TELLING STORIES

Now we begin to move away from songs that I imposed upon our household -- perhaps thumping the floorboards -- so you might not be familiar with these next selections. Then again, you might have glimpsed them as auras around my 1968 Mustang suggesting some responsibility for my hearing loss. What brings these songs to you now is their stories.

1969 Ramble On Led Zeppelin

Ramble On Lyrics

At first, I didn't much care for Led Zeppelin's music. I found it too heavy. Then, I discovered that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page enjoyed Tolkien and included references to The Lord of the Rings in Ramble On. After that I became a Led Zeppelin fan.

1973 Hypnotized Fleetwood Mac

Hypnotized Lyrics

We had a creepy book in our Charlotte living room bookcase about legends and ghosts of The Carolinas. It's hard to imagine that Bob Welsh didn't consult that book when he wrote Hypnotized. While I feel an attachment to this song through that spooky book, to this day, I absolutely love its triple-time groove -- a great song to take a walk to.

1976 Squonk Genesis

Squonk Lyrics

How in the world did Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, two members of the British rock band Genesis, come up with a song about a fearsome mythical creature from early 20th century Pennsylvania folklore? This of course was a captivating topic of discussion for a bunch of Pennsylvania highschoolers in the late 1970's.

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