Questionable Effort

Not my best writing effort ever, but I did spend time on it while bored at work so better to post it than just let it die. For your reading enjoyment...

It's not that uncommon to like Led Zeppelin, although some of my friends that I made and associated with would say that during my freshman year of high school I had an unhealthy obsession with the band.

I'm not sure exactly what tipped me off into purchasing "Houses of the Holy" in October of 1994 (see, I still remember that). My old man had a couple of Zeppelin records but they never generated any interest in me when I was a five-year old kid listening to KISS, Steely Dan and Bruce Springsteen. Before this time in my life I couldn't even hum "Stairway to Heaven."

So when I was at Best Buy with my Mom some fall Sunday afternoon, I decided that I would buy a CD with naked kids on the cover. My Mom of course knew what it was, she grew up in the seventies after all. No concern her child was forging an unhealthy interest in pedophilia.

It was one of those "I'm feeling adventurous" type days, even though buying an album from this band was anything but. You just have to keep in my that during the fall of 1994 I was reading Spin (still good back then) and listening to bands like Guided By Voices, Built to Spill and early Liz Phair. I listened to every band that magazine said was cool. I even still listened to leftover Seattle grunge. So for me, this was about as against the grain as you could possibly get because I'd already gone through my metal phase. Imagine my shock and awe at the bombast that came through my stereo speakers as "The Song Remains the Same" filled my room and house. I had a big stereo as a teen.

My interest in Zeppelin intersected with the release of "No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded." Remember that? It was a VH1 Special, an album and eventually a VHS and DVD. It was the year before they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The revival was on. The channel that debuted the special played Zeppelin videos and their concert film "The Song Remains the Same" over and over again. I taped it all, watched it and re-watched it a hundred times. I made others dine on my cornucopia of Zeppelin.

I played bass guitar before this epiphany of musical infatuation. Not until this band got under my skin did I get serious about learning and studying a craft and an instrument. Not long after I purchased my first Fender Stratocaster. Sure it was a Squire, but I was plugged in and poised to rock.

I bought books and brought them to school. I was ridiculed among friends for being so into a band that was seemingly only as cool as their parents. When someone asked me about Zeppelin, I didn't know if they were serious or if I was being mocked for the 78^th time that particular day.

The music to me was a gateway into music that I had never though of opening myself up to. Specifically, the blues. It's a sad affair when white kids from England have to compose songs on the backs of true pioneers, only to repackage it into a spiffy and pristine package suitable for middle America. But I needed a way in and I got it. The rest was a musical hodge podge of different world music as well. While I don't listen to too much international (or "ethnic") music I can still recognize different influences now. So, it helped.

From the fall of 1994 until the spring of 1995 if you saw me with headphones, you probably could guess I was spinning "Presence" or even "In Through the Out Door." Oh, I also had a four CD box set. I asked for it for Christmas because it had two songs that were not in release at the time. Remember, this predated internet downloading.

I've no doubt sealed my fanhood in the preceding. But I'm not here to tell how big of a Led Zeppelin fan that I was, or still am. What am I trying to say? I'm not even completely sure. The only thing that I know is that most people, teenage boys specifically, go through a Zeppelin phase. It's not hard to understand, it's a myriad of musical influences mashed together into something very pleasing. It's very sexual music, dumb as it is for me to type that even though I've seen it written about 376 times regarding the band. Anyway, teenage boys are all about the sex, or at least the sex they imagine in the palm of their hands.

Saying that, liking Zeppelin is boiled down by some as being for the tasteless and the musically inept. Most of the time, I may be inclined to agree. Really, you say? The songs are all over classic rock radio twenty-four hours a day. They've even lost some of their mystique by selling songs to Cadillac and letting the "Immigrant Song" be apart of Shrek the Third. I about puked when I saw and heard in a trailer that it was in the movie. Fuck Shrek, I hate those movies.

Even a few days ago at their reunion concert for Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertergun, videos surfaced immediately on YouTube and everywhere else. I wanted to see the show, but you couldn't film a Zeppelin concert back in the day without being practically beat up and consumed by the band's manager, Peter Grant.

Even with the shine off of Zep a bit, the reunion sparked something with me and I did something I didn't think I'd do. I was content to let my Zeppelin CD's sit on the shelf for the rest of my life, only listening to them very occasionally. However, last night I stayed up until 1:30 in the morning (lame that it's late now, I know) ripping every album of theirs into my iTunes.

Despite growing up (whatever that means), my musical tastes evolving or the music becoming dated, which it hasn't, I still can sit here at work and write while listening to "Four Sticks." They may not be trendy or hip or cutting edge, but when a band is good they're just good. If you don't get what I'm trying to say then you probably don't like the band in the first place, probably never will. And that's fine. I'm not going to go on and on about the layers of songwriting and production value that went into these albums that made them great compositions. Like my point in this entry. You either get it, or you don't. Either way is fine with me. I've gotten to the age where I don't care what you think. I've been there for awhile, but it bears repeating I believe.

If Zeppelin decides to play in the States, I know I'm going to be there. Not so much to say that "hey, at least I got to see them before they died." No, it's more to go and see a band that still knows what a rock and roll band is supposed to do and still do it well.