Monthly Archives: April 2014

Feature Post, Influential Albums, Music

Led Zeppelin II

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Confession time: for a long time, Led Zeppelin IV just didn’t do it for me.

In the Napster days, Led Zeppelin was this name that always got tossed around as the definitive hard rock band. Knowing that “Stairway to Heaven” was their most popular song, I figured that Led Zeppelin IV was the obvious point to jump on the Led Zep bandwagon. Bad call. I went in expecting something along the lines of “Hells Bells” and ended up with songs like “Four Sticks”, and “The Battle of Evermore”. Great songs in retrospect, but at the time, I saw the album’s diversity as incoherence. Without three album’s worth of context, it just came across as an album that couldn’t decide on it’s own identity. Looking back, Led Zepplin IV is an amazing album, but at age 15, I’d decided that Led Zep just wasn’t for me.

A couple of years later, I’d finished up high school, but had no firm plans on what to do with my life. Instead of blowing a few thousand dollars on some random universty program, I made the call to do an extra year of high school. With all the advanced math and science classes under my belt, I was left with a lot of choice in that last year. Computer programming/engineering classes seemed like a safe bet, but that wouldn’t fill up an entire schedule. The time was right to get a bit more experimental with my course picks, and what high school class says free spirit more than guitar?

As much as I loved the idea of learning how to actually play the music I enjoyed, I did have some reservations. Namely, my complete lack of musical talent. Seriously, it was pretty bad.

In grade 5, my class was given the task of learning how to play the recorder. The instrument itself wasn’t all that intimidating, but reading sheet music turned out to be extremely difficult for me. After learning the first 3-note song, I was completely lost, and way behind the rest of the class. The rest of the year was spent sitting as low as possible at my desk, in an attempt to obscure my hands from the teacher’s view. From there, I’d pantomime what the other kids were doing, and pretend to blow into that stress-inducing, wannabe flute. Whenever the time came for a test, I’d transcribe the notes into a system of numbers that fit with my finger placement, and fumble through the song. After all that, I walked away with a solid “B” mark, and a healthy sense of anxiety whenever the thought of performing music popped into my head.

Fortunately, guitar class worked out much better because I ended up with an amazing teacher. He wasn’t nessecarily Ynngwie Malmsteen, but he had a real passion for his job, and patience to spare. The sound of twenty teens mangling “Sweet City Woman” never seemed to fase him one bit, and he knew we could only get better. Afterall, the spirit of rock was chaos, and we had that in spades. Best of all, by getting rid of sheet music, the barrier for entry was tossed right out the window. With guitar tabs, and transcribed chords I had a fighting chance at this whole music thing.

Throughout that year, I gained a new appreciation for dozens of artists. The Beatles, The Who, Bowie, Hendrix, Kansas….even Led Zeppelin. Songs like “Moby Dick”, and “Bring it on Home” sounded like I’d always imagined Led Zeppelin should sound. The main riffs weren’t overly complicated, but still had the ability to make you look, sound, and feel like a legit rock star if you could pull them off. As it turns out, all of the “new” Led Zeppelin songs that I was discovering came from the same album….Led Zeppelin II. Their second album, and their second chance at winning me over.

I picked up the album on my next trip to MusicWorld, and thankfully, I wasn’t let down in the slightest. While a bit less diverse than their fourth album, Led Zeppelin II delivered on that promise of being the definitive hard rock experience from intro to outro. This was the legendary Led Zeppelin that I’d heard so much about, and it was the exact album that I’d been looking for.

From beginning to end, Led Zeppelin II had that sense of cohesion I didn’t get from their fourth record. Track sequencing probably had a lot to do with this. Jimmy Page did an incredible job of creating the perfect flow to keep you engaged the entire time. Kicking things off with “Whole Lotta Love”, then calming things down for an intermission of sorts with “Thank You”, before jumping into the second act with “Heartbreaker”.

To close out the whole show, there’s “Bring it on Home”. Beginning with a slow, heavily distorted blues intro, “Bring it on Home” suddenly explodes with life around the 1:40 mark. The band keeps that frenetic pace going for the rest of the song, before returning to the slow blues riff for the outro. It’s the perfect track to end the album with, and gives Led Zeppelin II an excellent mix of climax, and closure in the confines of a single song.

Needless to say, after Led Zeppelin II, I was finally sold on Led Zeppelin. Over the next few years, I’d pick up their other records, and with the context of Led Zeppelin II, I was much more open to the blues-heavy Led Zep I, the acoustic/folk-influence of Led Zep III, as well as the later albums that threw most genre conventions out the window. Without giving Led Zeppelin that second chance, I would’ve completely missed out on “The Rain Song”, and that’s just not a world that I’d want to live in.

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Feature Post, Music, The Concert Series

Sloan: October 4, 2003 – The Canadian Motor Hotel

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There’s nothing quite like live music. When the right band takes the stage, that song that you’ve heard a million times before, suddenly turns into this shared experience between you, the band, and the crowd. The band pumping up the crowd, the crowd giving it right back, and you in the middle of it all. A shared experience between a few dozen, to a few thousand people. Everybody brought to that same place and time for the love of one thing….music.

Somehow, I’d managed to go through 4 years of high school without ever attending a rock show. It’s not that I avoided them, it’s just that they never really seemed like the thing to do. My hometown isn’t exactly huge, so big name acts didn’t come around all that often, and the idea of spending money on some band that I’d never heard of seemed like way too much of a gamble. That was money I could’ve been spending on guaranteed fun, like trying to track down the hottest wings in the city.

When I heard that Sloan were coming to town, I was genuinely floored. They weren’t some unknown property, or a nostalgia act on the casino circuit. Sloan were one of the more popular, and well respected Canadian bands of that decade. They even had a single in heavy rotation on the radio. The fact that this successful, contemporary  band was playing a gig in my city was surprising. The fact that said gig was going to be at a local bar was bordering on unbelievable. The universe was practically demanding that I take advantage, so who was I to disappoint.

A trip to the local CD Plus, and $20 later, I had my ticket, and was all set for my first concert.

The Canadian also happened to be my first time in a real bar. Sure there was the trip to the odd sports bar for wings, but those were basically restaurants. The Canadian was the real deal. I’m talking entrance at the back, staircase to the basement, bouncer at the door, and second-hand smoke permeating everything. Windows weren’t really a thing, and the ceiling tiles were on the verge of collapse after years of nicotine and audio abuse.

My friend and I quickly grabbed some t-shirts from the merch table, and managed to snag a table on the edge of the dance floor. The opening band (Cuff the Duke) was decent, but I was probably too excited about the whole scenario to really process much of what they were playing.

Not long after Sloan took the stage, an old man came up to us and let us know that, “Young fellas like you should be up there, where the action is”. I was pretty sure that it was just a ploy to snag our sweet table spot, but he was pretty creepy, so we decided to vacate anyway.

It was the best thing we could’ve done really. We ended up getting really close to the stage, and got right into the show. As the music boomed, I could even feel little pieces of the drop-ceiling falling down into my hair. The whole scene felt very rock-n-roll.

As a very casual Sloan fan, I didn’t exactly know all the lyrics to their songs. In fact, a good chunk of the experience was spent awkwardly singing along with a good chunk of mumbling, and every 5th word shouted out. The best part was that I never felt nearly as awkward as I probably was. Sloan were just too captivating for me to even feel a bit self-conscious.

With all four members of the band sharing the songwriting duty, they would regularly mix up their lineup on the spot. The drummer would grab a guitar, the guitarist would grab the mic, and the singer would be sitting at the drums, spinning a drumstick between his fingers. Whoever wrote the song, would sing the song, and the music was fantastic.

Crowd interaction was the icing on the cake. From a story about the band running into a random fan downtown, and getting invited over for dinner, to the bass player standing on an amp, taking aim with his bass guitar, and firing notes into the cheering crowd.

Walking out of the Canadian, I made the mistake of trying to talk with my friend about how great the show was. Turns out, that on this night of firsts, I also ended up with my first case of rock-induced tinnitus. The conversation sounded a lot like we were having it at the bottom of a lake, but I’m pretty sure he enjoyed the show as much as I did.

Instead of the usual scenario of me becoming a fan, buying albums, then searching out a live gig, Sloan won me over on the spot. In the following years, with every Sloan album that I picked up, I just appreciated them even more. As hard as it was to believe that they would play in my town back then,  I have an even tougher time now, getting over the fact that one of my all-time favourite bands was my first ever concert experience.