MusicHead

What follows is a longer version of a Thread I made on August 8, 2024.

I’ve always loved music. Like most of us, music was always around. Growing up in the 1980s and 90s it was mostly whatever was playing on the radio in the car. The first song I remember telling family was my favorite and to turn up on the radio was Taco’s “Putting on the Ritz” (1982). The first song in which I was able to identify the artist AND the name of the song was “Material Girl” by Madonna (1984). These two set the stage for my love of 80’s pop that continues to this day and includes the likes of Tears for Fears, Billy Ocean, Whitney Houston, Hall & Oats, Culture Club, and The Bangles, along with a myriad of others.

I remember sharing headphones with my sister in the back of the van. We’d have the radio on her Walkman and she’d hand me her earpiece when she didn’t like a song. Something I remember her doing quite a lot. I loved almost everything. She was far more discerning, being three years older. This was all tracks from the local St. Louis Top 40 station in the mid-to-late 80’s. It must have been a mix of straight pop, rock, and hair bands. I don’t remember listening to a dedicated genre station until later. We would have been getting Poison, Bon Jovi, and Def Leopard along with our regular pop, too. I remember that she liked Def Leopard and had HYSTERIA (1987) on cassette. For this reason alone, in my brain Def Leopard has always been “girl rock” and I’ve never been able to enjoy them. (Yes, I know this is a stupid reason, but I truly still can’t stand that music.)

The 80’s turned to 90’s in rural Missouri and almost everyone around me seemed to be listening to the country music resurgence thanks to the likes of Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn, etc. Pop music was around but not emphasized. I was no different. Not only did I listen to those artists, but I remember also liking Alan Jackson, Joe Diffie, and of course, George Strait. It was during this period that the car radio was dedicated to WIL (92.3), our local country station. Country music was everywhere. Since I was an adolescent at the time, I didn’t have the cultural wherewithal to go against the grain, yet, I went along with the culture.

Then, one day I was rooting around under the basement stairs and found a case I hadn’t seen before. I pulled it out and opened it up. BEHOLD it was a stash of my father’s old cassette tapes. I didn’t recognize any of the artists, but I knew that dad was a rock-n-roller who played drums in his teenage band and still played guitar on his 12-string. I took the case and went up to my room and directly to my tiny “boom box” with its cassette player.

I don’t remember all that was in there, but there was a Jim Croce, probably PHOTOGRAPHS & MEMORIES, but I’m not sure. There was also Three Dog Night’s SEVEN SEPARATE FOOLS, a The Guess Who greatest hits, and Led Zeppelin II. Eventually, I must have tried each of them regardless of what it was. These were cassettes from the 1970’s and most had deteriorated to the point of being unplayable. The Led Zeppelin one stood out to me because it was an artist whose name I was vaguely familiar with.

Like I said earlier, I was mostly listening to the contemporary country music of the time. I think if you’d asked me my favorite song that day it probably would have been Brooks & Dunn’s “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” By this time, I was in Boy Scouts and had some knowledge of hair rock and Aerosmith from the older boys in the troop, but rock & roll was not a major influence, even though I liked a lot of the the stuff the older boys played.

I took that Led Zeppelin tape that had called out to me and placed it in my tape deck, and pressed PLAY. That slow fade in of the hard driving rhythm of “Whole Lotta Love” hit my ears for the first time. So completely different from anything I had ever heard before. There was a rawness and a sexiness (although, I couldn’t have identified “sexy” at that age) to this sound that unlocked a whole new psychic sensation. Then, Robert Plant comes in with his androgynous pure rock & roll voice and the whole band pulsing something out that Poison, Def Leopard, and Motley Crue couldn’t dream of producing on their best days.

The world turned color for the first time. My life was changed for the better forever. No longer was I chained to what was popular in the moment. No longer did my musical tastes have to be what was safe, or pretty, or nice. I could like something visceral and that was just mine. And really for the first time I knew that there was a whole universe of music in the world that existed before I was born and was just out there waiting for me to discover it.

I wonder if it had been a different Zeppelin tune, would it have been as effective? Was the “Whole Lotta Love” fade-in something that made it an easy transition? If the the record had be IV instead of II, would the sudden kickoff of “Black Dog” had turned me off? We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter. But I made a connection that day with my father, music, and myself that has and will endure for my lifetime.