Big Log

1983: I remember when this first dropped, during summer break before 8th grade (and then getting massive radio play that winter) and I was mostly underwhelmed. It was…aight. But it wasn’t the Mighty Zeppelin I knew and loved. It was mellow and articulated a weary world wisdom I had neither the experience nor perspective to understand, much less appreciate. I was, in short, too young and dumb to get it. Now, decades later — and older than the singer was when he recorded it– it somehow sounds ahead of its time and also…timeless in the best way the rarest music can. The subtle synth touches I tolerated as obligatory early-80s embellishment now seem to represent something organic; a no-longer novel instrument of its era employed with precision and purpose. And unheralded guitar hero Robbie Blunt with a tour de force of compressed restlessness (his second solo, especially the sublime 8 seconds that occur between 3:43-3:51, devastates me *every* time), seems less a solid replacement for Jimmy Page and more the perfect foil for a Golden God starting to go gray, and resigning himself to whatever is coming down the road. I listen, in late 2016, and it sounds to me like the melancholy of nostalgia not quite able to overwhelm a defiance to endure.