15. & 16. "Remasters" by Led Zeppelin (1990)

I missed yesterday and there are two disks in this album so today you get a
>>> DOUBLE-SHOT of the ZEP <<<<

I grew up in the 70s but I came to Led Zeppelin very late. When I was young I was a church boy and, except for a few radio hits, I always associated them with druggies and Satan worshippers. Really, I'm not kidding. Now I realize their genius and appreciate their ground-breaking style, but I'm not going to wax poetic about the good old days and how they were the greatest, nobody can play like Page, blah blah blah.

What I am going to tell you about is what I remember about some friends and acquaintances who were Zeppelin fans. Like Timmy M., a friend of mine in high school who insisted that all his friends call him "Zofo", for the inscription on their 4th album (the one with "Stairway" on it). Of course, we didn't know for sure if it was "ZOFO" or "ZOSO", but Tim already had the nickname, so we just called him "Zo".

Then there was this kid I met at basketball camp when I was about 15. He was older, more worldly and had gone to school in Europe. He tried to convince me that the Led Zeppelin song playing on his tape player was his band.

My friend Don and I used to ride around in his dad's Chrysler (sometimes Melissa and Linda would go with us). The car only had an 8-track player and some how or another the only decent album we had to listen to (in 1980) was "In Through the Out Door" (which many consider their weakest). Don loved to point out the little place in the keyboard solo in "All My Love" where he accidentally hits two keys at once. He also loved to demonstrate the concept of what people do when they "go shufflin' downtown" (from "Fool in the Rain").

Finally there's my friend Marty, who was a manager at IBM when I first started working there in 1988. He wasn't my manager, so we got to be friends. I remember talking to him in his office one day and he told me that his favorite band was Led Zeppelin, and he had one of their concert posters on his office wall. I couldn't believe it because I thought he was such a straight-laced guy. He was. He also liked Zeppelin. He died a couple of years later of some weird heart condition at about age 36. I think of him sometimes when I listen to Led Zeppelin.

So am I a big Zeppelin fan? I like them as much as the next guy. Do I like to listen to them? Yeah, I do.

"To be a rock and not to roll."

cds