Top 19 -- Led Zeppelin: House of the Holy

On Facebook I was asked to list my top ten all-time albums that most influenced me. Since I can't list anything without a huge explanation, this is it. Not only that but I'm writing about my Top 19 instead of my Top 10. 

This is what I wrote about this album on Facebook: "I was first introduced to this album in the late summer/early fall of 1990 when one of my friends would pick me up for soccer practice. We would listen to "Over the Hills and Far Away" (still my favorite Zep son) and then he'd flip the tape to "D'yer M'ker". After those two songs I was hooked. This album perfectly captures the melancholy and wistfulness of those days: the receding warmth of the late summer sun combined with the early sun down. Despite their bombast of more well-known albums and songs, this album encapsulates both the band and this time in my life perfectly, and that's what Zeppelin means to me. "

Are there better Led Zeppelin albums? Possibly. Actually definitely. There's some filler on Houses of the Holy. But you never forget your first. This is true with a lot of things, but in this case, it's especially true with Led Zeppelin albums. 

When I was 16-years-old, I knew of Zep. How could I not? Every single dance since seventh grade ended with "Stairway to Heaven". But I wasn't into the band. Why? Probably because they were an older band who long ago broke up and I had no time for that. I may have been poisoned by the Robert Plant solo stuff--those songs seemed lame except for "Tall Cool One", which had Zep riffs and callbacks, though I was unaware of what those callbacks were about. But also because the band seemed like a monolith, there were nine studio albums, which at the time seemed like a lot. Who had the time to listen to nine albums and who had the money to buy nine albums?

But one day, my friend Jamie showed up in his car blasting "D'yer M'ker" and it sounded interesting. And then he flipped the tape and played "Over the Hills" and like I said above, I was pretty much hooked. They're both really good tunes. We listened to these songs over and over and over again for a solid two months.

Today if OtHaFA comes on, I can close my eyes and picture us in his white Honda CRX bombing through Amesbury, chances are we were late to practice, a gaggle of friends in this car, talking about nothing, dreading the two hours of exercise we were about to embark on, feeling the warmth of the sun cascade over my face, pounding Jolt cola and my ears filled with these tunes. 

It was a good time to be alive. 

I was lucky. Around this time, Jimmy Page jumped back into the studios and for the first time remastered the best Zeppelin songs over a four-disc box set. I got the slimmed down version ($60 for four tapes? I'm not a millionaire!) and that helped me wind on down the Led Zeppelin road. But I never would have started on that path if it wasn't for Jamie Morrill, his Honda CRX and the Amesbury High School soccer team. 

Confessions of a Sports Bigamist

I was watching the Celtics play the Miami Heat on Sunday and my wife Aly asked, “Since when do you care about the Celtics?” And I didn’t have a real answer for her, I said something along the lines that I like this particular team as a whole, the personalities of the players and how well they’re playing. But I didn’t really have a strong answer. This question came about a month or so after she made the observation that “I care about football more than I think that I do.”

And it hit me, she’s right. I do care about the Celtics* (and the Bruins for that matter) and I do care more about football (especially the Patriots) than I even admitted to myself. I was a bit shocked about this realization more than I should have been, which is odd because since high school part of my identity has been one of a sports geek. I was a fair athlete (ok, maybe bad is the word), but I could talk sports with the best of them. But during the last ten years or so, that perception had changed; I considered myself a baseball fan first and foremost and the others fell into line. In fact, my mantra was: You can only have one favorite team. And for me, that favorite team was undoubtedly the Boston Red Sox.

* When I was in high school I hated the Celtics. Just hated them. I hated their style of play, I hated their boring-ass players, I thought that Larry Bird was overrated (I know, I know; the indiscretions of youth) and I hated that they were everything that the Chicago Bulls weren’t. I loved the Bulls and Michael Jordan, they were the new NBA of high flying, basketball dunking awesomeness. In a “kill your idols” sort of way, I reveled in every Celtics loss and cursed every Celtics victory. To me, Red Auerbach was an old fool that needed to go far away from the NBA.

But something happened in the almost 20 years that I graduated from good old Amesbury High School. The Celtics stunk, I mean really bottomed out and it wasn’t fun to kick a dead dog. I began to feel a bit bad about hating them so much and began to cheer a bit for the underdog. As they got a bit better and better, it became more fun to watch a Celtics game. The 2008 NBA Postseason is among the most fun I’ve had as a sports fan and last year’s was a lot of fun (until the last game).

The point that I was making is that I still believe that you can only have one favorite team, but I’ve widened my scope to believe that you can have a handful of other teams that you care about just as much. And for me those teams are the other three Boston teams.

I should have seen this coming; a few years ago, when the Pats lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl, I tried to blow it off as “not really a big deal” because New England had won three other Super Bowls and they’d get there again. I told Aly that while it sucked the Pats lost, I would be more upset if the Red Sox did something similar. But that was a brave face and the Super Bowl XLII loss gnawed at my gut the entire off-season and when Tom Brady went down with a season-ending injury just one quarter into the next season, it really hit me as to what the Patriots lost that day in Arizona.

From there it seemed like things changed. When the Patriots lost to the Jets (THE FUCKING JETS!) in January, I was as angry as I’ve been about a professional team in some time. When the Celtics lost to the Lakers in the Finals, I was really bummed out. When the Bruins choked away a three-games-to-zero lead against the Flyers, I was apocalyptic*.

* Again, this wouldn’t have been possible even five years ago because I hated the Bruins and wanted them to lose in the most excruciating, painful ways imagined. And the reason was because of their “thrifty” (read: cheap-ass) owner Jeremy Jacobs. He always seemed to be happy that the Bruins would make a couple of dollars for him and would never dump the money back into the team. One summer he opened the purse strings and signed Zedeno Charra and Mark Savard and I began to come back to the Bruins. That’s really all I wanted, just some show that he cared about the team. I know, I’m a sap.

And you know what? I feel pretty good about the outlet of emotion that I can express about the home town teams. Am I obsessed with the other teams? No, not as much as the Red Sox; but it’s good to have options and care about teams when the Sox aren’t in season.