauguration concert—and she was of course fabulous.) In any case, Geoffrey Himes has good things to say.

*This New York Times piece about the Great & Glorious Updike Archive is good reading. It also uses the phrase "lathe-turned."

Then, shortly thereafter, there were no aisles left to dance in. VHS made the concert film less of a public event and more of an at-home-with-a-bag-of-Cheetos experience. By the time Radiohead made its stuffy tour film, Meeting People is Easy, in the late '90s, the wonder and mystique were pretty much extinguished. Then YouTube came along and the screen got smaller still. These days, the large-scale concert film genre is basically a graveyard—home to the dead (Michael Jackson, This Is It) and the undead (The Rolling Stones, Shine a Light), with the JoBros the only remaining trace of once abundant youthful vigor.

Perhaps those eerie vibes are what has drawn D.C. expats Dead Meadow to the scene. Or maybe the trio, who play bluesy psych-rock, had been spending a lot of time with Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same. Whatever the rationale, in March the band will release Three Kings, a film that's one part concert footage, one part stoner-ghosts walking around in robes, and one part bassist Steve Kille firing an Uzi at a light bulb. At least, that's what this preview suggests.

A video for the song "That Old Temple," excerpted from the film, is up after the jump

Dead Meadow "That Old Temple" from Artificial Army on Vimeo.

The all-female five-piece—after Bonnaroo, no longer a parlor trick but still an oddity—sacrifices little in its sonic parrotry: enlisting Eddie Kramer to produce its self-titled debut; treating the Zep canon essentially as sheet music, "as if it were, I don’t know, a symphony by Beethoven," guitarist Steph Paynes told the A.V. Club. The group's performances are noteworthy for the virtuosity involved; for the appropriation of cock-rock swagger; for the fact that they're, you know, all women; and because unlike Plant, lead singer Sarah McClellan never cracks on those high notes.

(She also refuses to bait the audience with annoying lines like, "Remember laughter?" Possibly because Lez refuses to play Stairway-to-You-Know-What.)

Video & deets below the jump.

Friday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m.
The State Theatre
220 N Washington St.
Washington D.C. VA 22046
703-237-0300
$17

"Heartbreaker," from the group's 2007 performance at the State Theatre

Fascinated with DC rock music history, filmmaker Jeff Krulik, best known for producing  "Heavy Metal Parking Lot," with John Heyn, will be working on a documentary in progress Saturday afternoon at the Wheaton Community Center entitled "Led Zeppelin Was Here."   Krulik (conflict of interest note-I first met when we we were young lads in Bowie, MD)  after finding out that  the then-Wheaton Youth Center featured local, national, and international rock bands at teen dances from December 1963 until the early 1970s, became especially interested in the story that Led Zeppelin performed there.  Krulik's research suggests that on January 20, 1969, the day of Richard Nixon's inauguration,  Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, et.al., made their first area appearance, at this Montgomery County location.  Krulik is inviting anyone who was there for that show to come and reminisce and show any photos or other memorabilia they may have that relates to that event.  He'd also like to hear from anyone who saw other gigs there by the likes of local acts Lawrence & the Arabians, JD and The Jesters, and The Renegades, or out-of-towners such as the Stooges, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper and others.  To bring back some of the center's charm, and entertain both those who were there years ago and those who were not, the Beatnik Flies and Ottley! will also perform.

Saturday March 7 from 12 noon to 6 p.m. (live music at around 3) for free at the Wheaton Community Center, 11711 Georgia Avenue, Wheaton, MD