Xeroxing Zeppelin

**KINGDOM COME. “Kingdom Come.” Polydor. Since former Led Zeppelin belter Robert Plant keeps blasting Whitesnake and other bands for appropriating the Zeppelin/Plant sound (in one interview, he refers to Whitesnake’s David Coverdale as “Cover version “), you’ve got to wonder what kind of verbal salvo he’ll fire at Kingdom Come--the most blatant of the bunch.

Many radio listeners have already been exposed to these Rich Littles of rock through “Get It On,” the best Led Zeppelin song Zeppelin never recorded. The single is a propulsive mid-tempo romp that assumes an absolutely spooky similarity to Zep when singer Lenny Wolf lets loose his soaring dead-ringer-for-Plant vocals.

There’s lots more where that comes from. And not just crunchers. You want the floating, atmospheric side of Zeppelin? We got “What Love Can Be” and “Hideaway.” The more acoustic side? Try “Loving You,” in which chief songwriter Wolf screeches, “It’s such a heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy load”--just like you-know-who.

At several other points, Wolf similarly repeats words or phrases and engages in all manner of Plant-like vocal histrionics. It would be easier to cut Wolf some slack on this dubious duplication if he couldn’t help it, if he just naturally resembled the ex-Zep vocalist. But if you heard the way Wolf sounded in his previous band, Stone Fury, it’s hard to believe he didn’t purposefully play up the Plant impression here.

Kind of a shameless sham. With all the air play and attendant buzz generated by the single, though, Kingdom Come just might pull it off-- once . But given the lunk-headed lyrics (lots of “moon/June”-type rhymes and lines like “I want to be the tissue for your tears”) and the fact that this really is just Xeroxing Zeppelin, it’ll be tough to sell this approach a second time.