Measuring A Summer's Day I Only Find It Slips Away To Grey

Feeling a bit glum tonight so I'm listening to some old friends, Led Zeppelin. Or as me and my teenage mates would have simply said, Zep!

 

 

It's hard to remember a time when I didn't listen to Zep. After the goldrush of childhood and toys in the Sixties, Music was my next love and Rock was fused into my DNA bout age 12 and like many of my generation who were teenagers in the 1970's I considered Zep to be the best that Heavy Rock had to offer. I loved and still love many other bands from that era: Budgie, Uriah Heep, PFM, Judas Priest, Yes, Neil Young, Free and Rush but Zep were in a class of their own. They were defiantly anti-pop and never appeared on Top of the Tops I don't think, which is ironic considering that the show chose Whole Lotta Love as their title music!

 

 

Even The Old Grey Whistle Test, the prog alternative for longhairs like me, played old black and white Felix The Cat cartoons as 'videos' when Zep stuff was being played. Somehow they sat perfectly together and I can still see jittery monochrome cartoon characters twitching back and forth to the jerky beat of Trampled Under Foot as if they were made for each other!

 

 

The mystery of Zep just added to their Gods of Rock status. They were largely an album band, a phenomenon peculiar to that decade, avoiding singles at all costs, instead concentrating the band's talents and the fans' excitement on new albums, which were often either gatefold like Houses of the Holy or had moving parts like Led Zep III. I can still remember the frisson of pleasure I felt when I turned the dial of pictures in that LP sleeve and lined up the particular face of a girl in a particular hole in the cover! Teenage bliss and something I still like to do when I get the LP out.

 

 

When I started 'playing' guitar around 1971, like many of my mates, I began as a clumsy strummer, my tongue sticking out as I desperately tried to play the riff to Smoke on The Water on one string, the universal initiation of the adolescent axe army courtesy of one Ritchie Blackmore of Purple [that's Deep Purple to anyone under 50!].

 

 

However the goal of all fender virgins back then was to master chords. Not just any chords but those sacred combinations that form the opening of Tangerine, Zep's sublimest of odes to love. Elegantly simple yet quintessentially rock, Jimmy P's chords and Mister Plant's voice conjure up the fragrance of early Seventies summers and the search for a long haired girl wearing patchouli. I learnt how to play Tangerine on a 12-string EKO before finding my mojo proper in various bands, the best of which was Sirius along will fellow members George, Boyley and Raff, travellers all on the road to Silbury Hill.

 

 

As for Tangerine, I could probably give it a good go nowadays but sadly my 12-string is long gone, left forgotten on a nature reserve, where I lived in 1980. My electric guitars are a forlorn sight, collecting dust in the loft like fading kings. My love of rock is strong however, as strong as it ever was and a bout of Zep, Budgie, Free and Yes is guaranteed to lift my spirits and even just for fifteen minutes, morph me back into that passionate young hippy spirit it was a pleasure to be!

 

 

I feel better already!

 

 

For a taste or a reminder of the pleasures of Zep, here's a very small stick of their hard and soft rock courtesy of fellow Zepsters on You Tube. Enjoy!

 

 

1. Tangerine

2. Achille's Last Stand

3. Rain Song

4. No Quarter

 

For Encore: Kashmir

Feel free to infuse Moonbase Central with your own favourite music or bands. All styles welcomed.