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sophia_sol) wrote2012-03-10 12:36 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2012-03-10 12:36 pm
Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me, by Martin Millar
I have begun volunteering at my local public library again, where my duty is to once a week come in and go through the scifi and fantasy shelves to make sure nothing's out of order. It is DANGEROUS. I used to do it when I was in high school, and it was grand fun, because it meant I always noticed immediately when there was a new book on the shelves, because I was so intimately familiar with the book collection. It meant that I always had new stuff to be reading.
But going back to it after four or so years away, the shelves are full of books I don't recognize, and full of old favourites I haven't read for years, and looking at them makes me want to read them ALLLLLL. Dangerous, as I said! I could easily have walked out of the library with two dozen books, but I managed to restrain myself to three, this time.
Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me was one of them. It is another book I'm of multiple minds about. It was...kind of weird.
The book was shelved in the fantasy section of my library, where it totally didn't belong. I can kind of see what inspired that, but the thing is, it is quite clear in the text that the fantastical elements are simply the main character's imagination.
It's about a teenager in the 1970s who's obsessed with Led Zeppelin, and about the same guy in the present-day, talking to his best (only) friend about Led Zeppelin and his past. And it's...well, to start off with, the main character is a dick. And the worst bit is, he doesn't grow out of being a dick -- he remains one in the present-day part of the book too. So that's always frustrating, reading a book where the main character kind of makes you want to punch him in the face. It's one of those literary fiction novels where it thinks it's being I-don't-even-know-what by having an unlikeable main character living an unfulfilled and miserable life. WHY.
In the present-day parts of the book, Martin (the main character) and his best friend Manx are both kind of awful people who deserve each other, and I didn't like either of them (well, okay, Manx was better than Martin. But not by much), but I found myself enjoying those sections anyways. Because it was so clear how much Martin and Manx mean to each other. And apparently found-family gets to me even when I really dislike the people involved!
In the 70s parts of the book, Martin was still a kind of awful person, and so was his best friend Greg. And Suzy, the girl he and Greg were both after (of COURSE there was a love triangle) was not awful but nothing inspiring or exciting.. Cherry, though. Cherry was awesome. I liked Cherry a lot! I was cheering for her throughout the whole book. And I liked that by the end of the book Martin could admit that Cherry was awesome, and that he tells the reader about the wonderful life Cherry goes on to have. And I liked that despite the crush Cherry had on Martin back in the 70s, she DOESN'T END UP WITH MARTIN. Because she is so much better than him!
Martin did have one redeeming feature though, despite being a dick. The book was, overall, about what it is like to be deeply, passionately in love with a band. Fannish love! I can get behind that. I really enjoyed reading about that. And I liked how Martin said that he didn't mind if you don't like Led Zeppelin -- just because it's his band doesn't mean it's yours. You might be passionately into some other band, and he gets that.
And okay, there might not be any band I feel about like Martin feels about Led Zeppelin (the closest I come is My Chemical Romance, and even there it's quite a ways off from the level of adoration Martin has), but I get that. This book is about how huge fannish love is a transcendent experience! SO GREAT.
Of course, the other thing the book is about is how Martin is an unpleasant human being who we're nonetheless supposed to identify with, so there's that.
But going back to it after four or so years away, the shelves are full of books I don't recognize, and full of old favourites I haven't read for years, and looking at them makes me want to read them ALLLLLL. Dangerous, as I said! I could easily have walked out of the library with two dozen books, but I managed to restrain myself to three, this time.
Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me was one of them. It is another book I'm of multiple minds about. It was...kind of weird.
The book was shelved in the fantasy section of my library, where it totally didn't belong. I can kind of see what inspired that, but the thing is, it is quite clear in the text that the fantastical elements are simply the main character's imagination.
It's about a teenager in the 1970s who's obsessed with Led Zeppelin, and about the same guy in the present-day, talking to his best (only) friend about Led Zeppelin and his past. And it's...well, to start off with, the main character is a dick. And the worst bit is, he doesn't grow out of being a dick -- he remains one in the present-day part of the book too. So that's always frustrating, reading a book where the main character kind of makes you want to punch him in the face. It's one of those literary fiction novels where it thinks it's being I-don't-even-know-what by having an unlikeable main character living an unfulfilled and miserable life. WHY.
In the present-day parts of the book, Martin (the main character) and his best friend Manx are both kind of awful people who deserve each other, and I didn't like either of them (well, okay, Manx was better than Martin. But not by much), but I found myself enjoying those sections anyways. Because it was so clear how much Martin and Manx mean to each other. And apparently found-family gets to me even when I really dislike the people involved!
In the 70s parts of the book, Martin was still a kind of awful person, and so was his best friend Greg. And Suzy, the girl he and Greg were both after (of COURSE there was a love triangle) was not awful but nothing inspiring or exciting.. Cherry, though. Cherry was awesome. I liked Cherry a lot! I was cheering for her throughout the whole book. And I liked that by the end of the book Martin could admit that Cherry was awesome, and that he tells the reader about the wonderful life Cherry goes on to have. And I liked that despite the crush Cherry had on Martin back in the 70s, she DOESN'T END UP WITH MARTIN. Because she is so much better than him!
Martin did have one redeeming feature though, despite being a dick. The book was, overall, about what it is like to be deeply, passionately in love with a band. Fannish love! I can get behind that. I really enjoyed reading about that. And I liked how Martin said that he didn't mind if you don't like Led Zeppelin -- just because it's his band doesn't mean it's yours. You might be passionately into some other band, and he gets that.
And okay, there might not be any band I feel about like Martin feels about Led Zeppelin (the closest I come is My Chemical Romance, and even there it's quite a ways off from the level of adoration Martin has), but I get that. This book is about how huge fannish love is a transcendent experience! SO GREAT.
Of course, the other thing the book is about is how Martin is an unpleasant human being who we're nonetheless supposed to identify with, so there's that.
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The Glasgow concert was taped, although the quality's not too hot even for an audience recording. Which is a shame, because the band was smoking. '72 was a great year for them live.
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Zep was crazy huge for just over a decade, when their drummer John Henry Bonham died. The remaining members decided they could literally not go on and be the same band without him, so that was that. As good as they were in the studio, they were even better live, with songs running up to 30 minutes and shows up to 3 hours. They could improvise the hell out of anything, and yeah. Still my favorite band of all time.
Jimmy Page especially helped cultivate the band's mystique. He was/is into the occult; at one time he owned Alastair Crowley's house. Each member adopted a symbol to represent them, and those symbols were the title of their fourth album. Supposedly JP never would tell anyone the meaning behind his. So that was his shtick, besides being considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Page and Plant had ridiculous chemistry (http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyljptB6Ht1qzdza2o1_500.jpg) on stage. (It fueled a lot of fanworks, and the band inspired an entire manga series that's been running on and off for 30 years.) Plant was chatty at the microphone, all sinful and golden with those itty bitty shirts he never buttoned, and those insanely tight jeans he liked. Bonham was just a freaking beast on drums. JPJ was probably the must under-appreciated member, but he's my favorite. The man sounds amazing on pretty much any instrument he touches, and a few he's invented besides.
The fandom's centered a lot on the trade and circulation of unofficial recordings/fan-taped bootlegs. Some of the tapers from back in the 70s are legendary for the lengths they went to, sneaking a reel-to-reel deck into the concert hall. Pre-internet those private tapes were duplicated and traded; there's a complex system for determining a tape's lineage, and some tapers would introduce deliberate flaws in the copies they traded out, so they'd know if someone was selling their stuff to for-profit bootleggers. Show trading is still widespread (with the band turning a blind eye) but it's all net-based now. :)
The main mailing list is named FBO after this bootleg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Badgeholders_Only). They've been active for years, and I think the archives are still available here (http://www.oldbuckeye.com/badgeholders.html). Buckeye's page (http://www.oldbuckeye.com/) in general is a classic. Underground Uprising (http://uuweb.led-zeppelin.us/) is a good place to start for concert/recording reviews.
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(Frankly the only familiarity I have with Led Zeppelin is the collaboration between Robert Plant and Allison Kraus, and hearing the name "Robert Plant" associated with something else is rather jarring to me!)
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This is mostly early/unusual stuff, and it's all live. The quality's gonna be all over the place. There's a couple from "official" releases that have been cleaned in the studio, some soundboard stuff from concerts, some soundboards patched with audience source to fill gaps, and some plain old audience tapes.
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