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Showing posts with label Led Zeppelin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Led Zeppelin. Show all posts

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Taking Responsibility

Well, I purchased Led Zeppelin's least, and I mean least by millions of listener's favorite's albums recently at the Juke Box Shop on Anspach Blvd in Brussels, which specializes in psychedelic, soul, and "song's." The latter I have no idea what they mean, but they should also have classic rock on that list on their take-home plastic bag. Anyone need a good translator, copywriter???

That aside, this LP is incredible, and so sadly undervalued.

The cover art, and the fact that this was the turning and turning off point for so many people for Zeppelin is interesting. Similar to the saga of Rush and the album Signals, things just were never the same in the marriage of the fans and the band.

However, it is often the dustbins of our relationships that we find what is most interesting, and unfortunately for many, the least likely to be talked about unless tossed out there on the floor  with an extended dust pan in one hand and broom in the other and go, "what the hell is that?" And, either you can sweep it under the rug, or you can deal with it and actually talk it through. A novel idea for the modern world and an idea for a novel in the modern world.

Outside of the pool that I swam (and regularly swim under the airborne toxic event across the river) at on the Linkeroever of Antwerp today, as I was unlocking my bike, I was listening to a commentary about a book that I need to look up about the ultimate emergence of technology into the world of a "world of its own" and not on a philosophical plane, but simply, it is coming to a theater near you, just that theater is your life, and what will we do when that day happens, and it will. Not in a James Cameron way (though that is highly plausible), but in a discreet, simply, suddenly Susan 3.0 kind of way.  I personally have a computer story about such an event that I hope does not manifest itself as it gives me the creeps to think about, making the Matrix and Terminator pale in comparison, trust me, though we are closer and closer to that image that I have in line more with Lev Stanislaus or Daniel Denett. Spoiler alert, I won't spoil the alert, but when I write it and post it, don't say I didn't tell you so...

Regardless, conversations about such things can make us uncomfortable. Conversations on a daily basis are usually so mundane and banal as to not even phase us, nor to turn our heads, nor such to make us wonder. However, my personal philosophy is that at least once a day you should have, initiate or engage in a conversation that does make you uncomfortable at some level. That is how I used to teach classes, whether yoga or in the actual "classroom." I have thousands of student witnesses if you think this was not a "presence" in my classes. We talked about very uncomfortable things, and not as shock value. Anyone can shock. Boring. Can you Engage? When I taught Yoga, we got into uncomfortable positions and had to find the Integrity of the Pose. However, most teachers don't engage, they just ask the students to do the heavy lifting, sit back, drink a coffee and wonder how they ever did it. I was never one of those teachers.

That is wrong on so many levels. If you engage, you must also engage.

If you are willing to ask another, whether a friend, student, lover, son, mother, father, or complete stranger to engage in a state of "Presence," then, it is Nobody's fault by your/my/his/her/their/our own and it is one that you better be able to follow through with with words, but more importantly, with a compassionate, though guided and if necessary, critiquing ear.

Know your audience. Sometimes, the audience is at fault sometimes the one who delivers. With "Presence," I find nothing wrong with the message, nor the delivery. It just didn't work with many. So, whose fault is it? Nobody's but mine. Take responsibility people.

I Triple-Dog Dare you not to watch this in its entirety. Look at Robert Plant's gaze at about 2:13, he is wondering what conversation he has engaged, that is my wager.


Saturday, June 9, 2012

Killer Kitties

I spent a few hours today in Brussels, perusing the vinyl shops that are to be found in this mosaic city that no one can really put a finger on about liking or not. Regardless, I got some real gems today that I am sure I will be writing about in the near future.

However, for this post, it is what it is not that is what it is that is what I am interested in, namely the paradox of image and sound. The disjunct between perception and reality on one level and the reality of perception on the other.

I did purchase Led Zeppelin's "Presence" today at the Juke Box Shop on Anspach Blvd. in Brussels, but the video that was in my mind with LZ could not be more different, or could it?

"Presence" was the turning point, down turn or turn off point for legions of Zeppelin fans around the globe. It just didn't make sense as to how the creators of a stairway leading to the heavens of rock or the physical graffiti of a generation could create this? It was a conundrum and enigma for many, enough so to signal the prophetic Swan Song fall of Icarus from scaling the heights of the heavens with his waxen wings of glorified human ego. The higher they fly, the faster they fall...

The dynamics of "Presence" notwithstanding, one of the most "serious" sounding tracks from Zeppelin could arguably be the "Immigrant Song" from Led Zeppelin III. It deals with the tragically-laced history of the Norseman Vikings coming southwards, leaving a trail of pillage and rapacious destruction in their wake. The second-most "serious" song might be "Kashmir" from Physical Graffiti, though incorrectly cited by Damone in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" as the second side of Led Zeppelin IV (also known as Zoso or "Symbols" on which it is not).

However, there is a video out there that makes me smile, irrespective of the source, and the "seriousness" of the content, kittens from Valhalla just make me laugh out loud. Sometimes taking the unfamiliar, filtered through the familiar and then re-filtered through the unfamiliar to the mundane can have quite an effect that is something more than mockery and can just be good fun, such as the Viking Kittens.