Bring it on home to me

If you know me, or read my other blog, you probably know that I'm a big fan of music in general and rock music in particular. A couple months ago I found myself in a three sided debate with a couple friends about which band is the greatest rock band ever. For the most part we agreed on the top three, or two of the top three, but disagreed about the order. I said, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, one friend said The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and the other said Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Who. Of course then we over ruled her on the Dylan, saying that if she wanted to call him the best singer/song writer we'd have no objection but he didn't belong in this category. She was unconvinced but said even if we bumped Dylan she still wouldn't put the Stones in the top three. I don't think we ever got her to name which band she would put in the top three if not Dylan, but at least we all agreed on two bands, Led Zeppelin and the Who (I think she's crazy not to include the Stones, but that's her opinion and she's entitled to it).

I am only 29 years old, which, if you do the math means I was only 2 years old in 1980 when John Bonham died and, as Led Zeppelin hasn't toured since, have not seen them play live [note: I'm from Seattle and their last Seattle show was in 1977 so, again if you do the math you'll find they haven't played here since before I was born]. I have, however, seen the Who (twice) and it was seeing the Who that actually turned me into a real classic rock fan. Given that, and the fact that I also haven't seen the Rolling Stones live, I should, perhaps, withhold judgement on the greatest rock band issue. I do consider seeing it live to be the true test of music...or...the combination of good studio recordings and great live shows, which is to say that a truly great band can do both well. I just always seem to miss the Rolling Stones (or already have blown my concert budget on other shows) and I never thought Led Zeppelin would tour again so that level of comparison never really occurred to me in this case.

Unless you live under a rock you probably know that Led Zeppelin played a live show yesterday in London. It was a benefit show though, not the launching of a concert tour. Today's Seattle PI blog says that yesterday's concert has fans speculating about whether or not Led Zeppelin will tour again. It's true. I'm a fan. I'm speculating. As a person with a tendency towards logical arguments I have to lay out the evidence as I see it.

The current issue of Rolling Stone has an article about the return of Led Zeppelin in which Bonham's son (who filled in for his dad on drums at the London show) eludes to the possibility of future Zeppelin shows. Also, the launch of the official Led Zeppelin website is dated November 20th this year. What reason do you suppose they would have, after all this time the internet has been around, to launch an official site now? It seems to me the only reason they would launch an official site now is if they're going to have tour dates to post there in the near future.

I'd be thrilled to finally be able to make a comparison on their live show (versus the Who). If this review is anything to go by, it looks like they could steal the top spot.

My wonder years

After I found my high school yearbook a couple months ago, and was bombarded by a high school storyline on Grey's Anatomy last month, there was yet another reminder of my wonder years. I was trying to finally finish unpacking the rest of my boxes at my new apartment (which I've been living in for two months). In one of the boxes I found a bunch of old letters and pictures from high school. Including the last school paper from my senior year. Our school printed "senior wills" in the last issue of the school paper each year.

Of course, being me, even cynical, angsty, high school me, I left my undying love and affection to several people. A guy I had an on/off sort of love/hate kind of relationship with in high school left me a quarter to buy a clue with in his senior will. I guess the price of a clue must be a bit higher than he thought because I'm pretty sure I still don't have one.

I don't know that I want to really. The thing is I have a lot of faith in people. I believe that people are basically good and that they mean the things they say. I'm not excessively naive, just naive enough. It's not like I don't know not to take any wooden nickels. It's not as if I think it's okay to take candy from strangers. It's not as though I don't know what a boy has on his mind when he calls at 1:00AM and asks you to come over.

It bothers me when I'm being genuine with someone and they assume some ulterior motive, or assume that I'm lying to them. You see, I'd rather go through life occasionally getting hurt because I'm too trusting, than to go through life always thinking of all the possible angles people could working, and the lies they could be telling, and they ways in which they could be out to get me. My naivete is a choice. Like any kind of faith, I choose to believe the best of people...until they prove me wrong.

Tales of a 9th thru 12th grade nothing

I've been thinking a lot about high school lately. Reminders of it have been popping up everywhere. I was at my mom's house a couple months ago, sitting in the library, and I saw my senior yearbook on the shelf. Of course, I picked it up and started reading what people had to say about me when they signed the book. I was mess in high school, especially my last two years, or my junior year in particular. Partly it was starting my third school in as many years (my junior year), but mostly it was because I wasn't someone that fit in even with the groups of other people that don't fit in.

That year book though, from my senior year, is signed by a lot of people, nearly all of whom say they'll remember me as unique and kind which looking back on it is exactly how I'd want to be remembered. I know "unique" is polite code for "weird" and I'm fine with that, in fact I sort of consider it complimentary. I did some stupid stuff, in one case something stupid and hurtful to a very good friend (my best friend at the time), but it's nice to know that people thought of me as kind because that's the one thing I always want to be and always have wanted to be.

After finding the yearbook I already had high school on my mind and then, a few weeks ago, there was a whole high school themed episode of Grey's Anatomy in which a bunch of the doctors started reliving their high schools days and all sorts of assumptions were made about what they must have been like back then. It turned out Dr. McDreamy was a band geek in high school (as was Dr. Bailey), and Izzy was assumed to have been the prom queen type when in reality she was the "alternative school" type (that's what they call them in Seattle, the schools where they send delinquents and pregnant girls).

In the episode, a bus full of kids on college tours had crashed and they were all in the hospital. One of them was badly injured and he was an outsider, the kind of kid the other kids call "freak" all the time. This girl, his best friend, was pissed because her best friend was the one that was lapsing into a coma from which he would probably not wake and all these other kids were walking around crying when they hadn't even known him, or if they had it was only because they'd spent years teasing him.

First it brought me right back to 9th grade when I was starting my first new school. I didn't know anybody and though I was in the fall play I didn't really fit in the Drama club crowd, I was too shy, not enough of a ham for them. Luckily for me that fall play was a musical which meant practices with the orchestra. I made 3 friends at that school (all in the band) and one of them killed himself before the year was out. The band practiced every morning before school started and he came early, with one of his father's antique guns and shot himself on the walkway outside the band room. The school brought in crisis counselors and everyone walked around crying all the time. I think every kid in our class (and all of their parents) were at that funeral. I barely knew him. I mean, I'd only known him six months, but he'd been one of the only people at that school who even talked to me.

My next thought was, "what was I in high school?". That first year I might have been a drama geek. I was in both plays (fall and spring) that year and I thought that acting in plays was going to be my high school identity (possibly my identity continuing into adulthood as well). The following year though I tried to reinvent myself. Instead of trying out for the plays I joined DECA and was planning to run for national DECA president junior year except that junior year I transferred to another new school that didn't have DECA. I was all over the place in high school and that last school that I went to, the one I graduated from, the one where people said they'd remember me as unique and kind, that school didn't even seem to have cliques really.

I mean, I guess it did, it must have, but not really the traditional types. I couldn't begin to tell you which clique I was part of there. I hung out in the "smoking section" which was a small wooded area on one end of our campus where kids went to smoke, flouting both state law and school regulations, but the school couldn't seem to stop it. I'm told they tried to ban smoking on campus once but kids just went across the street and then the people who lived across the street started complaining about kids hanging out on their lawns, dropping cigarette butts and generally being obnoxious, but that would have been before I went to school there so as far as I know it's urban legend. You'd think that the smoking section would be where the delinquents would congregate, but that wasn't really the case. Sure our resident drug dealers and drug takers hung out there, but there was also members of the football team, swim team, band, drama club, cheerleaders, and pretty much any other cross section of high school society you can think of.

Seattle used to have mandatory busing (an effort to integrate the schools) but by my junior year it had been replaced by voluntary busing. I had a choice of schools, some near my home and some in other neighborhoods, and when I had to choose a school my junior year, I chose the high school I went to because I already knew a couple of guys that went there. One of them liked to call himself a "floater" because he believed that he was friends with everyone, he defied categorization. It's true that he moved easily from the honor society crowd, to the band geeks (he was in both the jazz band and the marching band), to the jocks, etc, but I think that had more to do with the fact that those labels didn't mean as much at our school as they might have elsewhere. Honestly, I went to my prom and I'm pretty sure we didn't even have a prom king and queen. I went back to drama at that school, since they didn't have DECA, and I suppose that did define me in some ways, but I never felt like it was exclusive, like I was a drama geek and nothing else.

It's not like I'm idealizing my high school experience into this happy time because we weren't confined by the usual cliques. My high school experience wasn't ideal by any means; given the suicide of one of my friends, the near brush with sexual assault, the threat of permanent blindness, and the pregnancy (and miscarriage), it could have been better, but at least when I look back on it (those last two years) I don't feel like I was stuck on the outside looking in at the popular people wishing I could be part of their world. I got to make choices and, yes, some of them were colossal mistakes but I feel like I had the freedom to be whatever kind of geek I wanted to be.