Re: The aching wonder of what it was like

["Dan Copenhaver" <zbird@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I can't recall exactly the first time I heard Zep but I was about 12 I 
think. The first complete LP I had was HOTH which an older neibor friend 
made me a cassette of. I listened to that tape quite a bit I know. I joined 
one of those record clubs at some point and got I, II, III and IV which I 
liked but I still wasn't addicted to LZ.
I do remember the exact time I became a full fledged LZ junky.
I was 15 and was visiting a friend named Tom. Him and I became friends the 
year before when he was just staying in PA with his Mom for the summer, but 
he lived in Portland OR with his Dad. He decided to move to PA then. They 
lived up this big hill in a house that never quite got done being built and 
was always in a state of construction. But out back they had an Airstream 
trailor which was his "room" and where we would all hang out because his Mom 
was cool and didnt mind us partying. :) He had this huge bamboo bong named 
Pappy which had a thimble with a hole drilled in the bottom of it for a 
bowl. One big Pappy hit could put even the veteran toker to his knees. 
Anyway one day while indulging in some Pappy hits, his Mom called him for 
dinner. Tom told me to make myself at home while he ate down at the house 
and told me to listen to whatever I wanted to on the stereo. He had a very 
nice collection of LP's he brought back with him from OR. He turned me on to 
many bands I never heard of like Gentle Giant, Emerson Lake and Palmer, 
Genesis, Tom Petty etc. I was going through the stack and came across a LZ 
LP I never heard of called Presence. Here it just came out that year and is 
why I never heard of it. I put the LP on the turn table on side two for some 
reason and within the first few notes of NFBM, every hair on my body was 
standing straight up and I slipped into a musical high like I never had 
before. When Tom came back after dinner, I was just sitting on the couch 
with the stereo cranked up as loud as it would go with a smile on my face 
from ear to ear he told me. I asked him why he never played this for me 
before, and he said he didnt really care for it as much as thier other LP's. 
I had to disagree with that bigtime!
Dan