Remembering Mama Jo

By Emily Walls

My grandmother screamed routinely in movie theaters. I'm not just talking Psycho. I'm talking Seabiscuit.

She prepared and froze her Thanksgiving casseroles before Halloween, her immaculate freezer a refugee camp for bulk-purchased Cool Whip and stalks of rhubarb.

When she trumped my trick in Euchre, she sang her high school fight song in its entirety.

For holidays, my family traveled from four states away to see her, and we always found her furniture covered in bedsheets "to keep it nice for company."

She ironed my grandfather's underwear. When I objected to the futility of de-wrinkling hidden boxer briefs, she responded, "Ah, but you've never seen him in his underwear."

My sister likes to say that our Mama Jo never shoveled snow a day in her life; she swept it with a broom as it fell.

"Towels are for sissies," my grandmother must have thought, because I never saw her use them on her trek down the hallway to her bedroom after a bath, her clothes folded neatly in her arms.

When I was a child, I feared my grandma, at least in part because I was not allowed to call her "Grandma." She insisted on being known as "Mama Jo." Grandmas were old, feeble, dowdy; Mama Jo was anything but. Once when I was five years old, I said to her, "Thank you, Grandma." She whipped around, pointed her finger at me about an inch from my nose, and shouted, "WHAT did you call me?" I would have pooped my pants right there if I weren't even more afraid of spoiling her white carpet. No one in the world but my Mama Jo ever had the audacity to keep white carpet pristine and plush for twenty plus years. She was manic about cleaning, so much so that if you wanted to talk to her you had to follow her around while she straightened and folded and dusted and wiped.

I avoided her in my younger years, but as I aged I sought her company more. She always spoke in superlatives, so I was sure to get marvelous feedback from her for any story I told. I could count on her for a "That's terrific, honey" or a "Well doesn't that beat all," no matter how dull my tale. When it was her turn to tell a story, she was magnetic. She whooped and hollered. She shook her head in dismay or elation, as the situation warranted, and she splayed her fingers wider and wider with the increasing intensity of her story. Her energy was boundless, so it's no wonder that friends gathered to her in droves.

I remember one particular conversation I had with her in 2003. On summer break after my freshman year of college, I visited my parents, who were temporarily living with my grandmother. Mama Jo and I stayed up late talking, as we often did, and she launched into what was more or less her life story. I had never heard it all in sequence the way she told it that night, so I was fascinated by each step. She told me about her parents' clothing store in Logansport, Indiana, and how she had spent her childhood in that town. She adored her mother (who she only ever called "Mother"), and she told me about watching Mother put on her lipstick to get ready for a night of cards and conversation with their supper club. I never met my great-grandmother, but I'll be she was charismatic like her daughter.

Mama Jo also told me about her older brother, Bill, who had spina bifida, if I recall correctly. He had limited or no use of his legs, so when he was a child he got around on a little cart pulled by a goat. Mama Jo loved Bill and toddled after him everywhere. When they were older, he played piano in a kind of a big band outfit, and she sat in on practices and danced along and had herself a time. She was in her early teens at the time, so it was extra special to her that Bill let her, his little sister, tag along with the band. He was her hero.

As Mama Jo's story progressed, she eventually got to the later years of her loved ones and ultimately to Bill's death. The details are fuzzy for me, but I think Bill died of cancer. He was in the hospital, declining rapidly, and Mama Jo went to see him. Bill had become a Christian just a short time before, so he was ecstatic with joy despite his pain. I remember that when she told me about Bill's death, Mama Jo was cleaning her kitchen counters (of course). She wiped and wiped the same spot as she spoke, and her tears fell to the end of her nose and dropped onto the counter she was cleaning.

"I had relied on Bill for so long, you see," she said. "I saw him there in the hospital and we both knew he was going soon. I said to him, 'Bill, what am I going to do without you?' He said, 'You've got Bob [my grandpa] and the kids, Joan. You'll be fine. This isn't the end.'" Mama Jo sobbed in earnest and paused in her cleaning to wipe her nose. "So Bill died soon after."

She said it so simply and moved on quickly to other stories, but now when I recall that night in 2003, my thoughts go immediately to what she said about her last conversation with Bill. That little snippet was significant to me, and for many years I tried to figure out why. It was only in this last year, in fact a month before my dear Mama Jo's death, that I realized why her words had such weight with me: They would one day be my own.

After a severe stroke in 2004, Mama Jo began the period of mental and physical decline that would make up the rest of her life. The stroke robbed her of her energy and sharpness, but it was encephalitis in 2007 that took away her short-term memory. When I visited her in recent years, I gave her lots of hugs and told her constantly that I loved her, but I never said to her what I was really thinking: What am I going to do without you? A month before Mama Jo died, I got a call from my mom that Mama Jo had taken a turn for the worse, perhaps due to another stroke, and that Mama Jo was in quite a bit of pain. Naturally I cried when I got the news, and I turned to Jonny for comfort. He held me and shushed me and stroked my hair, and he asked me gently, "How do you think you'll feel when she dies?"

I considered for a few moments and then said, "I think I'll rejoice. I don't want her to go, but I know that I only want her here for my own benefit. I like that I still get to hear her voice and that she tells me she loves me every time I see her, but I hate that she's in pain now. Mentally, she's been gone a long time. I know she'll be happier with Jesus, but it's hard to let her go."

Soon after, Mama Jo's conversation with Bill came to my mind, and I realized that in that conversation in 2003, she had answered my future question. Like Mama Jo had done before me, I asked, "What am I going to do without you?" and like Bill's response, the answer came. "You'll be fine. This isn't the end."

When we buried Mama Jo on New Years Eve of this last year, my family gathered around her grave to shovel dirt onto her lowered casket. We prayed prayers of thanksgiving, and as I watched my family take turns digging into the earth and sprinkling a covering over her grave, I had an irrepressible and inappropriate impulse to laugh. I had to hide my face to keep my wide grin out of sight of my mourning relatives. Nothing about death is funny, but I found that I could not help rejoicing that burial, an act of finality, was not in fact final. It was not the end for Mama Jo or for Bill, and it wasn't the end for me.

Since that cold December day, I've gone through different stages of mourning for Mama Jo. I still cry sometimes, and she would laugh to know that the triggers are usually cleaning-related. I know there is more to process with her death, particularly because she was my third grandparent to pass away, and I am now beginning to mourn, not just her, but her entire generation.

There is comfort too. That night that Mama Jo told me her life story, she also told me another bit of information. She told me that she had been praying for my husband and that she had just purchased my wedding gift: Oneida silverware from L. S. Ayres. This was news to me, especially because I wasn't dating anyone and in fact had NEVER dated anyone. I was peeved too, because she refused to give me the silverware early and told me I would only get it when I got married.

"But that's archaic," I said. "What if I never get married? Are single people to eat with their hands?"

She was indomitable, as always. "Oh, you'll get married," she said. "And he'll be good-looking too. I know it."

On May 15, 2009, I married Jonny Walls, a looker, on a beach in North Carolina. Mama Jo came to the wedding, but in her advanced state of decline she did not recognize Jonny (though she had met him many times before), and she forgot the ceremony minutes after it happened. Naturally, she did not remember to get me a wedding gift, but as was so typical for her, she had prepared years in advance with that silverware from L. S. Ayers. A few months after the wedding, I unpacked the silverware that was finally mine, and as I grabbed a couple of spoons from the box, the receipt she had included fell to the floor. I picked it up and checked the date. She had purchased the silverware on May 15, 2003, six years to the day before I got married.

I'm looking forward to having a good laugh with her over that one when I see her again.

Asking the Question and Chasing the Game: The Story of a Comeback

By Josh Corman

The question-askingest SoB I know.

Asking the Question

Up until a few years ago, I thought that I had heard every sports-related cliché and metaphor in existence. Then I started watching soccer. It didn’t take me long to realize that soccer commentators – my favorite is the darkly humorous yet empathetic Ian Darke – possess a diverse, insightful vocabulary all their own, perfectly suited to mirror the nuance of The Beautiful Game and - if I can be grandiose for a moment - life.

I’ll share two expressions which I had never heard before I started supporting Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League (imagine you were the parent of a bright child whose behavior and performance in school fluctuated so violently that you alternately believed he should apply to Harvard or be given up for adoption – that’s what supporting Liverpool is like, in case you need a frame of reference). The first is “asking the question,” and the second is “chasing the game.” I want to examine both of these expressions for their significance on and off the pitch.

“Asking the question” can be loosely defined as “prodding your opponent in a variety of ways, hoping to discover a weak link in their defenses.” Obviously, the concept itself isn’t unique to soccer. A quarterback hurling a deep ball early in the first half to gauge how well a cornerback is covering a star receiver is “asking the question.” Watch any basketball team try to penetrate a zone defense and you’ll see what appears to be a series of non-committal and innocuous passes, but what you’re really observing is a series of increasingly pressing questions. The offense just needs one to go unanswered, and they’ll strike.

In soccer, the potential payoff for “asking the question” is more immense than in any other sport I can think of. A goal is approximately equivalent to two touchdowns in American football, a twenty to nothing run in basketball, or a Grand Slam in baseball – it doesn’t represent an unconquerable deficit, but it makes the going very tough for the opposition. And so teams whip crosses into the penalty area, push their right and left backs up the field to increase pressure on the defense, attempt intricate pass combinations designed to catch a defender wrong-footed, and rip twenty-five yard rifle-shots just to make sure the keeper is on his toes, all in the interest of procuring that most critical accomplishment in the entire sport: the break-through goal.

If you watch soccer, you might be nodding along at this point. If not, you’re likely thinking, ‘Well, obviously. Why the hell doesn’t everybody just “ask the question” until they get a goal or three?’ The answer is simple. “Asking the question” is a risk every time, and mitigating risk is a huge part of what most soccer teams do during their ninety minutes on the pitch. Often, mid-level clubs achieve success by toothlessly passing back to their own keeper and pushing forward only slightly, rarely daring to “ask the question” in any serious capacity. By playing it safe, they hope to keep the game close against more dynamic clubs and, at worst, eke out a draw. “Asking the question” is too dangerous for them to attempt with any real flair or consistency, because more capable sides will often have a ready answer. They’ll clear a probing cross to safety and surge forward in a fluid counter-attack, visibly, tangibly shifting momentum and catching their meeker, milder counterparts with their pants down.

Yes, “asking the question” is always a risk, but the dominant clubs, ones to whom adjectives like “inspired,” “powerful,” “invigorated,” and “masterful” can be routinely applied, “ask the question” constantly. They don’t delude themselves into believing that mere possession equals dominance. Possession is an illusion of a statistic. Soccer isn’t about safely cradling the ball between the midfield and center backs. Possession is only as valuable as what you do with it, and “asking the question” is the best way to make possession count.

Chasing the Game

Goalless draws are admittedly abhorrent. In fact, I’d bet that the primary reason that soccer isn’t more popular in America has less to do with its ill-grasped nuance or the lack of an elite domestic league. Rather, I think that the concept of draws - altogether repugnant to the American sports audience as a collective, goalless draws doubly so - kills the idea of soccer before it's given an honest chance. We just don’t like the idea of subjecting ourselves to ninety-plus minutes of a contest in which neither side achieves their objective. We love meritocracies and hierarchies, and feel like sports should reflect this love.

I’ve seen the dull side of the game and mostly come to terms with it. Of course it’s still maddening to watch a team deliberately hold out for a draw instead of “asking the question” of the opposition even once during a lifeless back-pass-fest, but those games are actually rarer than the average soccer-hater would have you believe.

What happens more often is that the teams feel each other out - “asking the question” a few times and applying all that open reconnaissance to a developing strategy - until one of them gets a goal. Then, something changes. Faced with a one goal deficit, the team on the short side of the scoreboard has a critical strategic (and moral, really) decision to make. They can keep doing what got them a goal down, or they can “chase the game.”

A team that “chases the game” is a little desperate, they feel cornered, and, backs to the wall, they’ve realized that their last best shot is to come out swinging. It might start with a more aggressive formation or more persistent attempts to pass the ball into attacking position, but no matter the strategy, a team “chasing the game” is a team qualitatively different from that more reserved version of itself. The change in perspective ignites something in a team that’s a goal down. They often spark to life as though a switch has been flipped and their confidence builds, they push up the field and take chances, firing balls into empty spaces filled almost magically by their sprinting teammates, they pass and cut and put the other team on their heels. And then, they score.

Watching the deciding moments of a soccer match level at a goal apiece is almost like watching a different sport. With little time left and a lot to be gained by clear victory, both sides are “chasing the game,” and the pitch suddenly seems wide open. The mad scramble for the winning goal results in fluid, dynamic soccer that represents the way the game was meant to be played, the best it has to offer. And when you see this, the same thought will likely occur to you that occurs to me every time I watch it unfold: ‘Why don’t they play like this for the whole ninety minutes?’

But the answer is the same as the answer to the earlier question: fear. Worry. Risk-mitigation. There is something inside players and managers, especially those who play for a side that doesn’t have the financial or geographical advantages of a Manchester City or Barcelona, that compels them to play things close to the vest, maybe send the occasional long ball in to a striker, and hope for an early break-through. I’ve seen it time and time again. That first goal, the one that shoots more conservative game plans all to hell and forces the losing team to “chase the game,” is sometimes the very thing that actually wins the game for the team that gave it up, because suddenly just holding the ball and waiting for something lucky to happen doesn’t make sense any more.

The Beautiful Game

I’ve been teaching high school English for four years now. I have a pretty cushy gig by high school English teacher standards, actually. Four sections of AP English Language and Composition with a roster of kids who are almost all decent and courteous and intelligent and serious about their school work. I like the people in my department and get along well with the administration, plus I’m pretty good at the job itself.

None of these things is all that important, however, because I can count on one hand the number of days in four years that I’ve come home from work and felt fulfilled or content. My job does nothing for my spirit. It doesn’t speak to my purpose, or offer me a chance to express my talent and intelligence in their highest forms. This is just a fancy way of saying that I don’t much like what I do.

I never wanted to be an English teacher, I just thought I did. I thought this because I assumed that there exists a relationship between loving to read and write and teaching English. This may surprise you, but the two have almost nothing to do with one another. It didn’t take me long to realize this, and for four years, I’ve been holding the ball in the midfield, booting it left to right, dropping it to the center back, then to the goalie, half-heartedly “asking the (occasional) question,” waiting for something lucky to happen. I’m sure you can imagine how much fun this would be to live through. Just like watching a goalless draw. I haven’t been losing, really, because I’ve done some writing, and I have a job that’s at least tangentially connected to my interests, but I’ve not been winning either.

These thoughts and dozens of others like them have been weighing on me for a while now, and at some point during the last couple of weeks, those forces in my life which are opposed to my joy and satisfaction scored a break-through. I was suddenly down a goal, shocked at how quickly it had all happened, seriously wondering about my capability to recover. The choice resulting from this blow was simple, though not easy. I could choose to stay the course, knocking the ball around and hoping for a break that wasn’t likely to ever come.

Or, I could “chase the game.”

I started pushing back against those oppositional forces. I started “asking the question” again and again. What do I want to do? And what has to change for that to happen? At first, the opposition repelled my advances. Fears over finances and security and failure countered my attacks ferociously. But I kept pushing, and finally, the opposing defenses broke down.

It started, of all things, with an argument my wife and I had. Like a lot of arguments, this one started over nothing particularly important, but led to a revelation: It’s awful doing a job that feels in no way like what you’ve been built to do. I said this to my wife, and her only response was, “Then do it. We’ll make it work.”

I’ve never stood on the pitch at Anfield, Liverpool’s home stadium, sweating, exhausted, staring a deficit in the eye, only to have 50,000 flag-waving supporters rise to their feet and belt out Liverpool’s club anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” but I think it would feel something like hearing those seven words from my wife: Then do it. We’ll make it work. It’s risky, I know. But the choice to chase my passion is my equalizer.

The game is level at a goal apiece, and I’ve got the opposition on its heels.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

A Russian Pill for the Postmodern Blues

By Emily Walls

My generation is obsessed with irony. In Internet comments, Tweets, TV shows, and face-to-face conversation, we seem incapable of authenticity. April Ludgate of Parks and Rec is our poster child, but of course the poster is hung only in tongue-in-cheek self-reference. The writers of The Simpsons summed it up more than a decade ago in this gag from "Homerpalooza."

Irony and its cousin, metaphor, can be powerful, but I think when we use them exclusively, we dilute their virtue. In literature and art, our authors and filmmakers most often use metaphor to expose truth, and they are effective. American Beauty, Pan's Labyrinth and Toy Story 3 deftly expose deep longing within us, but they do it parabolically. In our art, subtlety is king, and irony is second in command. We are, in fact, so steeped in irony, much like the Simpsons characters, that straightforward declaration is uncouth, even vulgar. It's all right, we suppose, in the proper media, like Opinion sections and documentaries, but it is repugnant and amateur in fiction. We've seen it done poorly too many times to give it credence. Saved, Robinson Crusoe, Remember the Titans, even parts of my favorite book of all time, Jane Eyre, stumble into didacticism. In response, we stick with ever-faithful metaphor. Because we have only learned to draw stick figures, we eschew portraits altogether, but I believe that the realism of a Rembrandt can be just as stirring, sometimes more so, than the abstractions of a Picasso. Or in unambiguous terms, metaphor is useful but not all-encompassing, so when we reject explicit storytelling—both in plot and dialogue—we needlessly limit our expression.

This Picasso (1937) is good.

This Picasso (1895) is also good.

For proof, let's look to the master of straightforward dialogue, Fyodor Dostoevsky. His characters in The Brothers Karamazov are as ideologically diverse as they are fascinating. When I read the story last summer, I was two hundred pages in before I realized the plot had barely moved. The characters were so engaging, their dialogue so provocative, I had not noticed the glacier-esque plot. What's more, their conversations were philosophically charged, so much so that if I were inclined, I could spend weeks dissecting and studying each exchange. I'm not exaggerating. I often found myself mentally developing curricula for imaginary book circles I led (with an iron fist and a garish hat).

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky takes the best conversations you've had in the last decade, your wandering thoughts in the shower, your quiet reflections at night just before you fall asleep, and your meditations on sermons and speeches, divides them among a dozen characters, and gives them back to you in organized and clear discussion. Consider the following dialogue, a small portion of a discussion on the problem of evil:

...and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to 'dear God' in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony. But how, how will you redeem them? Is it possible? Can they be redeemed by being avenged? But what do I care if they are avenged, what do I care if the tormentors are in hell, what can hell set right here, if these ones have already been tormented? And where is the harmony, if there is hell?...I don't want harmony, for love of mankind I don't want it. I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I'd rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can't afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket....which is what I am doing. It's not that I don't accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket."

The entire novel is filled with conversations on compassion, faith, God, sin—the biggies. When I read it, I was struck by the dialogue's unique style. It challenged me, not just as a reader, but as a human being, to explore my own thoughts. I could see my own ideas through the characters' vantages, and although Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha were not always able to articulate their convictions, the words they used sounded like my own inner monologues. I shared in their struggles to understand, and I grew more decisive as they did.

And that's what is missing from modern storytelling, precisely because our stories are not modern at all—they are postmodern. Our dialogue in art reflects our actual dialogue, which is largely either waffling and noncommittal or insolent and satirical. When we take offense at every opinion and villanize every solid stance, not for its substance but for its existence, it's no wonder that our literary characters hint rather than declare. We have rebelled forcefully against modernism and now fall too often into insipidity. Authentic, straightforward storytelling is difficult to master, but it's a valuable tool too often overlooked.

Metaphor can be powerful and effective, but we overuse it to our detriment. Let's add another skill to our repertoire: candor. Both in art and in life, let's peel back the layers of ambiguity and for once, naked and raw, say what we mean.

A 12-Bar Christmas Carol, Sung by a Chorus of Vikings: An Assessment of Led Zeppelin

By Josh Corman

The Ghost of Zeppelin Past

Robert Plant (left) wore those jeans from 1968-1971,
when he finally had to be cut out of them.

For probably four solid months after I got my driver's license, my in-car listening pattern went something like: I, II, III, IV, Houses of The Holy, Physical Graffiti; repeat, with little variation. If you're wondering why Presence, In Through the Out Door, or Coda didn't join the rotation, it's because I'd heard that those three albums represented a pretty sharp decline in quality, and since I could not at that time imagine a reality in which everything the Great Zep touched did not turn instantly and irrevocably into gold, I avoided them, just in case it was true. Instead, I added the live compilation BBC Sessions into the mix and was waiting in line at Wal-Mart when How the West Was Won, their remastered three-disc live album culled mostly from their swaggering prime, went on sale. Led Zeppelin stormed the castle, and they almost took the keep. Many were the moments (most of them probably right in the middle of "When the Levee Breaks") when I sat in contemplation, wondering if Zeppelin had not indeed taken over the title of my favorite band of all time.

I stopped wondering after a while. The Fab Four built an impenetrable fortress atop my musical mountain, and Zep was content to set up residence on a minor outcrop just below the summit, where they have stayed ever since.

I know I'm throwing a lot of metaphors at you, but this is important.

A few months ago, Emily, Jonny, and I were having a conversation about possible VI pieces, and Emily intimated that she had an idea that had been brewing for quite some time, but that she wanted to run it by me first. Led Zeppelin had started to annoy her, she said. She probably heard the breath catch in my throat and imagined me going into cardiac arrest, because she took speedy pains to qualify her position. Mostly, she chalked it up to living in Los Angeles and being pummeled with Led Zeppelin by just about every radio station upon which she stumbled. "Stairway to Heaven," "Kashmir," and "Whole Lotta Love," over and over and over. She said she still "liked" them (I could hear the air-quotes in her voice) in some general sense, or maybe it was that she "understood" why some people - some people, as though she'd forgotten who she was talking to - really like them, but they just weren't for her anymore, except in small doses.

So she wanted to write a piece about how Led Zeppelin had reached critical mass in her life and how this saturation had driven her to confer upon the mighty Zep that most damning of honorifics: overrated.

Gasp. Shudder. The horror.

I gave Emily's idea an immediate thumbs up. I wanted a crack at writing the response, after all. Well, like I said, that was months ago. Time has run out, and I'm launching a preemptive strike, as it were (from what I understand, those always end well).

The Ghost of Zeppelin Present


This will not, despite all appearances, morph into a diatribe on why Led Zeppelin is incredible and Emily (or anyone else) is insane for believing otherwise. The truth is that Emily's proposed piece actually got me thinking. As I considered all that I might say in response to her claims of Zeppelin's limitations, I actually saw more legitimacy in them than I would have believed.

So I went back to the source. I threw on III (For those not prone to "getting the Led out," Zeppelin's first four albums were designated simply by Roman numerals) and tried to listen through the ears of someone who didn't once adore this music so intensely that it bordered on solipsism. This is an intensely difficult endeavor, as you might imagine. Thankfully for the sake of the experiment, the first track on III is "Immigrant Song," which, if I'm guessing, is probably in the top six Led Zeppelin tunes currently played on the radio. (The others are probably, in some order, "Stairway," "Kashmir," "Whole Lotta Love," "Heartbreaker," and either "Black Dog" or "Rock and Roll.") I've never thought of this song as one of Zep's best efforts, but then, I wouldn't consider any of the songs I've just listed among my personal Top Ten. I mean, they all have a seat at the bargaining table (except maybe "Kashmir," which has always seemed lacking), but after the initial shine wore off, they all settled far below my personal view of the band's apex.

I would wager that for a great many people—a majority of them like Emily, who has heard other Led Zeppelin, but for whom the radio hits have come to represent most of what the band is—these few songs have presented Zeppelin as a horribly repetitive group with little to recommend it beyond sheer bombast.

Now, none of this is to say Oh, if only the sad masses got to know the brilliance of Led Zeppelin's deep cuts, they'd be instant converts. That is condescending and doesn't really do much general Zeppelin discourse. I'm simply pointing out that, like a lot of bands, Zeppelin's most radio friendly songs don't really do the band justice. On III alone, after "Immigrant Song," we're treated to an acoustic folk-boogie ("Friends"), a slow-burning blues howler ("Since I've Been Loving You"), a sing-along pop gem ("Tangerine"), and a bluegrass-infused ramble ("Bron-Y-Aur Stomp"), mixed in among the straight-ahead rockers (and even then, "Celebration Day" and "Out on the Tiles" reflect the group's versatility and flair better than "Immigrant Song"). The point is, anybody who is repeatedly and almost exclusively bludgeoned with only the brawny heavyweights in Zeppelin's catalogue is bound to find them lacking.

The whole 'seeing the band through different eyes' thing didn't do much to change my perception of Led Zeppelin, but I can openly admit now what I may not have been able to before. Phil Tallon wrote a few weeks ago about Parks and Recreation, and how Amy Poehler's character on that show loves her hometown both in spite of and, in some cases, because of its flaws. That's how I feel about Led Zeppelin. I know that seven-minute drum solos on studio recordings are needlessly indulgent, but I love "Moby Dick" anyway. I know that it's hard to take a band seriously when no fewer than three of their songs feature overt references to The Lord of the Rings (even if you love The Lord of the Rings), but I don't care. Led Zeppelin hit me at a time in my life and in such a way that I don't know that anything could completely pry them out now. They're excessive and silly and self-serious and obnoxious, but I don't care.

The Ghost of Zeppelin Future


It may sound from all this like I'm still that sixteen-year-old kid with a stack of Zeppelin CDs in my passengers seat, all those albums still cycling through my stereo. But the truth is that until today, I hadn't listened to a whole Led Zeppelin album in a long time, maybe as long as a year. Writing this brought me back to them, and before I popped III into the CD player, I was a little worried that the magic would be gone. But I feel that way all the time about a bunch of my favorite things. I've often worried that I don't really like The Beatles as much as I claim, that I've just become complacent, that I've kept them atop my personal musical totem pole out of habit as much as for any other reason. I've done the same thing with the Star Wars films and The Lord of the Rings novels.

I become legitimately concerned about these things. And then the first chord hits, or I watch that yellow text crawling across space, or I read the first few lines, and I ready myself for a long-awaited party.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman