I've got a new obsession: 12 Tone. It's a YouTube channel where a guy - who knows a whole lot more about music than I do - breaks down iconic songs. He tells us all just why they're so iconic by focusing on the melodic structure, instrumentation, and production in short videos accompanied by hand-drawn cartoons. It's a good channel.
But, in one of those confluences that might be just another example of a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, I found the 12 Tone episode on Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven right around the same time that Kirk from Strong Songs did a full one-hour episode on the same song. Both analysts come to the same conclusions - the song rocks because it starts slow, builds, repeats the melody in different ways, and then thunders home with new ideas that expand and build on the previously established musical themes. I'll be honest, some of the jargon went over my head, but I trust their judgment.
Mainly though, both the video and the podcast just made me remember how much I like Led Zeppelin. In the late 80s, music labels discovered they could re-sell a bunch of music to people by selling them on the new format. To do so, they took a bunch of albums by a band or artist, packed them into a box set, and said, "Hey, look, it's on cassette now so you can play it in your car!" And that's how I ended up with a bunch of classic music - by stealing the box set tapes out of my dad's truck.
But, here's the thing: I played those tapes so much I got to the point where I just didn't want or need to ever hear them again. Remember that scene in Wayne's World where Wayne and the gang are at the guitar store and Wayne starts playing "Stairway to Heaven?" Yeah, that was too real. Everyone I knew with a guitar would start trying to play that intro the second you mentioned anything to do with Zep. We all did. And we were all so sick of that song that when the store clerk pointed to the sign that said, "No Stairway..." We thought it was pretty on point.
At the same time, Wayne's World came out in 1992, right about the same time I started working at my local college radio station. The station had a very impressive music library, heavy on 90s alt-rock and 70s hard rock LPs, including all nine Led Zeppelin records. Back when I had first gotten Dad's tapes, I had zeroed in Led Zeppelin 4 (or untitled, for all you purists) as my favorite. After all, that's where you found Stairway, Black Dog, and Going to California. But I just couldn't play Stairway anymore, man.
So, with all this in mind, imagine how nice it was to hear Stairway to Heaven again. I don't think I had listened to the whole song since Heart's performance at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors Led Zeppelin. And that was...pretty damn good. There was a full string section and the late John Bonham's son, Jason, sat in on drums. But even that was eight years ago.
After listening and watching, I went deep into my music collection and got out Stairway and I listened to the whole thing, all nine minutes. It was like re-visiting an old friend; the first line of Stairway has been stuck in my head for a couple of weeks now. It twists the old idiom: there's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold.
It's made me wonder (ooh, it makes me wonder) what other gems I had played too much in my youth are worth re-visiting. I've been spending a lot of my music listening time discovering and listening to things that had passed me by, trying to re-wire some of the more decrepit connections in my brain by feeding it new inputs, but I think it's time to go back into the vault and dig up all the glittery old tracks and find out which ones are still gold.
Definition(s):
From Cambridge Dictionary:
All that glitters is not gold: said about something that seems to be good on the surface, but might not be when you look at it more closely
From Collins-Cobuild:
All that glitters is not gold: said to mean that someone or something may not be as good or as valuable as they first appear
Origin(s):
From Wikipedia:
"All that glitters is not gold" is an aphorism stating that not everything that looks precious or true turns out to be so. This can be applied to just about any experience in life.
While early expressions of the idea are known from at least the 12th century, the current saying is derived from a 16th-century line by William Shakespeare.
Notable Events of 1971:
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All That Glitters
If I’m being honest, Led Zeppelin is not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the phrase “all that glitters.” No, it’s actually this book:
That big white ball in that background? That’s the ship All That Glitters and it’s the setting for most of the antics of this weird and unique little science-fiction comedy.
Illegal Aliens, written by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio, debuted in 1989 and I devoured it immediately. I had a vague notion of who Foglio was from his comics work (he would later go on to create Girl Genius, one of the best comics on the web right now) and got sucked in by the cover. I’ve since read the book *checks notes* 478 times. Okay, more like six or seven, but, still, I’ve read it a lot.
This is really apropos of nothing save that I have very fond memories of this book and encourage everyone to go find a copy. And, if you know of any that manage to capture the same humor and solid action as this one, let me know.
Next time: Checkmate. That's it. Stay strong, stay curious. Learn something.