Well it hasn’t rained today, at least not while I’ve been awake and I’ve been awake since about 8:30. It’s been a good run, since it’s now 5:34.
I’m listening to a playlist I’ve made on iTunes for Led Zeppelin, labeled Eat @ Blimpies. It’s quite humid out and listening to Robert Plant sing seems most apt.
I have a memory of this song from a few years ago, driving down to Sandy Hook with Stine, Annemarie and Earl. It was overcast in Hoboken but I think I got Annemarie and Stine into going anyway applying my wisdom in saying that it just might be different weather down there.
It rained a bit on and off as we were driving and The Rain Song was playing as we drove through various streets in search of the eventual blue sky.
Now Fool in the Rain comes on. I can play the basic bass line on this song. A small accomplishment.
It’s from In Through the Out Door. Which is dominated by the most underrated John Paul Jones since Jimmy Page was strung out most of the time.
You can tell since the guitar isn’t the main instrument. Nice Latin break in the middle eight.
I was never much of a Led Zeppelin fan, in fact I loathed them. I held to the punk ethos on that one. In grammar school when most of my classmates were discovering music, it was the ‘bad’ kids that listened to Zeppelin.
The ones who discovered sex and drugs and rock and roll before I did. I liked whatever was on the Top 40 then. If it was on Music Radio 77WABC I generally liked it.
Of course Elton was always there. Bowie was an alien to me, and some of the ‘bad’ kids got into him as well.
A lot of the music that I heard that wasn’t on the radio was from my brothers and sister. Frank played Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes a lot for a while. Annemarie played Somethings Happening by Peter Frampton and Brian was undergoing some Brain Salad Surgery from Emerson Lake and Palmer.
And on top of that was the music my parents liked which was mainly Big Band stuff from the 1940’s.
Right now, Trampled Underfoot from Physical Graffiti is playing. That is a funky groove. One of the handful of songs that I like from that double album.
Bonham is going nuts on the drums. I played this once when I was DJ’ing at a bar on Washington Street in the last century.
No, not McSwells.
Slapani’s which is now something else. I was playing a lot of chill out music, some quiet jams, some light hip hop, when some townie comes up to me and asks me to play some white music.
‘But music has no color man’ is what I said.
He gave that look that matched the horn hanging around his neck. I dutifully played some white music, Zeppelin, which was almost entirely derived from black music, the Blues.
As John Paul Jones’ clavinet was percolating, Joe Neckbone strikes poses and plays terrible air guitar.
One of my last DJ gigs I believe. It certainly wasn’t fun anymore.
