Led Zeppelin "Led Zeppelin" Vinyl, LP, Album, 1969 (Atlantic)

I bought the first Led Zeppelin I think very close to the day of its original release.   My educated guess, because I have no memory of the details, I must have heard "Good Times Bad Times"

 on the FM radio, and that's a type of record I have always liked.  Over time I learned to hate Led Zeppelin.  The funny thing is I 'm a huge fan of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones' studio work of the 1960s.  I love what Jones did with Immediate recordings, as well as Herman's Hermits.  And Page's work on Dave Berry's "The Crying Game" (if that is him?) is superb.   He also played guitar on John Barry's "Goldfinger."  How great is that?  And to this day, I think his best work is when he was an overly busy studio musician.  Still, there is something about Led Zeppelin that I can't fully dismiss. 

There are a lot of practical reasons for disliking Led Zeppelin.  Their horrible behavior toward groupies and people who work in the theaters, as well as them ripping off songwriters left and right - including the great song "Dazed and Confused," which is an amazing record. Jake Holmes wrote it, and when you hear the original compared to the Zep's version, it's outrageous that Page took songwriting credit on that song.   The truth is, Led Zeppelin is more in the lines of The Cramps, with respect how they re-arrange other material to suit their aesthetic.  And Jimmy Page is a brilliant arranger.  I also suspect Jones did a lot of the arranging as well, but it seems he's pushed aside with respect to crediting his arrangement work.  Nevertheless, that's Led Zeppelin in a nutshell, and one shouldn't dwell on the negativity of the situation.

What I do like about this album is that Page and company arranged these songs in a very textural and sonically powerful presence, especially when one puts up the volume.  Led Zeppelin is not about originality, but the way they present their (or whoever wrote the damn) songs in a manner that is magical.  The band is basically a trio, plus singer, but the big sound is the drumming of John Bonham who is a great drummer, and the layers of Page's guitars.  It's a joy to closely listen to his multiple layering of guitar sounds.  Page is technically a fantastic guitar player, but his genius is that he can think and play his instrument as if it was the lead player in a Wagner or operatic piece.  There are the riffs, but his playing is very subtle as well as being over-the-top. He knows how to balance the two and make it spectacular for that song, or album.   

Robert Plant has a voice.  A really good voice, but I don't think he's a great singer. He knows how to bend the notes, and play his voice as a fellow instrument with Page's guitar, but his delivery is always flat to me.  I think now, he is a much better singer as he got older, but as a teenager, a powerful voice but with no taste.  Led Zeppelin is very much a teenager's aesthetic.  Re-listening to this album after 39 years doesn't take me back to my youth, but now, I can appreciate the way the puzzle was put together, and Jimmy Page and band were very good in making this album as a statement at the time. I like it when "You Shook Me"goes right into "Dazed and Confused" and the same goes of the blending of "You're Time is Gonna Come" into the instrumental "Black Mountain Side, " which he originally recorded for The Yardbirds.   To me, Led Zeppelin is not a great album, but a work that is very much suited to its original era.  Skillful music that is tasteful, yet never went far enough.

ABBA - "The Day Before You Came" b/w "The Day Before You Came" 7" vinyl single, Promo, 45 rpm, 1982 (Atlantic)

A song that haunts me from the very first time I've heard it.  I have always been attracted to the thought that Mr. Right or Ms. Right is just right around the corner, and by chance, they shall meet. It has a Nöel Coward approach of throwing the dice and seeing how life will come upon oneself.  The beauty of it is the passiveness of the singer, noting her day, which is very average, and something experienced every day.  Until the moment happens, and all of sudden the world changes.  Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus go into the pathos and the dreaded counting of one's existence in a day that's normal but full of dread.  An ABBA masterpiece.  

Yes - "The Yes Album" Vinyl, LP, Album, 1971 (Atlantic)

Taft High School.  That should be the title of "The Yes Album."  I never owned this album due that every student at Taft High School had a copy of this record.   I kind of liked it that I was the 'only' person on that campus who didn't have a Yes album, especially "The Yes Album."  Overall my teenage life got better in the year 1971.  I loathe my Junior High School, but I have very few complaints about Taft.  The fact that I was fundamentally a C- student throughout the three years there, yet my social life was total straight A's.  The girls were pretty, the guys intriguing, and to base one's whole day on lunchtime at Taft was my primary goal on a daily basis.   So in that sense, I was a total success.  Still, I avoided "The Yes Album" like the plague. 

It wasn't until the year 2017 that I realized that I'm a snob.  If a great percentage of the population likes something, I'll hate it.  Clearly, as a teenager, Yes (the band)  was a major part of the machinery of teenage life.  All five members of Yes (at the time) were extremely great musicians, so it was the first fling of a well-tuned and proper recording artist that one can respect for their skills.   The thing was, I never cared for skilled musicians at the time.  I was more impressed with the imagery of a band or artist than how will they put together a song.  

Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (bass), Bill Bruford (drums), Jon Anderson (vocals) and Tony Kaye (keyboards).   One can swear that all of them had proper music lessons as children.  The truth is, when one wasn't looking, I secretly admired their songs when it was played on the FM radio.   I liked "All Good People."   Even now, not listening to the album, I can hear the whole track in my mind.  It's the perfect pop ditty that stays in one's head, even when they are taking a hot bath, and your brain is just floating on top of the oiled bath water.   

A few months ago I found this album at Rockaway Records (in Silver Lake) for $4.99.  I couldn't resist buying the album.  The odd thing is that I didn't even pause and think about it, I just took it to the counter and bought "The Yes Album."  I would like to think that it was nostalgia that made me buy it, but more like an unfinished business with my past.   I was curious what a 63-year-old man would think, and how different was it from a 15-year-old teenager's ears.   To my surprise, the album doesn't suck.   For sure, the price of admission is worth it just for "Starship Trooper."  A song in three separate parts, each written by a member of the band.  The classic part is "Würm" by guitarist Steve Howe. It's a proper guitar rave-up that is catchy but also builds in intensity.   That one piece alone makes this album 'almost' essential, and it would be if I weren't such a snob. 

"Yours is No Disgrace" and "I've Seen All Good People" is pretty great as well.  But to be honest, I consistently play "Würm" over and over again.  It's almost a meditative piece of work for me.  I like to write to the music when it's background noise.  The other interesting thing about "The Yes Album" is that I feel it's the foundation for David Bowie's "Station to Station" album.  Tony Kaye who played with Yes, also worked with Bowie on "Station to Station."  Musically not the same, but the format of the album with its many themes and only having six songs strikes me as a work that influenced "Station to Station."  At this point and time, I have no interest in checking out the rest of Yes' catalog.  I think "The Yes Album" is good enough.  

Barbara Lewis - "Baby, I'm Yours" b/w "I Say Love" 45 rpm vinyl single, 1965 (Atlantic Records)

I first heard this song as a child, and I was living in Beverly Glenn, which is a canyon area between Sunset Blvd and the San Fernando Valley.   Songs tend to place one in a specific era or location.  Barbara Lewis' "Baby, I'm Yours" places me in the spring time and even now listening to the record, I can feel the sunshine of that time in March 1965.  We were months away from a natural disaster (our house was destroyed in a mudslide that December), but before that life was good for me.  "Baby I'm Yours" represent the good times for me before the change took its place which to this day still have an affect on me. 

"Baby, I'm Yours" is a song written by Van McCoy, who had hits in the disco era in the 1970s.  Both the A and B-Side was directed by Bert Berns, which is different from the credit "An Ollie McLaughlin Production."  Does that mean Berns was in the studio or was it McLaughlin, or both?  It sounds like a film, and perhaps to Berns and McLaughlin, it was cinematic than aural  - or, it's a work that gives one a visual.  If that's the case, it works for me, because very few songs bring me to my childhood in such a vivid manner.   I can remember the heat and the chocolate Bosco drinks that our neighbor made for us kids on the block.  The romantic yearning of "Baby, I'm Yours" captured my young and curious heart.  I didn't know love, but I did notice the pretty girls I went to school with at Nora Sterry Elementary School.   This is the theme song of that time and place.  Perhaps my personal soundtrack of a memory.