Play That Funky Music

Album: Led Zeppelin, Presence, 1976

Best Track: "Hots on for Nowhere"

Lasting Memory: During my freshman year at Virginia Tech, I lived on the third floor of a dorm named Pritchard. My roommate Barry and I could not stand the guys who lived in the room to our left because those guys were dirty hippies who went to every dirty hippie Grateful Dead cover band show at the bar that was then known as South Main Cafe and made sure to cover their dorm room door with fliers for those dirty hippie cover band concerts.

Neither of those guys were in any of the dirty hippie bands, and they didn't actually listen to dirty hippie music when they were up at 3 am on Tuesday mornings smoking dope. Instead, they listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and the first side -- only the first side -- of Led Zeppelin's Presence over and over again.

Side one of Presence opens with the 10-minute "Achilles Last Stand," which judged only by its own merits is a pretty good song. Judged by the dirty hippie company the song kept during the fall, winter, and spring of 1988-1989, however, the song quickly became insufferable to Barry and myself.

One evening after consuming too much beer and vodka, I borrowed Barry's lighter and set fire to our neighbor's crappy band-flier door. I knew even at the time that that was not the smartest or most neighborly thing I had ever done, so I made sure to have a full cup of water with me and to put out the flames as soon as one of the fliers had burned to my satisfaction. There was no real harm done; the smoke alarms didn't even go off.

I suppose, in retrospect, that talking to the dirty hippies and asking them to turn down, or even just vary, their musical selections would have been the wise move. But fire is the cleanser, regardless of what Bart Simpson has written.

Because of my psychological torture-like association with half of Presence, I hadn't willingly listened to any songs from the album is 20 years until yesterday. I was cheating myself.

Beginning with "Royal Orleans," the last song on side one, and continuing through "Hots on for Nowhere," the second to last song on side two, Presence showcases a funky, even playful Led Zeppelin that I quite enjoyed. The "lah-di-dah-di" chorus of "Hots on for Nowhere" in particular brought a smile to my ear.

The customer reviews of Presence I skimmed on Amazon.com all state, in one way or another, "This album is considered the worst in Led Zeppelin's catalog because it doesn't sound like the other ones, especially Physical Graffiti, which immediately preceded Presence." That seems to leave me a minority of one in really appreciating the band's break from form. Heck, Led Zeppelin even got a little honky tonky and Elvisish on "Candy Store." Who can't like that?

Apparently my dirty hippie dorm neighbors couldn't. Fargin' bastages kept me from enjoying a good album for all these years.

Up Next: Lemonheads, Lovely, 1990