It’s Day 3 of my 1 Album A Day project and I’ve been driving through the city, listening to Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” on repeat. Curving down Western heading south, I try to think of a word to describe the sensation I am feeling as I listen.

Electricity.

The album is sheer electricity from start to finish.

It still is a record that awakens me, like New Order’s “Movement” or Soul II Soul’s “Club Classics Vol. 1” moved some of the most important people in my life.  I don’t have the same relationships to the songs on those albums as people I know and love, but I feel breathless hearing the Zeppelin album. The first four songs are like an ambush of sound, and then the album just continues, banging out stories. I’ve been trying to highlight only a few songs from each day’s pick and I thought to myself today, “Could I just include the entire album?” It’s masterful in just about every way, from the recording to the arrangement. And then there’s the last minute of “The Ocean” which is the biggest cherry on top, with “it’s oh so good” proclamation. Repeat.

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More random thoughts on “Houses of the Holy.”

I am my father’s daughter.

While I always felt a little distant from my father’s taste in music, we connected with Zeppelin.  Driving around LA as a kid, I could get lost looking out the window as he played his favorite albums loud on our endless commutes around town. If you’re a native Angeleno, listening to music while driving through traffic amongst colorful ever-changing scenery on canyons and freeways, through side streets and alleys and has a certain physical fusion to it. It’s very cinematic, and it’s like being a music supervisor to your own cliche reality.

When I think about my own awakening, and all the men I loved or crushed on, most of them were deeply into Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. Or both. And while we often had absolutely nothing in common, maybe loving the same albums was enough for me.