40

(No.  Not me.  Not yet....  That particular milestone is still a few years down the road.)

This week Led Zeppelin's IV turned 40.  I guess I heard a clip on the radio about it when I was on my morning high speed  interstate rally  drive to work.  I don't know why it hit me like it did.  I mean I did know the album is older than I am, right?  Even when I was in high school and everyone was dividing into the two or three musical camps all teenagers seem to wind up in as they are exploring their musical tastes, those of us who leaned toward stuff with the guitars did know that Zep was older.  It is just weird somehow to hear a number put on it, I guess, because to me this is music that should exist without them.

Some music dates achingly fast.  It's the stuff that the DJ pulls out at a high school reunion, some of it novelty songs from the your school years, some of it just not very good. You laugh with your friends over it like the old snapshots of you and your friends in bad hairdos or ridiculous clothing trends, and you sort of shudder and think, "My GOD.  What were they thinking when they came up with that crap?"  Other music never, ever sounds like it belongs to any particular age.  It is always good, always fresh.  It is an archetype.  It sets the pattern, is the mold that everything else tries to follow.   It's like an empire-waist gown, I suppose, always in fashion.  (And you can tell my mind is rambly this morning because I suspect I've just compared Led Zeppelin to an empire-waist gown... HA!  I will leave that there, too, because it makes me laugh....)

This entire album is special to me for another reason as well.  This music is my dad's music.  So much of my taste in music is his.  His album collection would make a classic rock vinyl collector tremble.  He's the reason I listen to the Stones, the Beatles, Zep, CCR, and so many others.  Riding around with him in his truck to basketball practices, to visit my relatives, or whathaveyou, he'd tell me about this group or that one.  There were always stories related to his life that went with them or that started because of them, and so I grew to love the music we were listening to.  He would give me his old cassette tapes of them or I would buy them myself.  That's how it started.

All these years later, I am still in the process of replacing all my old analog copies with digital ones.  "Stairway to Heaven," the most heavily-publicized song on IV (although probably not my favorite song on the album) is rolling through my iTunes right now.  I guess as formats change that is going to be a lifelong process of keeping a current library of my favorites.  I have to say, though, when I consider how much more than just mere music this is, it's worth it.