Escalator to Heaven

I haven't heard it via my ears in at least a week, but it's on repeat in my head. I've known this song by heart for years. I still love it. And no, I don't think "love" is too strong a word. Nor is "rapture". If I could go back in time to just one concert that I didn't make, the Led Zeppelin 1973 Atlanta concert would probably be it. It's definitely one of the top three.
I still remember where I was the first time I heard "Stairway to Heaven". It literally stopped me in my tracks, one of a select handful of songs to do so. Eventually I returned to Earth enough to find something to sit on while the song finished. Afterward, the DJ's babble and whatever music followed seemed profane. I turned the stereo off and tried to recreate what I'd heard. I couldn't hear the song enough.
I'd been a Zep fan since the first time I heard "Immigrant Song". I almost wrecked my bicycle when that came through my transistor radio. Yeah, music had a profound effect on me. It still does. And Zep did that to me several times.
I know a lot of people don't like Stairway because "it's been played to death on the radio!" I have a better solution; I quit listening to most music radio. Oh, I wander the "dial" now and then, but 99% of music on the radio is the dregs of a tiny subset of whatever the bean counters have decided America wants. Barf.
So I still love some of my old favorites, "Stairway to Heaven" included. There are times (like tonight) when it hits me like it did the first time, stopping me in my tracks, a transcendent, spiritual experience, effortlessly transporting me to an amazing place.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if there's a band you really want to go see in their prime, go see them. Find a way. I don't run into many people who say, "Man, I wish I had never gone to see Zook Spliffer Ganesh when 'Reefling the Sterm Acht' was my favorite new album!" But I know a lot of Reefling fans who still rue the decision not to go.

Still More Random Facts

By popular request or something: 8 more, more or less random facts about me that you have a reasonable chance of not knowing. Feel free to post yours! Just pick a number between 5 and 15, and post that many random facts. Or ask and I'll pick a number. Or ask someone around you. The first rule of this game is that there really aren't any!

Full disclosure: It's possible this was a Facebook post. It's possible this was not a Facebook post. After watching X-Men: Days of Future Past I realize it's possible that it both was and wasn't a Facebook post. I suspect Schrodinger's cat hates me. I hope he's not a Sentinel.

1. I like most styles of music from country to rock to metal to big band to hip hop to western swing to... but even in the genres I generally loathe (opera, pop) there are always gems I love. Caveat: If Slim Whitman is a genre, I haven't heard anything I liked.)
2. If I like a song or album, I may well just put it on repeat.[4] Earlier this week I listened to U2's "Gloria" at least a half dozen times before putting _Under a Blood Red Sky_ on repeat. I once left the same CD in my car's player for at least three months, and listened to it on my thirty to sixty minute each way, every day I worked.
3. In 1966 Aunt Betty (my Mom's sister) and her family came to visit. My teenaged cousin, Steve, had a 45[16] with the just released "Secret Agent Man". He played that non-stop[6] on the stereo morning to night, singing and playing his (or maybe Mom's) guitar, except when they made him stop for meals, or to watch the news or a ball game. I loved it but it drove my parents nuts. Dad claimed Steve wore out the brand new $10[2] diamond needle on the turntable.
4. Even unloaded, guns and mind-altering things don't mix. During my hippie daze, a housemate brought a couple of lovely, old family rifles back after a trip home. While I'm pretty sure we were not actually high at the time, we were still impaired as it had become a way of life. When another housemate got home, we dove behind a sofa and chair. When he came into the room looking for us we jumped up with rifles aimed at him and yelled, "BANG!" He died on the spot. Or thought he had. He was tripping, and it seriously froke him out. Stupid idea. Don't do it.
5. When I took that job as a paper boy[8] I really wanted to buy the previous route owner's Honda Cub 50 scooter, but Dad wouldn't let me. Nor would he let me get a ten speed. I ended up with Schwinn's[11] beefiest road bike, a single speed, with heavy duty baskets front and back. The baskets turned out to be a lifesaver, especially on Sundays when the papers were huge. The baskets would have looked stupid on a ten speed... but man was that bike a pig to get up some of those Augusta hills! On the other hand, my legs were in *great* shape after a few weeks.
6. A friend with a route and I threw parts of our routes together. One of us had James Brown's[12] grandmother[13] as a customer[14]. We went down a gravel driveway past a covered stoop; the paper had to be exactly in the middle of the doormat or our manager would get a complaint, and the paper's attitude was that the customer was always right and the paper boy wrong-- even if the customer said they wanted to maul the paper boy for fun. Then we continued down the gravel drive, around a sharp corner, and out into a busy street. We did this at top speed, sliding the bikes like dirt bike pros, because this house included the biggest German shepherd I have ever seen. He loved to hide in bushes and attack. He hated boys on bicycles. I once (LONG after I was no longer a paper boy) fantasized that I should have let the dog bite me and sued; I'd have been set for life. But in reality the dog would likely have devoured me and the Schwinn. And the extra papers. There would ha ve been no evidence.
7. My twin[15] brother Jon and I shared an apartment for a few months before Sharon and the kids were able to move to Austin. We were really into slingshots, BB guns, the predecessors to AirSoft, etc. We spent hours in the back yard shooting, starting with cans and working our way down to empty CO2 cartridges (the size of my middle finger) at ~20 feet. We got really good. When it was rainy we set up an indoor BB gun shooting range in the hallway. When I get one of my BB guns fixed, I am thinking indoor range again.
8. As a geek and long time software engineer, it annoys me that an "8" next to a ")" turns into a smiley face in browsers. It also delights me.[1] It also annoys me that it does this in browsers but not in apps. That does not delight me.

NOTES [1] I was putting Easter eggs in things before we called them that. [3]
[2] Per the government's inflation calculator, today (2014-06-05) that would be $72.29.
[3] Yes, I sometimes number these as I add them, not in order of appearance.[5][7]
[4] See #3.
[5] Why, no, I don't get confused about these. Why?
[6] You did read #2, right?
[7] If you are reading these, raise your hand.
[8] In a previous "random facts" post; go read it after this one, if you haven't![9]
[9] Or else![10]
[10] Or else what? I have no idea. Or else you won't?
[11] Which my friends who had discovered lightweight, Italian, racing bikes called a "Schwine".
[12] Yes, that James Brown!
[13] Hopefully I didn't tell this story before. If so, let me know and I will throw in a bonus fact.
[14] We never saw the lady. Or Mr. Brown. Just the dog, and once, a housekeeper. She shook something at us because the paper was an inch or two off center, but at least she didn't call the paper.
[15] Twins born to different sets of parents in different cities in different years, but so what? It's what's inside the head and heart that counts. There, we're twins.
[16] That's a record, a thing with music on it, not a pistol!

In Which Musician and Teen Win Over Geek

During an interview on KUT this morning, one of the members of Mother Falcon mentioned that each of them had grown up having "a different relationship with Radiohead's OK Computer album".

My geeky side immediately froke out. "You can't have a relationship with an album, for crying out loud!"

My musician, however, just went, "Yes!"

They immediately got into an argument. My inner teen joined up with the musician; the geek eventually gave up and wandered off in search of an algorithm or chemistry set, irritated but knowing deep in his heart the other two were right.

I think he gave up was when he remembered the night last weekend when they were all three in concert (in every way possible) on djembe with two other people , one playing cello, and one playing melodic percussion on guitar with chopsticks. Each of us was in one sense doing our own thing, yet we were all working together. It was pretty phenomenal.

 

I remember having relationships with albums growing up. It still happens, though seldom as intensely as when I was a teenager. It's been a while since I sat with my ear plastered to a stereo, so completely lost in a new song or album that the house could have burned down around me and I might never have noticed.

But it sometimes happens when I'm making music. I'll take that.

 

Mother Falcon seems to be in that space in between the worlds where all things are possible. I think they still have their relationships with OK Computer as well as with their (string and voice versions) of the songs. Yes, strings.

They're going to perform the entire album on cello, violin and so forth (there might be horns and stuff, too). And vocals, of course.

It goes down Saturday, Dec. 29, at the Scottish Rite Theater in Austin (Lavaca and 17th). I can't be there due to a prior engagement. But I bet it's awesome, and if you go, you should definitely have a relationship with the music. I bet it's a long and happy one.