I Remember That: Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven

"...and she's buuuuyyyying the Stairway To Heaven."

-The final words to Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven, a song that could leave any young teen positively beaten in spirit or in a sheer state of ecstasy-

There are many days when I just check out. My mind wanders and ponders the many trivial points of this vast universe like a biker on an open country road.  These thoughts flow coming and going. These thoughts are general reflections of things from my past or that generally amuse me and they will come to you by way of these irregular posts.

Why not?  Reflections on those by-gone days had been simmering for some time.



You know my affection for 80s music.  I love George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice, Volume I [1990], a masterpiece of music composition really.  It was an eighties album to kick off the 1990s, but George I'm still waiting for that second volume already.  Any day would be good my friend.

Of course, there are recordings you would prefer never to hear again.  You know the expression, "If I never hear that song again it will be too soon"?  There's definitely truth in it.  Other times I guess we just need a break - a really long break.





Well I swear once upon a time during the seemingly endless days of high school dances there was always one song to rear its ugly head at the closing of the night.  After a seemingly sweaty few hours of navigating the dance floor, spending time amongst bleacher creatures and generally trying hard not to get noticed by some but still noticed by others, the inevitable end would come.



The close of the night was reserved by the DJ at least in my town and those towns in the general area for Led Zeppelin [1968-1980; 9 albums - what's an album?].  Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven was absolutely positively automatic.  It was of course an endurance test, because the eight minute plus song Stairway To Heaven was an epic.  That ballad was a guarantee.  It was the essential ending to any dance.  Depending on who you were dancing with or whether you were dancing it all and merely gazing at the girl you wanted to dance with dancing with another, it was, in essence, heaven or hell.  Those final minutes were crucial to your identity, to your mental well-being and of course to your fragile heart.  Those were the breaks.  If you were on the gym bleachers staring out at the swaying masses you were pained beyond words.  If you were with the girl of your choice you were positively liberated.  If you happened to be the choice of someone other than that girl it was a long haul of a slog fest on that dance floor.  The same held true for the girls I'm sure.  It's funny to think The Sci-Fi Fanatic either sent home the ladies happy or with marked disappointment. Oh well.  Yes, those were indeed the days.



By God as the final minutes of the dance drew upon us, desperate efforts were either made to secure a dance looking out at the prospects like a wolf to sheep or those less fortunate might have devoted energies to convince the DJ to play anything but Stairway To Heaven.  Despite protests for a three to four minute ballad gem, the DJ spun his records like a red-faced Mephistopheles.  He looked out and he knew the torture he would inflict on some and the heaven on others.  When the opening notes of Led Zeppelin wistfully drifted across the basketball court or dining room's makeshift dance arena, it was all but secured that the night was indeed over.



Sweating profusely, quickly collecting data looking around the room a quick decision was required.  Bodies closed in spaces like celestial heavens.  The pressure was on.  And when the first notes ticked out of those speakers you were about to enter the eight minute fray of Led Zeppelin either alone or with someone, perhaps anyone.  If a decision, good or bad, wasn't made you were assured a bleacher spot along with the nameless rabble of broken hearts strewn across metal stairs like the piles of sweaters and coats that adorned them. You were on the benches, the sidelines or you were dancing softly and sweetly for eight long minutes, a veritable epic in a young man's life of pure, unadulterated passion.  Body to body.  Heat to heat.  It was Stairway To Heaven and the DJ guaranteed that song each and every dance.  And each and every dance those inevitable final moments came like a rousing crescendo of action from the latest Die Hard flick.  You swayed back and forth as Robert Plant and Jimmy Page elevated the tempo beyond ballad as you ascended those stairs.  There was nothing gentle about those moments but they certainly reflected the abnormal pacing of the heartbeat within. It was a rush of sheer joy and pain that every young man should have experienced.  But when those notes lit up the gym like a stately ball, I swear the eyes rolled to the back of the head and I said to myself at least once, "son of a bitch, Stairway To freakin' Heaven again!"  It was quite the trial in the 1970s and 1980s to be sure.  Judging by the images I found, I'm not alone in sharing this feeling.



Nevertheless, today, I actually really love Stairway To Heaven.  What an amazing song.  Without the weight of peer groups and the opposite sex throbbing around me in fuzzy sweaters, I can enjoy that song again.  My son and I have been loading up the blue ghost for trips with everything from Filter and Smashing Pumpkins to Soundgarden and AC/DC to, well, would you look at that, Led Zeppelin.  I plopped down $1.29 for Stairway to Heaven on iTunes along with Black Dog, Misty Mountain Hop, Immigrant Song, Whole Lotta Love, All My Love, Fool In The Rain and some Big Log solo stuff from Robert Plant.



By God I never thought I would have wanted to hear Stairway To bloody Heaven again.  But you know what that song is amazing and I appreciate it in a way I never thought I would have.  And Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin are absa-freakin'-fantastic anyway. To this day, the band ranks among the musical elite.  No one can touch them.

I Remember That: Big Wheels

"Ever since I was a little kid I have always thought I could run faster than the wind."

-Corey Hart, In Your Soul-

My brother texted me this picture.  A whole lot of memories came flooding back.  Of course, it was more like the 1970s, but you get the idea.



When we were kids we had Big Wheels.  They were made of pure, unadulterated, hard-molded plastic.  They went as fast as your little feet would take them by spinning that front wheel into next week.  How many times did your feet hit the ground spinning that wheel furiously?  How many times did it hurt?

My brother and I commonly road our big wheels up and down the driveway and we would fly into a generally quiet street of oncoming traffic that our driveway spilled out into.  So you damn well better have paid attention.  As we reached maximum velocity at the bottom of the driveway we reached down for the plastic break and yanked that bastard up like our lives depended on it.  Sometimes it did. It created a spin out into patches of dirt like you wouldn't imagine.  Sandy gravel from the previous winter's sand trucks would kick up dust and we would revel in the glory of our driveway runs.  It seemed like we had sandboxes in the street there was so much sand.  We immediately grabbed our big wheel with two hands on the front bars sometimes with tassels and with our legs off to the side running them back up the driveway feverishly for the next ill-fated run.



My father had a red Chevrolet - a real classic.  That car by the way was so loved by my father that there was literally a hole in the passenger side floor.  You could literally see that pavement rolling by whenever we drove on the highway.  Was that safe?  I suspect not, but hell it was fun watching that roadway go by.  Were we seat belted in the back seat?  Doesn't sound like it does it.

On our Big Wheels our tiny little foreheads crashed into the bumper of that red car like melons more times than I could count.  A good many tears were shed, but that never deterred us.  It was right back to it.  In fact, we went down that driveway so many times that the Big Wheels with their hard round back two tires began to wear from the break and friction of the pavement.  It got so bad it was to the point where segments of the plastic tires were becoming flattened.  Obviously attempting maximum speed with a tire that was no longer entirely rounded presented its challenges, but hell we persisted and drove those semi-square mothers into the ground.



We played hard as kids.  There were no knee pads.  There were no helmets.  My God we could have used them too.  I remember when we moved up to bikes.  We built dirt mounds and proceeded to thrust at them full velocity for jumps.  We used the classic clothes pin trick on the bike spokes to generate fake motor sounds.  It felt like we were sailing into the sky.  It was unbridled freedom.  We quickly discovered the joys of those fleeting moments were met with an occasional crash landing, a mangled bike, serious scrapes and bruising and a whole boat load of pain.  When you landed perfect though it was bloody magic capped off with a rousing YEAAAHHH!

We had this little bridge that linked my neighborhood to the local elementary school over a little pond, which sadly closed down a few years ago.  The hills down the bridge and up the other side were really steep.  At the bottom where each hill met somehow managed to build up an excessive amount of sand and gravel.  We would ride down that hill so fast and normally plow through that sand with the typical still one attains by becoming one with their circular steeds.  One day, I remember we went down that hill and one of us lost control through the sand and crashed. It was no ordinary crash.  It was bad.  The rest followed suit.  My arm was badly covered with bloody raspberries it was like pain you don't know.  Imagine someone taking your arm and scraping it on pavement for several feet.  Torture I tell you.  I'm sure many of you had similar experiences.



And through it all, through all these nightmarish crashes, somehow our melons survived the carnage helmet-free.  I don't know how, but they did.  Vegetable boxes were much safer.

Boy we had a crazy ass neighborhood too.  We had these older bullies in the neighborhood that would stop you when you were on your bikes far from home and issue you a fake citation with their little pads and pencils.  We were young so we often just stood there with our bikes like we had to.  What for I have no idea, but the whole situation was very uncomfortable.  Who the hell are these guys?  You can't give out a citation to a bike rider?  But it was crazy ass stuff.  I was normally just making my way back from the local 7-Eleven with a bag of Wonder Bread.  You know, the ones with the Star Wars cards.

Getting back to the Big Wheels though, my brother and I moved up from those wooden vegetable boxes we turned into imaginary spaceships for a time.  Those vegetable boxes were colorful and fun and yielded great rewards from the imagination.  But, along came the Big Wheels and one step closer to freedom. Yes, we got wheels and we were actually moving.  We were no longer pretending to move while my father washed his red car with the hole in the passenger side floor. We had wheels and they were big ones like the big ones we seemed to have as kids!

Unfortunately, one day, once again, everything changed.  My brother got the Green Machine.  Son of a bitch!  Man, I remember that.

I Remember That

"Nothing sounds as good as... I remember that.  Like a bolt out from the blue, did you feel it too?  I remember that."

-Prefab Sprout-

As everyone who visits here knows, I'm a bit of a music fan.

Well, I've been toying with a new, shorter post format for some ideas or, at least, for looking back at past events that I remember from my life.  Each and every post need not be a feast.  As a chef, you can get knackered from preparing and cooking such large meals week after week.

There is a lovely, beautiful, little number from Prefab Sprout and singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon called I Remember That from the recording From Langley Park To Memphis [1988].  I've chosen to use that inspired little song as the title to my ongoing thread of memories.

Some of these reflections will lend themselves not necessarily to science fiction but more likely pop culture in general and how these things have affected me and will no doubt be infused with the humor and absurdity of life we all experience.   So, please indulge me with my occasional short shots on life I've dubbed simply I Remember That. Stay tuned and we'll see where it takes me.  We don't call it Musings for nothing.