“Free trip to Norway,” read the email subject line. That got my attention. So did frostbite and snowbanks downstairs in the open-air train station at the Oslo airport in February three months later.
“Arctic Circle,” pronounced my father when first informed of Norwegian hospitality. Top of the world, ma! If I ever harbored designs to the Norse Pole it’s courtesy of Led Zeppelin.
Now being accosted by a gang of music thugs in the back of a school bus in the 7th or 8th grade and bullied towards some sort of blood pledge to Led Zeppelin didn’t exactly foster my fealty to the UK’s other fab four. Luckily, my deflowering had gone down several years earlier with a new vinyl copy of Led Zeppelin IV. They had me at the guitar propeller crank that turns over “Black Dog,” though “Rock and Roll” cedes literal embodiment to no namesake. “D’yer Mak’er,” forever first time, mortgaged Houses of the Holy next.
My first year of high school brought 1979’s In Through the Out Door, “In the Evening,” “Fool in the Rain,” and “All of My Love” triangulating radio. On the vinyl’s inner sleeve, the just-add-water colors really worked, “Hot Dog.” The following year, I was in class the days alcohol overdoses killed both AC/DC live wire Bon Scott (2.19.80) and Led Zeppelin wingman John Bonham (9.25.80). I was doing my math homework the night John Lennon was assasinated (12.8.80). I blame Ronald Reagan for the massacre.
My last year of high school brought Zeppelin’s Coda, perfectly sequenced treasure to this day. Closing drag race “Wearing and Tearing” crippled me for life as the ultimate In Through the Outtake. Like its exit of origin, the song was recorded at Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. What would albums be without liner notes to memorize while tattooing your ears? (mp3s.) Forever after, Polar Studios lodged a glacial imagination tweak. In college, almost two entire years were pledged to the Zeppalogue, from its first note to the last. “We come from the land of the ice and snow,” opening war cry of Led Zeppelin III ’s “Immigrant Song,” always hailed Polar Studios in my matrix. Rock the arctic top.
Standing in Oslo’s Viking Ships Museum, “Immigrant Song” pounds ancient metal memory at 20 knots a clip on the two vessels’ spiral geyser bows, four conquering Zeppeliners in flaxen locks and van dyke or blackened beard and mane bristling in the shrieking wind. “On we sweep with threshing oar, our only goal will be the western shore.”
Exactly 10 days later, when the Sword’s Trivett Wingo chooses Led Zeppelin III as the first, second – no, third – landmark platter in the Chronicle’s “An Album Saved My Life Tonight” series (thank you MOJO), I tumble off my tavern stool. What are the odds?
And last week, as the tale goes to press, Pink Skull’s 12-inch vinyl single teaser, “Gonzo’s Cointreau,” arrives unsolicited in the mail, an advance of Philly DJ Julian Grefe’s forthcoming LP included, Zeppelin 3. Heavens to Odin, what’s the meaning of this!?
By all rights, the single should’ve been pressed on bubble gum pink vinyl since the first track discos “Bubblelog Aftermath,” laser sound effects, Miami blackout, the whole nine yards. Dance partner “Cry for Meee” disappears back into the rave, so it’s topsider “Gonzo’s Cointreau” – on the platter’s literal B-side – spritzing an electro raspberry up some young thing’s grunt on the pulsing, neon, four-on-the-floor with maximum thrust.
Zeppelin 3 kick-off “Cointreau” then free falls into 65 minutes of Icy Demons and frog orchestras (“1850”), sticky, spider-web beats on My Tiny Pyramids (“Get Inside”), and hip-hop-attitudinal Ghostface Killah, Sprankrock, and Amanda Blank verse (“Crambodia”). “Crambodia,” a genre in the making, giving way to the Japanese psych rock of “Ssilt” and China basin pixels of “Unicorn Harpoon.” Star Trekkian bass rush “Itchy Woman,” who also parlez’s French, slips “U.g.uo.aaaahhhhh” into your rum fizz, while “El Topo” rides you out into the nightclubs of Indonesia. Closer “Take Me Out Riding,” featuring Mirah, rickshaws you out of Saigon. If Zeppelin 3 resembles Led Zeppelin III in any manner whatsoever, it’s a panoply approach to textures and sound design. Valhalla for the mix tape set.
Swapping virtual burns with Swordsmith Trivett Wingo, here’s my one-disc alternate to Jimmy Page’s close encountered Mothership last winter. Primarily a headphone melt for a levee’s worth of SXSW editing, it’s half After the Burnout disc (three Coda riffs) and half never burnout personal DNA mutation using Zeppelin IV as a framing device. Flames of Albion, recorded at Auslo Studios:
Black Dog
Rock & Roll
Poor Tom
D’Yer Mak’er
The Rover
In My Time of Dying
Achilles Last Stand
Misty Mountain Hop
Night Flight
Walter’s Walk
In The Evening
Wearing and Tearing
When the Levee Breaks
This article appears in March 28 • 2008.
