I’m not an Olympic fan, not spending every spare moment watching the games. In fact, I have them on my phone and have so far watched half-an-hour of cycling, and I’d watch that if it was the tour de Quebec.
Every Olympics, however, there’s a couple of events, couple of compelling stories that catch me. So far in this Olympic, it’s Shin A-Lam, the South Korean fencer.
I’m not up on the niceties of fencing, but here’s the gist. There was a timekeeper error, the timekeeper in the event being a 15-year old British volunteer. Shin A-Lam had, by rights and by rules, already won the match. However, the error meant the match went for one more session. A-Lam lost in that session, thus losing the match.
In order to protest the results, a fencer must stay in the fencing area. While the officials took 45 minutes to process the official protest, the fencer sat on the mat and sobbed in front of the 8,000 spectators.
Sadly, the officials decided, quite literally, that the clock runs the referee, not the other way around and South Korea’s Shin A-Lam was out of the gold medal hunt.
Comments Off on The Freedom of Music: In Through The Out Door
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.
Rush – Spirit of Radio.
Thirty years seems like a long time. Long enough that if you fight for that long, they’ll call it the 30-year war, unlike, say WWII, which they don’t call the 6.002 year war. No, in warfare, thirty years is a long time. Not so many years ago, 5 times 30 or so, 30 years was pretty much a human lifespan, much less if the Germanic countries are in the middle of 30 years of killing each other. Yes, thirty years seems a long time.
Then I woke up yesterday and check my e mail to find out it’s a thirty year anniversary. On August 15, 1979 Led Zeppelin released their final studio album, In Through The Out Door. It’s not just their last album, however, it is also the only one I have a direct reference to it’s release. Being sixteen in the summer of 1979, I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan and had spent the last two years loving learning their catalogue. In Through The Out Door I waited for anxiously all that summer, as the release date was more a suggestion, and nobody knew for sure when it would hit the stores. I was in London at the time, where Led Zeppelin was in the middle of their triumphant return to English soil and were kings (or despised aristocrats who weren’t fit to lick the boots of the punks like the Sex Pistols and the Clash: sometimes point of view is everything). I bought extra copies because rumour incorrectly suggested the album would be released in Europe before America, and how cool would it be to be the first on the block to have a copy of the new Led Zeppelin album?
Can it really be thirty years? Suddenly thirty years doesn’t seem like such a long time.
In Through The Out Door is a much maligned Led Zeppelin album, undeservedly so. Even Jimmy Page has disparaged it, citing All My Love as not a very Zeppelin song. However, the music world was changing leading into the 1980’s, and whether Jimmy Page likes it or not, the long solos and extended jams where not going to cut it much longer. The three to five minute song was back, and Led Zeppelin let it be known with In Through The out Door that they were ready to face the new decade. All My Love may not have been a very Zeppelin song, but was very much a song of it’s time.
Besides, the album also had Fool in the Rain and In The Evening on it. For all their great music through the years, Fool in the Rain belongs among the top few. A great song that sound so unlike something Zeppelin would do, and yet was immediately identifiable as Zeppelin. And it’s not just Robert Plant’s voice that gave the game away, John Bonham is recognizable as the drummer on Fool in the Rain within a few bars of the opening. Not many drummers have such a unique sound, but not many drummers back a band as good as Led Zeppelin.
As for In The Evening, When Guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Plant got together in the 90’s for a couple of albums and tours In The Evening was one of the songs they played. How bad can it be if they still considered it worthwhile fifteen years later, especially when you have Zeppelin’s catalogue to pick through.
In the world of rock and roll, however, a good to great album is not in the hits, not in the top three songs, it’s in the filler. Sometimes, the filler is just that, throw away music that had negligible impact on your listening life. In better albums, the filler is almost as good as the top songs. In Through The Out Door has some very effective fill. South Bound Saurez, full of honky tonk piano and vocal hooks. Hot Dog, the mock-country song that you can’t help but laugh along with.
In Through The Out Door is not one of the seminal Led Zeppelin works, although it ranks among my favourites. Historically it is important because it was Led Zeppelins last. But in truth, it’s anniversary is a big deal because I will never be sixteen again, never be that excited because band is releasing new music.
Now that sounds better than the Cambridge Penguins. I was on the NHL to Cambridge kick before the idea became mainstream during the Nashville to Southern Ontario fiasco. But when you overhear something at the gym from “two guys who heard it from a friend, who knows a guy,” you know you have a scoop.
Sadly, however, it appears Jim Balsillie, if he can pry the Coyotes out of Phoenix, will move them to Hamilton. Southern Ontario is a great market, and if you read the two links given, you’ll know
I believe Cambridge can work: It’s an hour or less from the growth spots – downtown Toronto to London; it’s right along the 401, and RIM owns a parcel of land right at the 401 and Townline; It is outside both Buffalo and Toronto’s 50 mile boundary (just); and the Cambridge Coyotes has a nice alliterative ring to it.
Hamilton on the other hand… lets just say, find me one Hamilton Tiger Cat fan outside of the City of Hamilton. Sorry Hamilton, but Southern Ontario won’t cheer for your team. It will be a Hamilton team, drawing from Burlington to St. Catherines.
As to whether Balsillie will get the Coyotes out of Phoenix, the NHL has been dramatically weakened by the current economic climate. Three teams appear to be in serious trouble, many more hurting. Gary Bettman, for all his bluster, works for the owners. He has already cost them in Nashville. It may be true that the other owners don’t like Balsillie’s style, but sooner rather than later, they’re going to decide they like the colour of his money. It appears, as well, Balsillie has played this one very deftly, possibly opening the NHL to a lawsuit should they decide they don’t want him in the club. The bottom line is, if the bankruptcy judge accepts Balsillie’s offer, the NHL would have trouble turning him down.
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