Listen To This Eddie is a weekly column that examines the important people and events in the classic rock canon and how they continue to impact the world of popular music.

Robert Plant has a complicated relationship with his onetime band Led Zeppelin. On the one hand, he certainly has an immense amount of pride for the songs that he created with John Bonham, John Paul Jones, and Jimmy Page, and there’s definitely a warm place in his heart for some of the good times they shared on and off the road during their ascent in the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s.

On the other hand, however, the group has proven to be an albatross weighted around his neck as he’s pushed deeper and deeper into an increasingly rewarding solo career. It’s something that guaranteed to get brought up in nearly every media interview and every fan interaction. With each fresh project that Plant rolls out into the world, it’s always consumed, talked about, and critiqued underneath a looming, balloon-shaped shadow. It’d be enough to drive anyone mad.

As a recording artist, Plant has done just about all he can to distance himself from his past as the frontman of that band. Whether that means digging deep into American roots music with collaborators like Alison Krauss for the Grammy Award-winning record Raising Sand (snagged the elusive Album Of The Year honor), or pursuing different British, Celtic and Arabic flavors on the last two records with his group the Sensational Space Shifters, Lullaby… And The Ceaseless Roar, and last year’s phenomenal Carry Fire. The only place it seems that Plant is really comfortable embracing his role as the self-proclaimed “Golden God” his Zeppelin acolytes continue to pin on him is during his live shows.

I’ve seen Plant twice in 2018 and both occasions were some of the best gigs I’ve caught in years. The first time was back in February at the Riviera Theater in Chicago, a delightfully dusty and ornate venue that evokes the vibe of Bill Graham’s vaunted ‘60s venue, The Fillmore East. The second occasion was just a couple of weeks ago in the heart of the city at the decidedly more modern Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. At both shows, Plant re-affirmed my opinion that he’s the greatest singer in rock and roll history, filling the atmosphere in each space with his iconic voice, a little deeper in register than it once was perhaps, but no less powerful or engrossing. His innate understanding of dynamics and control defy comprehension. He oozes charisma, dashing off jokes in between song, while cradling and sashaying his mic stand like a newfound lover. He also shocked me with his willfulness to dig deep into the Zeppelin catalog.

The first show at the Riviera leaned more heavily on the Carry Fire material, which makes sense considering the record was still fresh off the shelf, and the relatively intimate 2,500 seat venue was made up of the true die-hards. Songs like “The May Queen,” and especially the North African-tinged title-track took on new dimensions that widened eyeballs in the boisterous crowd. Still, when Plant elected to slip a couple of Zeppelin tracks into the set, you could feel a noticeable uptick in enthusiasm amongst everyone in the room.

That night he performed six Zeppelin tracks. Two hewed toward a more folksy, pastoral sound (“That’s The Way” and “Gallows Pole”), one felt like more of a surprising lark (“Misty Mountain Hop”), another was a bombastic, set-stealing tour de force (“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”), and that all culminated in an encore mashup of “Bring It On Home” and “Whole Lotta Love.” The most common phrase heard in the flabbergasted crowd exiting the Riviera into the chilly night air was “Holy sh*t!”