Context – lazy Monday videogames

Led Zeppelin is the background music of my life, which is to say I wildly underappreciated their capacity for rock until about 3 years ago or so.  Being primarily a Led Zeppelin I-IV listener myself, I recognize the titles of a few of these songs (and certainly the cover art), but I don’t have a concrete memory of giving these an earnest listen.  Not that I gave Houses of the Holy an earnest listen as I crushed my opponents in League of Legends this morning.  I’ve found you don’t always crush your opponents, but when you do it’s a grand ol’ time.

This album is pretty solid, and seems to be a good stick by which to measure all other albums of theirs as I go through them.  Not as good as IV, but better than I, this album will be used to determine if another of theirs makes it into a more stable rotation.

This album was a bit of a cop-out, since there isn’t much to say about Led Zeppelin that hasn’t been said before: if you like them you probably know this album and are pulling your hair out, “What do you mean you haven’t heard ‘The Rain Song’? ‘No Quarter’, man! ‘No Quarter'”!; if you don’t like Led Zeppelin there’s not much I can say to convince you to listen.  How I got over my haterade was I got into soul and R&B music from the sixties, which put Robert Plant’s voice into a sort of context for me.  I also started playing the guitar in earnest, and it’s hard to deny Jimmy Page’s skills.  There are other members of the band too, who would be better remembered if they weren’t sharing the stage with these two monsters.

So what’s next then? The Beatles’ Abbey Road (spoiler alert, it’s great).  I mean I’ll probably get around to them as well, sooner or later.  Maybe by then I’ll have a more nuanced method of articulating my feelings; maybe I’ll find more inspiration somewhere and won’t be able to shut up about them.  More on that as it develops.